At 67, Leivas is a respected Chemehuevi elder, Salt Song singer, tribal scholar and environmental activist. His intensely compassionate eyes, warm presence and wry sense of humor (an endearing trait shared by many Chemehuevi) are particularly disarming. However, his detailed and comprehensive knowledge of his people’s history, culture and the landscape they inhabit—along with the varied, complex issues affecting contemporary Chemehuevi people—is most impressive.
Leivas is the youngest of two brothers, five sisters and several older half-siblings from his father’s previous marriage. He was born and raised at Hanks Village, an Indian allotment in the Parker Valley at the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) reservation.
The federal government established CRIT in 1865 for both the Mojave and Chemehuevi people—even though the region was traditional Mojave territory and the two groups were currently at war.[3] By 1867, when the conflict had subsided, many Chemehuevi relocated to Parker Valley from Chemehuevi Valley—considered their traditional territory along the western shore of the Colorado River. Today it is the site of Lake Havasu.[4] It is essential to state that in 1853, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had already conveyed Chemehuevi Valley into the public domain.
At the beginning of the hostilities, some Chemehuevi, including relatives of the contemporary Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, fled to various parts of the Mojave Desert to escape the violence wrought by the conflict. The Chemehuevi band at Twentynine Palms, California would remain at the Oasis of Mara (Mar’rah), sharing the village with the Serrano until the tragic Willie Boy saga had unfolded in 1909.[5] Other Chemehuevi bands dispersed into the Mojave River watershed at present-day Victorville, California, but ancestors of the Chemehuevi had thrived throughout the Mojave Desert since time immemorial.
By the turn of the twentieth century, most Chemehuevi had settled at reservations in the Parker Valley or southern California’s Coachella Valley. However, some had chosen to return to Chemehuevi Valley. In an apparent about-face, the federal government established the Chemehuevi Valley Reservation in 1907. With the eventual construction of Hoover Dam in 1935 and Parker Dam in 1939, Chemehuevi returning to the area would again be displaced. After Parker Dam became operational and the river’s waters rose, nearly 8,000 acres of fertile reservation farmland flooded the following year. Leading up to the dam’s construction, those residing in the valley had no choice but to relocate south to the Parker Valley. Additionally, after the Chemehuevi became consolidated into CRIT, officials revoked their tribal status. However, unbeknownst to them, their Chemehuevi Valley landholdings would remain in trust—but in limbo—for over fifty years until the mid-1960s when tribal member Herb Pencille learned through his ongoing research that these lands still belonged to the Chemehuevi people.[6]
Leivas regards Parker Valley as his first home—where many of his relatives reside today—but considers Chemehuevi Valley his true home. Leivas’ mother, Gertrude Hanks Leivas, whose Chemehuevi name is Kankewa, or “Hillside,” vividly recounted her family’s relocation to Parker Valley as a small child during the mid-1920s, when plans to construct Parker Dam had begun. During her interview for William Logan Hebner’s Southern Paiute: A Portrait, she stated that their journey started after a big Sing took place with the entire community gathering to dedicate traditional songs “to the land, the ancestors, [singing] goodbye to everything.”[7]
Gertrude’s family traveled on foot alongside her father, Henry Hanks,[8] who pulled a wagon with their belongings thirty or so miles southward. Gertrude took in the stunning scenery as they plodded through the desert mountain canyons. Yet, however small she was at the time, she never forgot her homeland, where dense cottonwood groves lined the formerly unbridled river, and seasonal flooding kept the land along it lush and fertile. Throughout her life, Gertrude would implore her family to return to their true homeland—the Chemehuevi Valley. By the time she passed in 2007, she would be the last full-blooded Chemehuevi born and buried here.
By 1970, after a concerted effort by Pencille, other tribal members, and the California Indian Legal Services, the Chemehuevi’s tribal status was formally reinstated. Under the executive order, two adjacent parcels of their former lands on the California side of the river, each approximately 16,000 acres with a total of thirty miles of Lake Havasu shoreline, were returned to the Chemehuevi to repatriate. Consider that 8,000 acres of their original lands were now submerged. In addition, non-Indians had leased out prime lakefront property. Still, many Chemehuevi, including the extended Leivas family, decided to leave Parker to rebuild their lives up north. At times, the transition proved difficult—they would need to re-establish themselves in a land now partially occupied by outsiders. Plus, for most of the younger tribal members, including Leivas and his siblings, the land was foreign.
Leivas, like his mother before him, attended Sherman Institute, in Riverside, California, during the 1960s.[9] Sherman is an off-reservation boarding school established in 1902 that continues to be operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior. Like the hundreds of Indian boarding schools run by the federal government during the late nineteenth century, Sherman’s history is storied and controversial. For one, the goal of these programs was to expunge student attendees of their Native heritage and culture—including their appearance, language and spirituality—to “assimilate” them into white mainstream society. Starting at four years of age, children were, at times, removed from their homes forcibly. Other families sent their kids willingly because they had no other option due to financial hardship. Students would attend Sherman for up to ten years. Most were unable to visit their families while enrolled due to economic disadvantages and the distance required to travel back home.
Sherman’s early educational program was structured as vocational; girls were trained as domestic workers or nurses while boys studied agriculture, carpentry, tailoring and other trades. Program administrators believed that by “civilizing” these Native children, they would, in turn, influence their parents and families once they had returned to their respective reservations. Over time, Sherman would become academically focused, providing college preparation courses by the 1970s.
But a dark period from Sherman’s past would linger well into the future when a Riverside Eagle Scout discovered sixty-seven graves of former students in 2003 who had attended the program from 1904 to 1955.[10] The cemetery had been long forgotten. Many of the deceased children, mostly orphans, were buried in unmarked graves. Officially, the school attributed the deaths to disease or “accidental death.” For those lucky to survive, harsh discipline was the norm. Leivas shared how his mother and a female friend who had attended Sherman together continued into old age to cover their mouths while speaking in hushed voices. This habit resulted from the disciplinary actions of their former headmistress. Regardless, Gertrude Leivas mostly expressed fond memories of her time spent at Sherman.
Renamed Sherman Indian High School in 1971, the program began serving grades nine to twelve. Leivas and other students from his senior class were instrumental in securing California state accreditation that same year. Doing so ensured that graduating students would receive their high school diplomas. As one of four federally administered off-reservation Indian boarding schools in operation today, Sherman celebrates Native American culture rather than suppresses it. The program has students from seventy-six federally recognized tribes, with about 68 percent attending from reservations across the country.[11] Native Americans manage administration and operations. They also oversee and teach Sherman’s curriculum, including American Indian history, languages and culture.
Leivas moved to Chemehuevi Valley in 1977. His mother and two sisters, Mary and Irene, followed in 1980. Leivas worked as the area’s chief tribal game warden from 1977 to 1989, where he was responsible for patrolling 32,000 acres of desert solo. While doing so, his appreciation of the area’s native ecology deepened as he “relearned” the landscape. During repeated management excursions on foot, truck, plane or boat, Leivas noticed the subtle physical signature of cultural sites, including ancient sleeping circles. At first, these ancient village sites were difficult to discern but became more visible the longer he spent time in the land.
Around this time, Leivas’ spiritual awakening began to take hold. He would “feel the spirit” while patrolling his people’s ancestral lands. During this period, he became acutely aware of the multitude of connections between himself and the lives of his ancestors, the animals, plants, rocks, springs, sky, the river and other natural physical features he encountered. At one point, on his days off, he began driving out to West Well to clear up a dried-up natural spring located at an ancient Chemehuevi camp that had served as a stagecoach stopover during the late nineteenth century. The spring was no longer flowing, choked with non-native vegetation. On one of these visits, Leivas found a crooked two-foot-long arrow weed branch (Pluchea sericea) that became his Poro or sacred prayer stick. Having heard about a Hopi elder who revived a long-dead spring by blessing it in the traditional way, he decided to attempt this for himself. During a return trip to the spring, Leivas burned local mountain sage from the Old Woman Mountains and solemnly prayed over the site. He prodded the earth with his prayer stick several times—and miraculously, water began to percolate from below. The spring continues to flow to this day.
West Well or Hawaiyo is an important cultural site for the Chemehuevi, located just south of Chemehuevi Wash. Detailed petroglyphs at West Well describe various natural resources and sacred sites throughout the region. Leivas contemplated the meaning of these inscriptions for some time. Eventually, he deciphered a large, stylized drawing near the top of the outcrop that had previously caught his attention during one of these outings. He realized that it was a map of the Colorado River showing various channels, bays, points and islands. His ancestors had etched it as a wayfinding tool for travelers.
Around this time, Leivas became increasingly involved in environmental justice issues, affecting both Native people and the larger regional community. For example, he joined with other tribal members to halt the construction of a coal slurry pipeline and incinerator in the Ivanpah Valley near Primm, Nevada—considered traditional Chemehuevi territory.
In 1986, Leivas, accompanied by a BIA representative, seized illegally acquired Native American artifacts, including several large boulder faces with ancient petroglyphs. They were being displayed as lawn ornaments at a lakefront property in a retirement community called The Colony, located on Chemehuevi land leased to non-Indians before the 1970 turnover. The homeowner, a California game warden, was away at the time. However, his next-door neighbor, a San Bernardino County sheriff, came outside to contest the removal of the artifacts, stating that boulders had originated from the New York Mountains, not Chemehuevi Valley. However, Leivas suspected they were taken from a much closer locale, possibly West Well.
Leivas and the BIA representative responded that removing culturally significant artifacts from public land violated federal law. The sheriff continued to block their recovery effort by calling San Bernardino County deputies to assist him. But after negotiation, he allowed the two to confiscate the boulders without further incident. The artifacts are now on display at the tribe’s cultural center museum. Not long after the confrontation, both homeowners vacated their properties. Eventually, The Colony became a tribal subdivision.
During the late 1980s, and later as tribal chairman, Leivas joined with other Chemehuevi, Fort Mojave, Quechan, Cocopah, CRIT and other regional tribal members, along with several non-tribal environmentalist groups, in their continuous occupation of Ward Valley. This non-violent act of solidarity set in motion a fifteen-year watershed battle against a proposed low-level nuclear waste dump that was being fast-tracked for development within this sacred valley, located less than twenty miles from the Colorado River. It is also prime habitat for the desert tortoise. Leivas encouraged various tribal groups to unite when internal negotiations became strained due to the hardship of maintaining the vigil for over a decade.
Leivas was then cast into an important tribal leadership role as intertribal political turmoil erupted during a contested takeover of the tribal council. Having demonstrated his capacity for fair leadership, Leivas was selected as the “illegal” tribal chairman in 1992 by the tribal majority. He would be formally elected as the official chairman the following year. Leivas had been encouraged to take on the honored role as he is one of two grandsons of the last recognized chief of the Chemehuevi Valley people, Henry Hanks.
As tribal chairman, one of his first significant achievements was to switch the tribe’s main water supply from the Colorado River intake to water pumped from the local ancient aquifer on the Chemehuevi Valley reservation. The tribal council had previously noted a spike in thyroid disease cases and suspected Colorado River water was the culprit. As a result, they set about creating their water standards and regulations to protect this resource. Additionally, the Chemehuevi have an 11,400-acre-foot annual allotment of Colorado River water but are presently using only around 2,400 acre-feet. Currently, they are unable to market sales of this surplus water unless they receive congressional approval to do so.
The tribe then purchased the Havasu Landing Resort Inc. at premium “fair market” value from the previous owners. Renegotiation of leased holdings on tribal land ensued, and a costly restoration effort began to clean up these long-neglected properties. Tribal members oversaw this effort, which included the renovation of the old Havasu Landing casino and the adjacent marina along with the blighted RV campsite. Today, the campground is a stopover for retired recreationists frequenting the new lakefront hotel and casino, which opened in late 2019.
However, Leivas regards his effort to acquire once-private land within Mamápukaib, the Old Woman Mountains, where significant ancestral Chemehuevi cultural sites are located, as one of his most notable accomplishments. Today, the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, in conjunction with the Native American Land Conservancy (NALC), jointly manage the 2,560-acre Old Woman Mountains Preserve (OWMP), acquired in 2002, whose mission is the acquisition and protection of Native American sacred lands through sustainable land management, education and scientific study.[12]
These places exist in dreams and the spirit world and also exist in the conscious, natural world of the living Nuwuvi who sing. —Vivienne Jake, Kaibab Paiute [13]
The Old Woman Mountains are a sacred site of the Asi Huviav or Salt Song—a vast interconnected ritual song map describing the sacred geography of the Nuwuvi people whose ancestral territories traditionally spanned across the Mojave Desert, the southern Great Basin, the northwestern Colorado Plateau and the north-central Colorado Desert.
During the mid-nineteenth century, when Euro-Americans first documented this region’s Indigenous people, as many as thirty-five distinct geographically-dispersed bands of Nuwuvi thrived here.[14] Of the thirty-five original bands, fourteen remain today. They include the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, Pahrump Band of Paiutes, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah (Cedar, Indian Peaks, Kanosh, Koosharem, and Shivwits Bands), and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.
The Tuumontcokowi or Nuwu (the name Chemehuevi call themselves) are the southernmost groups of the Nuwuvi people. Today, descendants of the Nuwu include members of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe at Chemehuevi Valley, those at CRIT, and members of the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians.[15, 16] The Kawaiisu of Tehachapi and Fort Tejon, located at the far western edge of the Mojave Desert, are also part of the larger Nuwuvi diaspora—suggesting that the Nuwuvi were a highly adaptable desert people comfortable migrating over great distances across time when necessary.[17]
Vivienne Jake, the Kaibab Paiute elder who was instrumental in reviving the songs before her passing in 2016, stated, “Salt Songs are a cultural and spiritual bond between the Nuwuvi people and the land, and represent a renewal and a healing spiritual journey.”[18]
The 142 Salt Song cycle describes locations of ancient villages, places to gather life-giving salt, medicinal herbs, foodstuffs, trade routes, sacred sites and other important geographical features that were in the past necessary for their continued survival.[19] When sung during private memorials and other ceremonies today, Salt Songs encourage community healing by connecting contemporary Nuwuvi to their ancestors and the landscape they once inhabited. More importantly, the songs are the puha path or spiritual trail that provides a conduit between past and present for both the living and the dead. Singers, dancers and attendees work together to assist the deceased transition into the next world. “The songs of our singers will be like a trail leading us to you.”[20] Likewise, the songs allow the living to embark on their spiritual journey while participating in song, dance and shared ritual.
The origin of the Salt Songs is obscure—most Southern Paiute groups claim ownership. Salt Songs are sung in various Southern Paiute dialects and intertwine vestiges of traditional songs from other regional groups, including Cahuilla Bird Songs. Some are sung in a “backward” Yuman dialect of their former traditional enemies, the Mojave.
The Salt Songs describe the journey of two sisters who receive puha—sacred power or energy that emanates from the earth within a cave along the Bill Williams River in western Arizona near Parker. [21] The two embark on a spiritual journey traveling northward along the Colorado River into the Hualapai Mountains. They continue their travels through the spectacular rugged country of northern Arizona, southern Utah and southern Nevada. Once they reach the sacred creation site for all Nuwuvi people—Mount Charleston in the Spring Mountains northwest of present-day Las Vegas—they split up. Here, the Midnight Song is sung with sorrow and heartache because the two sisters must continue their journey alone, knowing that they will never see each other again. One sister continues her solitary wend northward, “symbolically representing the soul of the dead traveling north on her journey to the spirit world.”[22] In contrast, the other sister roams southward along the Salt Trail, embarking on a new beginning.
The Salt Song Cycle begins at Avi Nava/Ting-ai-ay (Rock House), the sacred, unmapped cave near the confluence of the Bill Williams and Colorado Rivers. The song then travels northeast along the Colorado River into the Colorado Plateau, Kaibab and southern Utah. From there, the song heads westward to Nuva Kaiv (Mount Charleston). Traveling further west across the Mojave Desert into the Tehachapi Mountains and then to the Pacific Ocean, the song loops back southward through the southern Mojave Desert across El Cajon Pass into the Coachella Valley and Salton Sink. Next, it travels around the Chocolate Mountains and merges with the Quechan Dream Trail. Following the Colorado River north of Yuma, the song crosses the river at Riverside Mountains near Poston, Arizona, completing the cycle at its origin at Avi Nava.
Besides being indispensable for ritual purposes, Salt Songs and other sacred songs acted as an “oral deed” in the past, marking a family’s territory. These hereditary songs are passed down from family to family, thus delineating property ownership. With song ownership came the responsibility to respect and care for the entire ecology represented within the song. This ecology includes human occupants and the encompassing ecosystem: flora and fauna, water resources, rocks, mountains, earth and sky—of which Chemehuevi consider themselves caretakers. No longer a record of property ownership, Salt Songs are crucial for the continued transference of cultural memory and ritual practice, especially for younger tribal members.
Salt Songs are part of a larger physical and cultural landscape connected through a network of trails documented and mapped by the Salt Song Trail Project, an intertribal partnership supported by the Storyscape Project and the Cultural Conservancy, whose goal is to preserve and revitalize the songs for future generations. The project, begun in 1998, was led by San Francisco State University professors Philip Klasky and Melissa Nelson with co-directors Vivienne Jake and Leivas. Senior tribal collaborators include Betty Cornelius, Larry Eddy, Willis Mayo, Sylvia Polacca and others. A historic 2001 recording of a Salt Song performance of thirteen singers led by 89-year-old Mayo (Kaibab Paiute) is for tribal instructional use only. Two short documentary films are available for public viewing. In addition, a beautifully printed map illustrating the Salt Song Trail is available for purchase.
Leivas himself became intrigued with the Salt Songs after listening to his mother, aunts and uncles sing them during family gatherings in the late 1960s at their home at Hanks Village. When his older brother Ace returned from Vietnam, Ace began recording the group with a reel-to-reel for a family archive. Gertrude and his Uncle Mio asked Matt to sing for the group at one of these gatherings. He obliged. After finishing, he asked how he sounded. His mother replied, “You sound okay.” Exasperated by her response, Leivas exclaimed, “What?” Gertrude countered, “It sounded okay, but you’re only singing with your mouth. You’re not singing from within, from the heart.”[23] Her assessment drove Leivas to learn the songs in earnest. He began to organize gatherings with other Chemehuevi elders, including Larry Eddy, who would mentor Leivas and others interested in learning the songs. Eventually, they invited other regional tribal groups—Maricopas, Mojaves, Pimas—who shared similar oral song cycles.
In 1993, Leivas traveled up to Kaibab in the Colorado Plateau after being invited by a Kaibab tribal member. He first met Vivienne Jake and Willis Mayo during a Cry that Leivas had participated in during a visit. For those unfamiliar, the Cry or Yagap is an all-night vigil for the deceased that follows the Salt Song cycle from dust to dawn. The songs are performed in a specific sequence to guide the departed to Naugurivipi (Land of Spirits into the Milky Way) while assisting mourners in their grief—thus producing tremendous communal catharsis.
Traditionally, all belongings, including the person’s home, are burned during the ceremony to ensure that the deceased have access to them in the next life. Rarely do contemporary Southern Paiute burn all possessions of their loved ones—although the ritual burning of personal property is still crucial for the positive outcome of the ceremony. In the past, to announce the event, a knotted string called the tapitcapi was carried by chosen tribal runners, who moved effortlessly through the desert terrain. Today, relatives share the news of the Cry via telephone or email. The event may take place months after a person has passed.
An outdoor arbor is constructed from natural materials to prepare for the Cry. Photographs of the deceased are placed on an altar within. During the song cycle, dancers performing the Circle Dance go ahead of the singers, creating a sacred space or holy ground linking the living with the dead. Assistants aid performers, along with the immediate family, during the vigil. At certain stages, the participants take breaks and feast before dawn. The ritual burning of the deceased’s personal belongings occurs after the Salt Song cycle ends the following morning. In some cases, four of the final songs are sung during the ritual burning.
Jake, who had been working independently to preserve the songs before meeting Leivas, was concerned that her people’s younger generation did not know the songs. She cautioned them that outsiders would sing in their place if they did not learn the songs themselves. After the ceremony, she and Leivas discussed what each had envisioned to revitalize them, thus beginning the groundwork for the Salt Song Project, whose goal was to share and preserve the songs and their sacred landscapes for future generations.
What makes this story so compelling is that Leivas’ grandfather, Henry Hanks, had shared a prophecy with his brother, Ace, many years before stating, that the songs had “left” the valley and traveled north. He said, “If people want to know the songs, they need to go to Kaivavante (Kaibab) to retrieve the songs—to bring them back.” In the beginning, some Kaibab tribal members found it hard to accept this notion—that their songs may have originated elsewhere. But as the discussion evolved, the community began to mutually acknowledge that the songs had developed dynamically over a vast, shifting landscape that transcended time and cultural displacement. The Salt Songs were now bringing the contemporary Southern Paiute together as a people.
Not long after the Salt Project became a reality, a group of Salt Song singers, including Jake and Leivas, traveled to Riverside, California, to sing for the children of Sherman Indian School who had died there. The children were buried in the once-forgotten school cemetery. Singing sacred songs for these deceased children was an emotional, cathartic and healing event for everyone evolved. As they sang the final round of songs, Matt felt compelled to open his eyes east towards the mountains. Above him were three hawks circling midair in the sky. He was elated, knowing that the children were now returning home.
Further reading:
- Carobeth Laird, The Chemehuevis (Banning, California: Malki Museum Press, 1976).
- William Logan Hebner, Southern Paiute: A Portrait (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2010).
- Clifford E. Trafzer, A Chemehuevi Song: Resiliency of the Southern Paiute Tribe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015).
- Clifford E. Trafzer, Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert and Lorene Sisquoc, eds., The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute (Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 2012).
The author thanks Matt Leivas for his guidance and generous support during the consultation and drafting of this dispatch. This article is co-published with KCET Artbound. Visit Artbound’s Mojave Project page here. Opening image of Matt Leivas, Sr. singing at the Old Woman Mountains Preserve photographed by Kim Stringfellow in 2019.
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FOOTNOTES (click to open/close)
[1] Leivas was a Riverside County all-star high school linebacker in 1971.
[2] Jeff Johnson, email correspondence with the author dated December 6, 2019. Johnson is the land manager at the Old Woman Mountains Preserve and a friend of Leivas. He had accompanied Leivas during this particular outing.
[3] Today, CRIT’s approximately 4,277 active tribal members include Chemehuevi, Hopi, Mohave and Navajo people. CRIT’s land holdings originally comprised 300,000 acres along both sides of the Colorado River along with 717,000 acre-feet of senior water rights—nearly one-third of Arizona’s total Colorado River allotment.
[4] The Mojave and Chemehuevi people coexisted for the most part peaceably along the Colorado River corridor before the incursion of Euro-Americans into their respective territories. However, during the contact period, interactions became strained creating tension between the two tribal groups leading to conflict by the mid-nineteenth century. Douglas Deur, Ph.D. and Deborah Confer, “People of Snowy Mountain, People of the River: A Multi-Agency Ethnographic Overview and Compendium Relating to Tribes associated with Clark County, Nevada,” Pacific West Region: Social Science Series, Publication Number 2012-01, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2012, 161-166.
[5] The Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians are relative newcomers to the Oasis of Mara (Mar’rah). Throughout time, Serrano, Cahuilla and Chemehuevi have historically occupied this multi-tribal village site—sometimes jointly. For more information, see: https://www.29palmstribe.org/copy-of-our-mission-statement-1
[6] In 1966, the BIA twice-offered Chemehuevi cash for their Chemehuevi Valley landholdings if they agreed to fold them into CRIT. They turned the offer down and were reinstated as a sovereign tribe on June 5, 1970. William Logan Hebner, Southern Paiute: A Portrait (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2010, 156.
[7] Heber, Southern Paiute: A Portrait, 58.
[8] Henry Hanks’ Chemehuevi name is Siwantip. During Hebner’s interview of Gertrude Leivas with four of her daughters, it was stated by daughter June that “Hanks” and other white surnames like them given to Native Americans are “our slave names.” Heber, Southern Paiute: A Portrait, 160.
[9] Gertrude Hanks and her siblings were sent to the BIA Indian school in Parker Valley not long after her family arrived there.
[10] Eagle Scout Jasen Aebischer worked with other scouts and volunteers in a clean-up effort of the cemetery. As a result, the Pechanga Indian Tribe donated $5,000 for headstones. Cecilia Rasmussen, “Institute Tried to Drum ‘Civilization’ Into Indian Youth,” Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2003.
[11] Sherman Institute was initially founded as the Perris Indian School in 1892 and relocated to Riverside, California, in 1902. For more information, see https://www.shermanindian.org/home.
[12] The OWMP dedication ceremony on May 23, 2015, involved Cahuilla, Chemehuevi and other regional tribal members, local ranchers, representatives from the BLM and from the Sierra Club. While dancers performed, Cahuilla Bird Songs were sung.
[13] Ruth Arlene Musser-Lopez and Steve Miller, “Archaeological Trails and Ethnographic Trails: Can They Meet?” SCA Proceedings, Volume 24, 2010, 2.
[14] Maps showing traditional territories of the Southern Paiute compiled by Isabel T. Kelly in 1934 and William R. Palmer in 1933 suggest that up to thirty-five distinct bands, recorded during the mid-nineteenth century, were consolidated into fifteen groups. See Heber, Southern Paiute: A Portrait, 188-192 for more information.
[15] Translates to Black Bearded Ones. Carobeth Laird, The Chemehuevis (Banning, California, Malki Museum Press, 1976), 3.
[16] As mentioned earlier, Chemehuevi descendants live within the Coachella and Imperial Valleys.
[17] A band of Chemehuevis lived in the Victorville/Apple Valley/Lucerne Valley area during the nineteenth century and perhaps earlier. One of the last conflicts between Native Americans and Euro-Americans in the Mojave Desert occurred at Chimney Rock on February 16, 1867. Designated as a California Historical Landmark No. 737 in 1960, the Chimney Rock site is located north of Rabbit Springs Dry Lake in Lucerne Valley, California. Matt Leivas said that these Chemehuevis, who fought in this battle, are the Pyuchies. Matt Leivas, interview with the author, June 7, 2020.
[18] Musser-Lopez and Miller, “Archaeological Trails and Ethnographic Trails,” 2.
[19] In the past, Deer and Bighorn Sheep Songs provided an oral map for prime hunting locations while other songs detailed food and other important resource gathering sites.
[20] Heber, Southern Paiute: A Portrait, 14.
[21] Certain remote desert caves are significant ceremonial ancestral sites for Southern Paiutes. Sacred caves in the Mojave Desert, including Mitchell Caverns, are places where “Paiutes sought and received spiritual powers from specific, named spirits…sometimes be [sic] revealed in the form of songs.” One of these “Music Caves” known today as Gypsum Cave, located east of Las Vegas, Nevada, is one such ancient ritual site. This cave is filled with invaluable indigenous artifacts left over a long period of human occupation; archeologist Mark R. Harrington first excavated the cave during the 1930s. Unfortunately, in more recent years, reckless recreationists have completely desecrated what little remains in the publicly accessible areas of the cave. Deur and Confer, “People of Snowy Mountain, People of the River,” 276.
[22] Clifford E. Trafzer, A Chemehuevi Song: Resiliency of the Southern Paiute Tribe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 6.
[23] Heber, Southern Paiute: A Portrait, 168.