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

plant managers, creating a complex culture that not only permitted them to flourish for thousands
of years in this environment, but was more adaptive than that of other Indian groups around
them, then aspects of their culture may be worthy of both preservation and simulation by land
managers today.
Beyond cultural preservation is the issue that perhaps Southern Paiutes have something
to contribute to Federal and state land managers. Critical here is the possibility that Indian
people learned during thousands of years of living in these lands how to care for the plants,
animals, water, and spirituality that occurs here. These lessons learned, bound in the culture of
Southern Paiutes, can potentially be incorporated into how Federal agencies approach the
management of these natural resources. Especially important are Indian perspectives that
approximate in scale and functional integration those currently being attempted under the new
ecosystem stewardship approach of the Federal government. This chapter, and much of this
report, attempts to share some of these alternative perspectives on Paiute culture and its
potential contribution to contemporary land management issues.
2.1 Holy Lands and Creation Stories
Southern Paiute people have resided in their traditional lands for many generations
(Figure 4). According to archaeologists, Paiute people came into the region by at least 1150 AD
(Euler 1964, Shutler 1961). Their ethnic group boundary has been defined by travelers'
observations in the late 1700's (Bolton 1950), by Euroamerican settlers' diaries, official
government surveys in the mid-1800s (Little 1881; Powell and Ingalls 1874), and by oral
history interviews in the 1930s (Kelly 1934, 1964; Stewart 1942) and 1980s (Bunte and
Franklin 1987; ERT 1980). Existing within the traditional territory of the Southern Paiute
Nation is the northern Colorado Plateau ecoregion.
Efforts by Euroamerican scholars to define a boundary and an origin time for the
Southern Paiutes are perceived by Paiute people themselves to be overshadowed by their own
religious knowledge about traditional ethnic territory and the events by which their people
came to inhabit these traditional lands. According to traditional Paiute beliefs, Paiute people
were created here. Through this creation, the Creator gave Southern Paiute people a special
supernatural responsibility to protect and manage the land and its resources. In Euroamerican
terminology, this land is their Holy Land (Spicer 1957:197, 213).
The Southern Paiute people believe that they were created by the supernatural near
Charleston Peak -- called Nu- vaγantu- [herein rendered as Nu- vagantu- ]--located in the
Spring Mountains in southern Nevada (Kroeber 1970, Laird 1976, Stoffle and Dobyns 1983).
According to Laird (1976:122):
In prehuman times N-ivagant-i was the home of Wolf and his brother, Mythic
Coyote. It was the very heart of T-iwiin y ar-ivip-i, the Storied Land.
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