The Alabama Hills. PhotograPh by Steve beradi.

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Boom: A Journal of California, vol. 2, Number 4, pps 104–117. iSSN 2153-8018, electronic iSSN 2153-764X.

© 2013 by the regents of the University of California. all rights reserved. Please direct all requests for

permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s rights and

Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. doi: 10.1525/boom.2012.2.4.104.

I n 1935, Susie baker, an owens valley Paiute elder from big Pine, California,

told the following story: a giant approached the alabama hills, a range of small

hills and protruding rock formations on the valley’s southern edge.1 as the

giant reached the hills, he screamed at the top of his great voice. Frightened, people

scurried from their hiding places. as they fled, the giant picked them up and killed

them. he planned to take his victims home for a feast with his wife. When the giant

reached tinemaha, a peak that looms over the owens valley, he again screamed at the

top of his voice. More people ran from their hiding places, and the giant picked them

up, too, and killed them. he traveled as far north as tupueseenata (hammil valley)

and then decided to return home with his prey.

but the waterbaby, a spirit that lives in lakes, grew tired of the giant’s screaming,

which had frightened him several times. Waterbaby knew when the giant would pass

by his home in the owens Lake, so he went near the trail, lay down on a rock, and

waited. When the giant approached, screaming, he saw the waterbaby lying on the

rock. the giant asked where his mother and father were, but the waterbaby refused to

answer. the giant pressed the waterbaby’s little fingers to see if it would scream, but

the waterbaby never said a word. the giant pressed his little head, but the waterbaby

did not even mumble. again the giant asked, “Little boy, where is your mother and

father?” the waterbaby said nothing. the giant pinched the waterbaby’s finger,

saying, “you have a very little hand and pretty little body.” the waterbaby sat up and

seized the giant by the forefinger. the giant exclaimed, “Let me go, you must have

thought i was your dad or mother but i am not!” the giant tried to escape with his

great strength, but it was useless. the waterbaby stood up, dragged the giant to the

edge of owens Lake, and threw him into the water. then the waterbaby jumped in

after the giant and took him down to the bottom. years later, the waterbaby took the

giant’s bones and threw them opposite the alabama hills, across the owens river,

which drains into the lake. the remains of the giant’s bones are still there, baker

informed the younger Paiute woman who recorded her story.

there are multiple meanings to this story, not only for the owens valley Paiutes

but for all who have an interest in the owens valley. Scholars and folklorists know

william j. bauer, jr.

The Giant and the Waterbaby

Paiute oral traditions and the owens valley Water Wars

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106 b o o m c a l i f o r n i a . c o m

the aqueduct to which Susie baker refers is, of course,

the famous channel that siphoned water from the owens

valley toward Los angeles, and its construction was a

seminal part of the owens valley Water Wars.

The Water Wars

a popular topic of study in California’s history, the Water

Wars have inspired many books and the film Chinatown.

authors have used the owens valley saga to assess the

environmental and economic causes and consequences of

water diversion.3 yet in too many of these histories, scholars

ignore the owens valley’s indigenous inhabitants. Paiutes

may appear as static “first inhabitants” of the valley, but

that such oral traditions are far from fantasy or quaint

myths. baker, seventy years old at the time, purposefully

used the story to contemplate the history and consequences

of a crucial event in California history. She concluded her

narrative by saying that the rock on which the waterbaby

waited for the giant still existed, but “it may be destroyed

by the Los angeles aqueduct builders. the waterbaby’s

home may be still there. i do hope it’s there.”2

He planned to take his victims home for a feast

with his wife.

Owens Lake. PhotograPh by aLaN LeviNe.

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then they disappear, allegedly conquered by owens valley

“pioneers.” they were thought to have had little at stake

in the owens valley Water Wars—a sentiment that Susie

baker refuted. Water and the conflict over this precious

resource were on the minds of owens valley Paiutes when

they told oral narratives in the 1930s.4

beginning in 1905, the Los angeles department of

Water and Power bought land and water rights from

owens valley settlers. in 1913, the department of Water

completed an aqueduct that brought the water from owens

Lake and owens river the 230 miles to Los angeles. in

the 1920s, conflicts between owens valley farmers and

the City of Los angeles developed. drought had reduced

the amount of water available for productive farming in

the valley, and angry farmers attempted to sabotage the

aqueduct. eventually, the farmer rebellion failed and they

sold more land and water rights to Los angeles. by the

1930s, the city of Los angeles owned 95 percent of the

owens valley’s farm and ranch land.5 through all this,

the Paiutes and their oral traditions remained.

in 1935, anthropologist alfred Kroeber of the University

of California secured a state public works project grant and

enlisted anthropology students to canvass the state and

interview native peoples. Students Frank essene, Frederick

hulse, and abraham halpern traveled to the owens valley

to conduct their fieldwork. anthropologists often hired

younger Paiutes to interview and interpret the oral testimony

of elderly Paiutes, which enabled Paiutes to control and

shape historical and contemporary narratives. Many of these

oral traditions involved or were related to water.

oral traditions, those stories told for more than one

generation that reflect social, economic, cultural, and

political contexts, represent the ways in which indigenous

people remembered and told their histories.6 Paiutes related

their ethnogenesis to a specific river, which enunciated

their relationship with water, and identified the location of

Owens River. PhotograPh by raLPhMaN.

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108 b o o m c a l i f o r n i a . c o m

springs as a way to define a historical consciousness that

depends on place rather than chronology.7

Paiute oral traditions not only contemplate the past,

they intentionally reflect and comment upon contemporary

events. the diversion of water from the owens valley

was one of the most important events in Paiute lives and

politics, if not in all of California. Paiutes revised their oral

traditions in a struggle between themselves and anglo

settlers over the meanings and consequences of Settler

Colonialism in California.8 in their oral traditions, Paiutes

argued that the war began at Paiute creation, not in 1905,

when Frederick eaton began to purchase land in the owens

valley. the antagonist, rather than the City of Los angeles,

was more often than not the owens valley settler. and the

ultimate victors in the wars may not have been the city of

Los angeles, but the Paiutes themselves—their systems of

knowledge and their efforts to reclaim water.

Identity and water

at a basic level, Paiute oral traditions define Paiute

identity. in the 1920s, george Collins, a Paiute man in

his thirties or forties from Fish Springs, said that the

owens valley Paiutes called themselves nün’wa paya hūp

ca’á otūŭ’mu, “we are water ditch coyote children.” in one

version of their creation story, Coyote the creator placed

Paiutes next to the “water ditch,” or the owens river, that

runs through the valley.9

anthropologists lump owens valley Paiutes into the

great basin cultural area and have attempted to define

them by their language and economy. Paiutes speak

Mono, a dialect of the Numic language mostly spoken in

the present-day states of Nevada, oregon, Utah, Colorado,

and California. archaeologists and anthropologists believe

Paiutes settled the owens valley as early as 600 c.e.,but archaeological evidence shows that indigenous people

occupied the valley 5,000 or perhaps 6,500 years ago.

a common trait of great basin indians was their ability

to adapt a hunting and harvesting economy to the arid

environment east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the

rocky Mountains.10

but whereas anthropological cultural areas, such as the

“great basin,” identified practices that indigenous people

of a specific region shared, and archaeologists endeavored

to discern a specific time or date when Paiute culture

appeared in the owens valley, Paiutes demonstrated

the importance of place in their sense of self. Paiute

ethnogenesis occurred next to a known and specific body

of water; they were not “water ditch coyote children” until

Coyote created or placed them next to the owens river.

oral traditions explicitly linked Paiute identity to Paiute

water, and water to Paiute worldview.

all things, especially water, are sentient in Paiute

cosmology, with human emotions and abilities. in one

story, a group of women are gathering basket-making

materials near a lake at present-day dyer, Nevada. the

women foolishly begin to make fun of the water. angrily,

water leaps out of the lake and attempts to sweep them to

the bottom.11 although the lake fails to take its intended

prey, water, like humans, feels insults and attempts to exact

revenge for affronts.

additionally, water possessed its own spirits, such as

the waterbaby in baker’s story.12 often, waterbabies were

PhotograPh by FraNK KovaLCheK.

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troublesome sprites associated with bodies of water, such

as lakes or rivers, although they also functioned as spirit

helpers for healers. another oral tradition relates that a

group of children were playing at Pasasa’a (now known

as Casa diablo hot Springs and home to a geothermal

power plant). an impetuous boy begins to throw rocks into

Pasasa’a, despite his peers’ warnings. a waterbaby emerges

from the spring, abducts the boy and takes him under the

water.13 Such stories about water revealed the way in which

Paiutes understood and related to the world in which they

lived—namely, that aspects of the physical world possessed

access to supernatural forces. Moreover, these stories

warned children of the real dangers of playing too close to

springs, creeks, or lakes.

Paiutes animated water by imbuing it with puha,

power or “a force or energy” that everything in the world

possesses. Puha can have positive and harmful effects;

it can be a generative or destructive force in the People’s

lives. yet the relationship between puha and water might

be much more than just possessing power. the Paiute

word for water—paya—sounds like puha, the word for

power.14 a Southern Paiute man from Las vegas described

puha in liquid terms: it “flows into and down the sides of

mountains.”15 the Paiute worldview accorded water an

important role and place in the People’s lives.

The places of history

Paiute histories emphasize place, rather than chronology.16

oral traditions and historical narratives move across

space, not time; from place to place, not from date to date.

Consider again the story of the giant, who traveled from

one distinct place to another on the owens valley Paiute

landscape. the giant walked from the alabama hills to

tinemaha to tupueseenata and then returned to owens

Lake. baker knew the exact location of the rock on which

the waterbaby waited for the giant. other stories about

water, too, were clear about where they occurred. We know

that the story of the basket-makers took place at dyer, and

the story of the children occurred at Pasasa’a. in the owens

valley as well as the yukon territory, specific places serve

as “anchors of memory,” linking human history to place.17

We don’t know when these stories occurred, but they are

“true” from a Paiute perspective because they occurred at

places known to historical and contemporary Paiutes.

Looking into the stories deeply, we see a narrative

structure emerge that adheres to topographic features. in

Paiute cosmology, high places such as the alabama hills

or tinemaha are associated with positive manifestations

of puha. hence, puha “flows down” from mountains.

benevolent spirits live on mountain peaks; doctors go

to the tops of mountains to seek visions and puha itself.

Low-lying areas, such as owens Lake, Pasasa’a, and other

bodies of water, usually (but not always) have negative

manifestations of puha. Waterbabies emerge from water

and snatch women and children. in between high and low

areas are the plains, or owens valley itself, an area of stasis

or what geographer yi-Fu tuan describes as “space.”18

Paiutes structure their oral narratives to replicate this

understanding of their topography. oral traditions begin

in space, either on the plains or at the foot of the hills,

and proceed to high or low places. the story of the giant

originates at the foot of the alabama hills and then moves

from named place to named place before the giant meets

his end at owens Lake.19 other oral traditions about water

adhere to this topographic narrative structure.

The Frog Sisters and Rattlesnake

here is another story Susie baker told in 1935: the Frog

sisters lived at a spring. rattlesnake, who lived about one

mile or more away, planned to steal the spring away from

them. he kept very close watch until he had a chance. one

afternoon, when the Frog sisters were fast asleep and no

one was around, rattlesnake came down to the spring and

drank as much as he could, holding the rest of the water

in his mouth. he took every bit of the water in the spring

and started for his home. he was about a half-mile away

when the Frog sisters woke up and to their surprise found

no water in their spring. they immediately investigated

and guessed what had become of their water. they pursued

rattlesnake and saw him climbing up the hill. the Frog

sisters followed him up the hill as fast as they could. Upon

seeing the sisters in pursuit, rattlesnake increased his

Paiute histories emphasize place, rather than chronology.

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110 b o o m c a l i f o r n i a . c o m

speed, but as he ascended the mountain, he became tired,

coughed, and spat out some of the water. he continued on

his journey until the Frog sisters overtook him, stopped

him, tickled him, and made him spit all the water he had

in his mouth. the Frog sisters drank the water and took it

back to their spring where they deposited the water in its

rightful place.

this story embodies the topographic narrative structure

that undergirded Paiute oral culture and history. as we

can visualize, the story begins with rattlesnake on the

plains, moving down to the spring and stealing the water.

afterward, rattlesnake climbs a hill, where the story’s

positive resolution occurs. additionally, baker used the

Paiute language to map the owens valley landscape.

baker identified the place where Frog sisters lived as ya

qua java joh (Frog Spring). She called the place where the

Frog sisters overtook rattlesnake togo wamo cha qua tepu

(Snake Spat out).20

the Paiute landscape functioned as a mnemonic

device, reminding Paiutes where valuable sources of

water exist—essential knowledge in an arid environment.21

in 1935 Mattie bulpitt, a ninety-five-year-old Paiute woman

from round valley, told a variation of the Frog sisters and

rattlesnake story: “[Frog] owned a spring about five miles

out, north of big Pine and it still is there just below the

state highway.” She also identified the locale of Snake Spat

out: “these willows can be seen still to this day near the

top of the mountain just off the main state highway.”22 the

places mentioned in Paiute oral traditions were not atavistic

memories; they were meaningful locations that, on a daily

basis, Paiutes saw and into which they invested meaning.

When Paiutes moved into the owens valley

approximately 1,500 years ago, they grafted meanings on

the area’s mountains, hills, valleys and waterways. these

early Paiutes used language, stories and place names to

create a home in the owens valley. they named the places

in their homeland—the owens valley—in their own

language: Mattie bulpitt called the places “Frog Spring” and

“Snake Spat out.” With these oral and historical narratives,

Paiutes transformed nebulous space into place and made a

PhotograPh by FraNK KovaLCheK.

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boom | w i n t e r 2 012 111

political claim on it. Naming a place is laden with power

relationships and the act of naming generates debates over

the meaning of those names.23

early twentieth-century settler historians of the owens

valley and inyo County challenged Paiute ideas about

history and the land. William Chalfant, a local news-

paperman and contemporary in age to Susie baker, wrote

owens valley and inyo County histories, constructing a

usable past that glorified american settler colonialism.24

Settler histories use indians as foils, introducing them

as premodern people who gave way to civilized settlers.

Chalfant dedicated his book “to the pioneers” and to his

father, who was a “Pioneer of inyo and [a] pioneer in

endeavor[ing] for her moral as well as material growth.”

Chalfant suggested that Paiutes failed to work for owens

valley’s social and economic development. then, he

went so far as to deny Paiute indigenousness in two

chapters on Paiute cultural practices, freezing them in

the time in which they encountered anglo settlers in the

mid-nineteenth century, and denying them any history

beyond. he argued that no one, not even the Paiutes,

had occupied the valley for long before anglo americans

arrived. the indigenous artists who made rock paintings in

the owens valley, he claimed, were interlopers. he further

argued that archaeological remains were the products of a

“wandering warrior from some other region” and not of a

long Paiute occupation. Finally, Chalfant provided detail

into the process by which the owens valley, river and lake

received their name: Captain John C. Frémont named the

area’s predominant features after a fur trading associate,

richard owens.25 in the owens valley, as in southern New

england, Settler naming-practices replaced “indians in

their homelands” and argued for the “indigeneity” of the

Settlers themselves.26

Paiute oral traditions challenge Chalfant’s arguments.

they argue that Paiutes had occupied the owens valley

for a long time and possess a deep understanding of the

area’s history through knowledge of places and what

Owens River at sunset. PhotograPh by MarShaL hediN.

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112 b o o m c a l i f o r n i a . c o m

occurred there. although “pioneers” had arrived in the

owens valley and displaced the Paiutes—Mattie bulpitt

told her listeners—the place names, historical actors, and

tellers of history remained. although she did not explicitly

refer to Chalfant’s work, likely, she and Susie baker knew

the meanings Settlers had embedded onto the Paiute

landscape, and they refuted his arguments with their oral

traditions. the story of rattlesnake and the Frog sisters

reasserted a Paiute landscape, known to them, defiant of

american colonialism, which began in the 1850s.

Anglo colonialism and Paiute displacement

in the mid-nineteenth century, anglo americans arrived

in the owens valley, which sparked conflict over natural

resources. Jennie Cashbaugh, a seventy-year-old Paiute

woman from bishop, noted that “trouble arose every

now and then as the white people wanted more water.”27

american Settlers established a mining, pastoral, and

agricultural economy in the valley, which drained water

from Paiute communities and resource areas. Conflict

ensued as Paiutes clashed with miners, ranchers, and

the military. in 1863, the California volunteers forcibly

removed nearly one thousand Paiutes to Fort tejón.28

From there, federal officials relocated the Paiutes to the

tule river reservation, near modern-day Porterville,

California. by 1870, very few Paiutes remained at tule

river, for they had returned to the owens valley, but by

that time, anglo american farmers and ranchers had

claimed much of the best land and water. Paiutes eked

out a living by creating a mixed economy of wage labor,

hunting, and using the little water available to irrigate

gardens and small fields.29

giving places anglo american names signified the

process by which anglo americans exerted rule over the

region. indeed, place-naming worked in concert with Settler

economic practices and histories to erase Paiute histories

and systems of knowledge. in the 1860s, Confederate

sympathizers living in the owens valley named the alabama

hills after the CSS Alabama, which sunk the Union ship

Hatteras off the coast of texas.30 Paiutes reclaimed such places

by telling their own narratives about them. the alabama

hills are not significant because they commemorate a

Confederate naval victory, Paiutes tell listeners; they are

important because they were the place from which the giant

began his rampage and where, ultimately, he ended his

journey and his exploitation of the People. Paiutes were not

interlopers, recent arrivals or wandering warriors—they had

a deep history in the owens valley.

An alternative history

if we continue to probe the sometimes murky meanings of

oral tradition, other historical meanings and interpretations

rise to the surface. Susie baker deliberately ended the story

of the giant with a reference to a contemporary event, that

the rock on which the waterbaby waited for the giant “may

be destroyed by the Los angeles aqueduct builders.”31

Similarly, she concluded the story of rattlesnake and the

Frog sisters, “[ya qua java joh and togo wamo cha qua tepu]

were springs at one time, but they are now dry.”32 in other

words, in 1935, Frog Spring and Snake Spat out no longer

had water. Why not? Simply, someone had entered the

valley and drunk all the water.

Paiutes used their oral traditions to offer an alternative

history of Paiute-american encounters and interpret the

impact of those encounters on the water and, therefore,

the People of the owens valley. “an enduring value of

informal storytelling,” anthropologist Julie Cruikshank

writes, “is its power to subvert official orthodoxies and

to challenge conventional ways of thinking.”33 it is no

surprise that the Paiutes called the owens river the “water

ditch,” for they irrigated the owens valley for centuries

before anglo americans arrived. at a town Paiutes

named pitana patü, near the modern-day town of bishop,

Paiutes used irrigation ditches to increase the growth of

indigenous plants, such as nā’hāvīta (spike rush). in the

spring, the town head man announced the beginning of

the irrigation season, usually when snow runoff from the

southern Sierra caused creeks to rise. residents of pitana

patü then elected or chose a tuvaijü’u, or irrigator, who led

a corps of twenty-five men in building a dam out of rocks,

It is no surprise that the Paiutes called the Owens River the “water ditch.”

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If those places ceased to exist, the history might

disappear.

brush, sticks, and mud on bishop Creek. after completing

the dam, the tuvaijü’u directed the water into the ditch,

which fed northern and southern fields in alternate years.34

Stories about the “water ditch,” then, reposition Paiutes as

the indigenous people of the valley and those who had first

used the water.

Reframing time

Paiute oral traditions reframed the timing of events. the

owens valley Water Wars did not begin when Los angeles

department of Water and Power representatives bought

land in the valley. rather, the wars’ genesis flows back

to creation, when Coyote placed his children next to the

“water ditch.” after that, Paiutes productively used owens

valley’s water by irrigating fields of nā’hāvīta. then, anglo

Settlers arrived in the valley, who seemingly could never

slake their thirst for water.

although Los angeles entered the valley and preyed on

water, Paiutes identified new “villains” or antagonists in

this story. in many owens valley histories, Los angeles and

its representatives are the story’s bad guys.35 Paiutes told

it differently. Jennie Cashbaugh actually had kind words

for Los angeles: “the city of Los angeles is a different

proposition all together,” she said. “they would meet the

indians part way, they realize they have made the indians

homeless and took their work from them, the means of

bread and butter they had, just a living but today they are

fair enough to compromise with the Federal government

so as to give better land to the indians to at least make a

living.”36 Los angeles, according to Cashbaugh, promised

to work with the Paiutes, something that owens valley

settlers had never offered. Unlike the settlers, who also

“made the indians homeless,” Los angeles promised to

Owens Valley. PhotograPh by FraNK KovaLCheK.

Owens Valley in the fall. PhotograPh by FraNK KovaLCheK.

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114 b o o m c a l i f o r n i a . c o m

create a land base for the Paiute and provided jobs in 1930

and 1931 on city-owned ranches, roads, and waterways.37

Settlers, on the other hand, had marginalized Paiutes to the

lowest rung of the region’s economic ladder and usurped

the best land in the valley.38 For Paiutes, settlers (the typical

victims in anglo histories of the owens valley), not Los

angeles, served as antagonists.

if Paiutes reframed the chronological narrative of the

owens valley Water Wars and pointed to new adversaries,

they also used their oral traditions to address the unique

ways in which the Water Wars affected the People. the

disappearance of water particularly harmed Paiute women.

When Jennie Cashbaugh described the sedge plants

Paiutes gathered, she remarked, “Nā’hāvīta is a taboose

class of seed food, [it] cannot be found in the owens valley

since the valley went dry. the plant must have all dried up,

never to grow again.”39 the development of a mining and

pastoral economy in the owens valley, and Los angeles’s

siphoning of the valley’s water, destroyed indigenous food

sources, specifically those harvested by Paiute women, and

harvesting indigenous plants grounded women’s identities:

at Creation, the Paiute Father gave baskets to women in

which they could gather plants.40 Without water, women

could not perform this essential contribution to the family

economy. (Paiute women found job opportunities as

domestic workers and washerwomen, but they were poor

substitutes for these lost resources.)41

the Los angeles aqueduct also threatened Paiute

systems of knowledge. the aqueduct threatened to destroy

the places where Paiute oral traditions occurred. Passing the

alabama hills in the owens valley, Paiutes remember that

screaming giant. Passing the rock where waterbaby waited

for the giant reminds them of waterbaby’s unusual service

to the People. if those places ceased to exist, the history

might disappear. Likely, owens valley Paiutes had another

sobering thought in the 1930s: if the water disappears, what

will become of the People? What will become of “water ditch

Coyote children”? When Frog Spring and Snake Spat out

were dry, and nā’hāvīta no longer grew in the owens valley,

the very identity of the People was threatened. in 1935 this

was literally true, and it was the result of the colonization

of the owens valley.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope in these stories, a

thought that Paiutes may emerge victorious. the stories

of the giant and of Frog sisters refer to a predator entering

the owens valley, moving across the Paiute landscape

and harming the People. both the giant and rattlesnake

act in ways that mimic the actions of Los angeles. When

the giant walks from alabama hills to tupueseenata,

he comes from the direction of Los angeles (south) and

parallels the pattern in which Los angeles purchased land

in the owens valley, moving from the south to the north.

the Frog sisters story likewise resembles the history of

Paiutes, anglo settlers, and Los angeles. Someone—

Paiute leaders, the office of indian affairs, owens valley

settlers—was asleep when rattlesnake crawled into the

valley and stole the water. at this point, it certainly looked

bleak for Paiutes and water, with murderous giants and

thieving rattlesnakes.42

the stories’ conclusions, however, offer a positive

narrative for the future. For one, the giant story suggests

that the Paiutes were prepared for Los angeles. they already

knew that violent and threatening beings could come from

the south and invade the north. Paiutes also knew that they

and their water had the puha to defeat these large monsters.

in parable-like fashion, the oral tradition of the rattlesnake

pointed out the folly of greed. rattlesnake took too much

water, for he could not swallow all of it. he eventually lost

all the water and the Frog sisters returned the water to

its rightful place. in the end of both stories, diminutive,

ostensibly powerless, characters reclaim the water and

defeat powerful enemies. the small waterbaby throws

the giant into the lake and devours him; the Frog sisters

reclaim their water from poisonous rattlesnake. although

The stories tell us that small, seemingly

powerless people can slay the giant

and tickle Rattlesnake.

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things may have looked bleak in the oral traditions and

in 1935 when the women shared these stories, the future

need not be. Paiutes had faced large foes like this before

and won; Paiute cultural heroes returned the water to its

proper place.

in 1935, when Paiute women told these narratives,

their leaders were negotiating with the United States

and Los angeles about the future of the Paiute nation.

in the early 1930s, the federal government and Los

angeles had recommended removing the Paiutes from

their homeland, from the site of the “water ditch” to a

new reservation, near modern-day Merced, or to Nevada’s

Walker river reservation. in fact, many of the people

interviewed in 1935, such as Cashbaugh and bulpitt,

were children when the federal government removed

the Paiutes to tejón at the end of the 1860s, and they

told stories of that difficult experience. Los angeles’

suggestion for removal resurrected those memories of

the forced march to tejón and the awful living conditions

there and at tule river.43

between 1935 and 1937, federal officials held outdoor

meetings in the owens valley to explain the situation to

the People. Paiute women appeared at these meetings

in equal numbers with Paiute men. Perhaps the stories

they told their leaders energized them in their effort

to reclaim land, water, and power. at any rate, the

Paiute leaders, supported by their elders, insisted they

were not leaving. historian Steven Crum suggests that

the Paiutes’ “deep attachment” to the owens valley

galvanized their resistance to removal.44 Paiute history

and oral tradition likewise bolstered their fight to

remain near the “water ditch.”

in the end, Paiutes emerged victorious because they

avoided removal and displacement. in the 1937 Land

exchange act, Paiutes and the United States traded 2,914

acres of “previously allotted lands” to Los angeles for 1,392

acres, which became the bishop, big Pine, and Lone Pine

reservations.45 the Paiutes would remain next to the “water

ditch” forever.

the story, however, did not end there. the Land exchange

act provided for Paiute water rights, but the federal

government failed to secure them from Los angeles. as

part of the exchange, Los angeles had promised to provide

6,064 acre-feet of water to the Paiutes; but at the same

time, the city insisted it could not transfer water rights

to the Paiutes without a two-thirds vote by city residents.

Moreover, the amount of water promised failed to meet

the demands of a growing Paiute population and tribal

economic development.46

in 1994, the department of the interior investigated the

water rights issue, which is still open to debate. the owens

valley indian Water Commission—a consortium made

up of the bishop, big Pine, and Lone Pine reservations—

fights for water rights and, like their oral traditions, hopes

for a positive future.47

in their oral traditions, Paiutes told an ethnohistory of

water and water rights in owens valley, which detailed the

destructive consequences of economic change and offered

a critique of historical changes in the valley. Seen in the

context of a struggle over water and culture, these stories

enable us to see ways in which Paiutes re-envisioned

their past and made it usable for contemporary political

struggles, providing a snapshot of Paiute interpretations of

past, present, and future.

other histories of the owens valley Water Wars have

treated Paiutes as bit players, something akin to the

background that the alabama hills offers for movies.

Paiutes were not scenery to the story; they were central to

the Water Wars, which threatened the very core of Paiute

life. the stories tell us that small, seemingly powerless

people can slay the giant and tickle rattlesnake. Perhaps

nothing is more valuable than these oral traditions as a tool

for understanding Paiute history, politics, and culture, or as

a guide to assist modern-day Paiutes in future struggles for

natural resources. b

Notes

i would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their

excellent critiques of this essay and for pushing me to improve.

i appreciate my friend Louis Warren for soliciting this essay

for Boom. Charles roberts shared research materials with me

and directed me to important sources. damon akins, Laurie

arnold, brian Collier, duane Champagne, Steve Crum and

bridget Ford prodded me to think about this paper in new ways.

i thank audiences at Stanford University, the University of

California, davis, and the University of Notre dame for sitting

through my lecture about Paiutes and water. your questions

improved this essay. the american indian Studies Center at

the University of California, Los angeles, and the Center for

race and ethnicity at Stanford University provided space and

time for me to write.

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116 b o o m c a l i f o r n i a . c o m

1 the alabama hills have served as the scenic backdrop of

hollywood films, such as The Ox-Bow Incident, Joe Kidd, Star

Trek Generations, Iron Man, and Django Unchained.

2 Susie baker, ethnological documents of the department and

Museum of anthropology, University of California, berkeley,

1875–1958, bancroft Library, berkeley, Ca, baNC FiLM 2216,

(hereafter ed), reel 149–152, item 152.4: 296–98.

3 See roman Polanski, dir., Chinatown (Paramount, 1974);

William Kahrl, Water and Power: The Conflict Over Los Angeles

Water Supply in the Owens Valley (berkeley: University of

California Press, 1983); Marc reisner, Cadillac Desert: The

American West and Its Disappearing Water, rev. ed. (New york:

Penguin books, 1993); gary Libecap, Owens Valley Revisited: A

Reassessment of the West’s First Great Water Transfer (Palo alto:

Stanford economics, 2007); abraham hoffman, Vision or

Villainy: Origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles Water Controversy

(College Station: texas a&M University Press, 2001).

4 there are correctives that include Paiutes in owens valley

water history. See Nancy Walter, “the Land exchange act of

1937: Creation of the indian reservations at bishop, big Pine,

and Lone Pine, California, through a Land trade between the

United States of america and the City of Los angeles” (Ph.d.

diss., Union graduate School, 1986); John Walton, Western

Times and Water Wars: State, Culture and Rebellion in California

(berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); andrew

Franklin, “desiccating a valley and a People: the effects of the

Los angeles department of Water and Power on owens valley

and its inhabitants, 1924–1931” (M.a. thesis, California State

University, Sacramento, 2000).

5 For an overview of the owens valley Water Wars, see Walton,

Western Times and Water Wars, 131–97.

6 i follow Jan vansina’s definition of an oral tradition: a “verbal

message which are reported statements about the past beyond

the present generation.” Jan vansina, Oral Tradition as History

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 27. rather

than merely a personal recollection, vansina suggests, oral

traditions reach far deeper in time and are told with more

consistency. dakota scholar Waziyatawin adds that oral

tradition also involves the process in which the story is relayed.

Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor

Narratives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 27.

7 anthropology and ethnohistory have come a long way from the

days in which robert Lowie could dismiss oral traditions out

of hand. i have been influenced by Marshall Sahlins, Islands

of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Peter

Nabokov, A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History

(New york: Cambridge University Press, 1995); see 1–28 for

discussion of oral tradition and Lowie; Julie Cruikshank, The

Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon

Territory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998);

Jonathan d. hill, ed., Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous

South American Perspectives on the Past (Urbana: University of

illinois Press, 1988).

8 Nabokov, A Forest of Time, 92. Peter Nabokov describes oral

traditions as “mythic revisionings”: “rather than being closed

systems of fixed symbols, if myths are to remain relevant and

recited, they must be susceptible to internal tinkerings and

updatings.”

9 Julian Steward, “ethnography of the owens valley Paiute,”

University of California Publications in American Archaeology

and Ethnology 33:3 (1933): 235, 234 for a description of Collins.

by using the past tense (“called”), i do not mean to insinuate

that the owens valley Paiutes no longer think of themselves

as “we are water ditch coyote children.” rather, they “called

themselves” this name in the 1930s.

10 Sven Liljebald and Catherine S. Fowler, “owens valley

Paiute,” Handbook of North American Indians, 17 vols., William

Sturtevant, gen. ed., Warren d’azevedo, vol. ed., (Washington,

d.C.: Smithsonian institute, 1986), 11: 412–34; Steward,

“ethnography of the owens valley Paiute,” 233–38; Walter,

“Land exchange act,” 31.

11 Mary Saulque and emma Washington, ed, reel 205–206,

item 205.3: 159.

12 Susie baker, ed, reel 149–152, item 152.4: 296–98.

13 Susie baker, ed, reel 149–152, item 152.4: 288–92.

14 For a concise overview of puha, see Jay Miller, “basin religion

and theology: a Comparative Study of Power (Puha),” Journal

of California and Great Basin Anthropology 5:2 (1983): 66–86.

15 richard Stoffle, richard arnold, Kathleen van vlack, Larry

eddy, and betty Cornelius, “Nuvagantu, ‘Where the Snow Sits’:

origin Mountains of the Southern Paiutes,” in Landscapes of

Origin in the Americas: Creation Narratives Linking Ancient Places

to Present Communities, ed. Jessica Joyce Christie (tuscaloosa:

University of alabama Press, 2009), 36, 38.

16 “Whether in physical reality or cultural memory,” anthropologist

Peter Nabokov writes, “language, religion, and history always

‘took place.’” A Forest of Time, 131. Perhaps the best known

book on the role of place and worldview is the fantastic work

by Keith basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language

among the Western Apache (albuquerque: University of New

Mexico Press, 1996).

17 Cruikshank, Social Life of Stories, 17, 18.

18 yi-Fu tuan defines space as “that which allows movement.” Space

and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota Press, 2001), 6. here, too, i am influenced by

daniel gelo’s exceptional work on how Comanches (also Numic

speakers) view of the landscape. “recalling the Past in Creating

the Present: topographic references in Comanche Narrative,”

Western Folklore 53 (october 1994): 295–312.

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boom | w i n t e r 2 012 117

19 For a similar narrative structure, see gelo, “recalling the Past

in Creating the Present.”

20 Susie baker, ed, reel 149–152, item 152: 321–22.

21 basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 15, 16. basso notes that Western

apaches recognized that water too had left their homeland.

Many Western apache placenames referenced water existing

in places that are now dry.

22 Mattie bulpitt (Paiute), ed, reel 149–52, Notebook 43:

336–38.

23 For helpful studies of place and power, see tuan, Space and

Place and tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Wiley-

blackwell, 2004). historian Jared Farmer has put the theories

of both scholars to good use in his history of place making in

Utah: On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians and the American

Landscape (Cambridge: harvard University Press, 2008).

24 across the United States, local histories were instrumental

in the construction of ideas about american indians and

westward expansion. Writing about southern New england,

historian Jean o’brien argues, “the local gave particular valence

to the twinned story of non-indian modernity and indian

extinction.” Jean o’brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians

Out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 2010), xiv.

25 Willie arthur Chalfant, The Story of Inyo (Published by the

author, 1922), frontispiece, 8–41, 9, 10–13, 46–47.

26 o’brien, Firsting and Lasting, 56, 73.

27 Jennie Cashbaugh, ed, reel 153–155, item 154, Notebook 31:

198–206

28 For a concise overview of removal, see george harwood

Phillips, “Bringing Them Under Subjection”: California’s Tejón

Indian Reservation and Beyond, 1852–1864 (Lincoln: University

of Nebraska Press, 2004), 248–49.

29 Walton, Western Times and Water Wars, 24–52; Sharon dean,

et al., Weaving A Legacy: Indian Baskets & the People of Owens

Valley, California (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press,

2004), 23–26.

30 erwin gudde, California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology

of Current Geographic Names, 4th ed. (berkeley: University of

California Press, 1998, 1949), 6. anglo americans named

tinemaha after a Paiute chief. ibid., 394.

31 Susie baker, ed, reel 149–52, item 152.4: 296–98.

32 Susie baker, ed, reel 149–152, item 152: 321–22.

33 Cruikshank, Social Life of Stories, xiii.

34 Steward, “ethnography,” 247.

35 See especially reisner, Cadillac Desert and Walton, Western

Times and Water Wars.

36 Jennie Cashbaugh, ed, reel 153–155, item 154, Notebook 31:

198–206.

37 Kahrl, Water and Power, 356.

38 Jennie Cashbaugh, ed, reel 153–155, item 154, Notebook 31:

198–206. For the Paiutes, events during the next couple of

years ensured that they would remain in their homeland. in

1937, the Land exchange act created reservations at bishop,

big Pine, and Lone Pine. on behalf of the Paiutes, the federal

government exchanged nearly 3,000 acres of land with the

City of Los angeles for nearly 1,400 acres of land. Questions

remain about Paiute water rights, and modern-day Paiutes and

scholars argue that the United States failed to protect Paiute

water rights and fulfill its trust responsibility to the Paiute

Nation. Walter, “Land exchange act.”

39 Jennie Cashbaugh, ed, reel 153–155, item 154, Notebook 31:

196–97.

40 Jim Jones, ed, reel 149–152, Notebook 29: 129–33.

41 Walton, 25–27.

42 anthropologist Julie Cruikshank notes that for indigenous

people of the yukon territory, “if one has optimistic stories

about the past . . . one can draw on internal resources to survive

and make sense of arbitrary forces that might otherwise seem

overwhelming.” Julie Cruikshank, Social Life of Stories, xii.

43 For owens valley Paiute removal, see Steven J. Crum, “deeply

attached to the Land: the owens valley Paiutes and their

rejection of indian removal, 1863 to 1937,” News from Native

California 14 (Summer 2001): 18–20. Crum also notes that in

1873, the federal government proposed returning the Paiutes

from owens valley to tule river. however, owens valley

Settlers, who needed Paiute labor, blocked these efforts.

44 Crum, “deeply attached to the Land.”

45 Sharon dean, et al, Weaving A Legacy: Indian Baskets & the

People of Owens Valley, California (Salt Lake City: University of

Utah Press, 2004), 31-33.

46 Walter, “Land exchange act,” 213, 379.

47 http://www.oviwc.org/index.html (accessed 1 august 2012).

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