A History of Utah's American Indians 2000

The Paiute Tribe of Utah Gary Tom and Ronald Holt Tabuts [elder brother/wolf] carved people out of sticks and was going to scatter them evenly around the earth so that everyone would have a good place to live. But Shinangwav [younger brother/coyote] cut open the sack and people fell out in bunches all over the world and that's why people fight. The people left in the sack were the Southern Paiutes, and Tabuts put them here in the very best place.1 For a thousand years the Paiute people have lived in an area that is presently known as southern Utah, southeastern California, northern Arizona, and southern Nevada. Their homeland is adjacent to the Great Basin and included the resource-rich Colorado Plateau and a portion of the Mojave Desert.

Neither the written word nor the course of historical events have been kind to the Southern Paiutes. Theirs is a story of resiliency under great pressure and of disappointment after many promises. With the encroachment of Euro-American settlers into the area came the destruction of much of their traditional culture, religion, economy, and the title to their ancestral homeland. It took less than twenty-five years of contact with the Mormon settlers to reduce the Paiute population by 90 percent and turn them from being peaceful, independent farmers and foragers into destitute, landless people who survived by doing seasonal and parttime work for the white settlers. Some Paiute groups even ceased to exist.

To further the official demise of the Paiutes, the federal government and the Mormon church made only feeble attempts to provide needed services. These attempts implemented many ill-conceived policies purported to "help the Indian tribes." In spite of all this, the majority of Paiutes never left their ancestral lands—they remained and survived the barrage of acculturation, relocation, and termination policies and prac•123—