chiefs and sub-chiefs would be the first to be shot.50
On the mid-morning of the next day they started their trek. The elderly, pregnant women, and children had the privilege of riding in wagons while the others, weak and dispirited, would be driven like cattle by the 70 or more cavalry soldiers plus 22 men of the Fourth California Infantry. Captain George, the headman and nominal leader of the Camp Independence Numu, rode his horse as dignified as circumstances permitted. Suffering would be great for all of them, especially the very old and very young. Many died from lack of food and water, and the trail between Owens Lake and Walker’s Pass was particularly difficult. After a trip of nearly two weeks and about 225 miles, the prisoners arrived at Sebastian Reservation outside of Fort Tejon on July 22. Of the 998 captives who started the voyage, only 850 arrived—148 Paiutes had either died or escaped from the Moses of the Wilderness (see map, Figure 2.4).51
Again, getting the Indians to Fort Tejon and San Sebastian was more important than what should be done with them after they arrived. The army now considered them to be the problem of the Department of Indian Affairs, while the Indian Service did not have the resources to care for their charges. Starvation and hunger took many of them, while measles and other diseases took others, especially the infants. Perhaps as many as 370 Paiutes managed to escape back to Owens Valley. Captain John Schmidt reported on January 26, 1864, that a remnant of 380 Indians (two-thirds of whom were women and children) “are under no one’s charge, no one to care for them, they must look out for themselves.”52 Some were transferred to the Tule River Farms when Fort Tejon was abandoned.53 Most went into oblivion. Those that returned found the northern Owens Valley in a constant state of chaos due to the actions of Joaquin Jim’s warriors.
Yet, the writing was on the wall, and the returning Paiutes soon learned that their era was over as miners and settlers arrived by the thousands with no intention of honoring the rights of Indians. Camp Independence was closed in 1863 followed by Fort Tejon in September 1864.54
A second “Owens Valley War” lasted from November to January 1865, and began a new wave of genocidal killing that resulted in the deaths of between 64 and 184 Owens Valley Indians.55 Just as the Paiutes lost their lands to the incoming hordes, so too did the people of Los Angeles Basin eventually steal the water of all of the citizens of Owens Valley—Indian and non-Indian. When the 240-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct was built in 1913, it followed part of the trail taken by the marchers of 1863.56 Later many contemporary Owens Valley Paiutes followed the aqueduct to Los Angeles. Today the remaining Numu live on three isolated reservations in the Owens Valley.
These Wandering Tartars of the DESERT57
In January 1844, when John C. Fremont and his group wandered from Oregon into northwestern Nevada, he came upon a body of water. He noticed a 300 foot rock or tufa formation in the lake. Since the “Pathfinder” was obviously America’s Napoleon, the tufa reminded him of the Great Pyramid of Egyptian King Cheops, and therefore he named the inland sea Pyramid Lake. The 100 or so inhabitants already had a name for the lake; it was called Kuyui Pah, named after the tasty black sucker kuyui fish that lived there. The people called themselves the Kuyuidokado, or “kuyui eaters.” As for the Great Pyramid rock, it was simply called “wono” or basket.58
In 1844 the lake was larger than today, measuring 40 miles long and 20 miles wide. As for depth, as writer Bernard Mergen has noted, “you could drop the island of Manhattan … into Pyramid Lake, and all but the tallest buildings [the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet high] would be covered.” Although a bottomless lake to its protectors and admirers, it is probably somewhere between 320 and 335 feet at its deepest point. The source of the lake is the Truckee River, with its headwaters at Lake Tahoe, and since Pyramid Lake has no outlet and evaporates the water is slightly saline (about 17% as salty as ocean water). This water not only supports the kuyui, which spawn in the Truckee River in the spring, but a cutthroat trout that is a species of lake salmon.59
Since the life of the indigenous peoples is intimately tied to the environment, it is not surprising that spawning time is fishing time and ceremonial time and prayer time. The lake was cultivated akin to the way suburbanites till their gardens, with tules, cattails, fish, and waterfowl carefully protected and utilized. Pyramid Lake was made a reservation in 1859, but not legally confirmed until 1874 (Walker River Reservation in Nevada was also proposed in 1859 and confirmed in 1874, while the Malheur Reservation in Oregon was established in 1871).60 The history of the Pyramid Lake people since 1861 and the end of the Pyramid Lake War has been one of protecting the lake and the river that feeds it from squatters and other outside encroachments.
The decade of the 1860s witnessed the murder of close to 300 Northern Paiutes involved in interracial conflicts. Between 1860 and 1866 the Pyramid Lake population was decimated, with 850 individuals either being killed in war, dying from disease, or fleeing their homeland lake for the safety of the mountain country. A population estimated at 1,550 in 1860 was reduced to 700 by 1866. The decline continued so by 1880 they were only 396 Kuyuidokado (by 2010 the census listed 1,330 enrolled members of the Pyramid Lake Reservation).61
The immediate background to the Pyramid Lake War began in 1859 when war fever broke out among the white miners and settlers in Carson City and environs. This was partly the result of the starvation winter of 1859–1860 and the continuing flow of gold and silver prospectors to Paiute lands. Prior to these underlying events, however, was the immediate cause of the mysterious death of Peter Lawson in April 1859 near Pyramid Lake. Lawson, a personal friend of Old Winnemucca, was killed by a sharpshooter with a rifle. Indian Agent Frederick Dodge suspected the Mormons, but most of the residents automatically blamed the Indians for any and all violence. Dodge noted that blankets, beef, and whiskey, which Indians would usually take, were left intact at the site of the murder. While the case remained unsolved, most of the Carson City inhabitants had no doubt the murder was the result of the Pyramid Lake Indians.62
Another event prior to the Lawson incident (sometime between 1857 and 1859) was the murder of two pack train operators, John McMarlin and James Williams, in the high Sierra above Lake Tahoe. Arrows had been carefully placed in the bullet wounds. When the Pyramid Lake leaders were taken to task by their Comstock neighbors, they identified the arrows as Washo. The Washo chieftain was then ordered to bring in the culprits. Three Washo men were brought in to be interrogated, but on their way to prison they broke from their captors and ran. Frontier justice was immediately realized when their captors shot the three dead.63 Later on, according to the testimony of Sarah Winnemucca, the actual culprits were two white men who were found with the money that had been stolen from McMarlin and Williams. They had planted the arrows so as to redirect the blame toward the Washo Indians.64 In any case, it was just one more misplaced event that added to the increasing war fever of the Comstock crowd.
The final outrage of a series of transgressions by whites against Indians, including squatting on Paiute lands, stealing fish from Pyramid Lake, hunting and destroying their forests and game, and rape and murder, led to a retaliation known as the Williams Station Massacre of May 7, 1860. In this instance two brothers who ran Williams Station, a combination saloon and general store on the Carson River northeast of Carson City, kidnapped two 12-year old Paiute girls who had been out digging roots for food. They were taken back to Williams Station, held prisoner in a cellar hole, their mouths gagged with rags, and forcibly raped. Just before dark a party of nine Paiutes, including the father and brother of one of the girls, discovered the girls alive in the cellar. In their anger the Numu killed the two brothers and three other men at the station, and then burned the place down.65 This was the Williams Station Massacre that led to the Pyramid Lake War that started on May 12 of that year.66
Within three days news of the “massacre” reached Carson City and Virginia City. The person who had discovered the burnt bodies, a third Williams’s brother, anxiously proclaimed that at least 500 Indian warriors were on the warpath.67
