Ethnographic Overview And Assessment: Zion National Park, Utah ...

said, "Those that want to go could go, but we are not leaving." So this man
came, and he told his government people that they didn't want to be moved. "I
don't think any of them want to be moved," he said. And they really had a big
talk over that. I don't know how long it took, but anyway, they'd always talked
about that and they'd have meetings. This white man got some other people to
back him up and help him to save this place for the Indian people, that this was
where they were born and where they were raised and they didn't want to move.
And nothing was going to make 'em move... They said that no matter what they
did, they were not gonna move, were just going to sit down and not move. And so
that ended that and then they decided they were gonna make a reservation out of
it. So they went back to Washington, they had to buy some piece of ground for
them. So they did and that's how this became a reservation spot where they live
now. (CG1)
Another elder who grew up at Pipe Spring before it was a National Monument described his
early experiences:
We used to live down there where that van is. That spring was good then. We had
it fixed good so it ran off through a little pipe. [There was] a bucket sitting there
all the time. When it fills up you go get it, then sit it back again. I used to go to
school from there, clear back up that way... My uncle, and my mother,
grandmother, grandfather, we used to have that little farm down near, below that
snack bar they got down there. We had that farm down there... We had a pond
right there to irrigate with. We irrigated and had an alfalfa field and everything
- corn, pears was good, too. That pear tree there, nice sweet pears there. (DA4)
The perception of home influences Southern Paiute interpretations of the parks and how they
should be managed. For example, one elder argued that the special connection between
Southern Paiutes and their home should be recognized by the NPS:
I don't think it's right for people that were born here to come back and in order
to come worship the mountains they have to pay the Park Service's charges. It's
more like we have to pay $4 apiece in order to come see the mountain. (DH6)
When talking about the Pah Tempe Hot Springs, one individual said:
It belonged to [the old people]. It was given to them by their Father for them, for
that purpose. (CG5)
The Southern Paiute attachment to their homelands is not a new phenomenon. Indeed,
such ties were among the first recorded observations made by Mormons, describing the impacts
of the slave trade on its Southern Paiute victims:
Notwithstanding their horrible deficiency in all the comforts and decencies of life
these Indians are so ardently attached to their country, that when carried into the lands of
their captors and surrounded with abundance, they pine away and often die in grief for the
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