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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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CAMP WINFIELD SCOTT
Nevada
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Location: Humboldt County, on an unimproved road,
about 5 miles east of the town of Paradise Valley.
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This camp (1866-71) was founded near the head of
Paradise Valley in northern Nevada to protect settlers and travelers
from Northern Paiute depredations. It was one of the bases used by
General Crook in his 1866-68 campaign against the tribe. The garrison,
however, spent most of its time patrolling and capturing Indian cattle
rustlers.
The campsite is on a privately owned ranch. All the
remaining buildings are adobe: two officers' quarters, now serving as
ranch and bunk houses; and a barracks, used as a barn. The barracks
contains remnants of a chimney, fireplace, and doorways. Behind one of
the officers' quarters is a stone cellar, whose barred windows indicate
use as a magazine or guardhouse.
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FORT HALLECK
Nevada
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Location: Elko County, on Nev. 11 at Secret
Canyon, about 11 miles southeast of Halleck.
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The troops at Fort Halleck (1867-86), in the Humboldt
River Valley of northeastern Nevada, watched over the nearby route of
the Central Pacific Railroad, stage and telegraph lines, and settlers.
Most of the small garrison served in the Nez Perce War (1877).
A stone marker identifies the site, which is in a
privately owned meadow. All the log and adobe buildings have long since
disappeared, but brush-covered earth mounds indicate the location of the
guardhouse, magazine, and commissary warehouse; and traces of rock
walls, either the headquarters building or the officers' quarters.
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FORT MCDERMIT
Nevada
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Location: Humboldt County, on an unimproved road,
about 2 miles east of U.S. 95 and McDermit.
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General George Crook utilized this fort (1865-89),
which had been founded by California Volunteers in a canyon of the Santa
Rosa Mountains just south of the present Oregon-Nevada boundary, in his
1866-68 campaign against the Snake Indians. Its garrison also took part
in the Bannock War (1878); protected settlers and ranchers from Paiute
harassments; guarded the road running north into Oregon; and in the
later years policed the adjacent Indian agency. The Army's successor at
the fort was the Indian Bureau. It operated a school in one of the
buildings, most of which were of stone.
The remaining structures, which include two officers'
quarters, serve as headquarters of the Fort McDermit Indian Agency.
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PYRAMID LAKE BATTLEFIELD
Nevada
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Location: Washoe County, just off Nev. 34, about 4
miles southeast of the southern tip of Pyramid Lake and immediately
south of Nixon.
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Twice in 1860 Southern Paiute Indians, resenting the
intrusion of miners and settlers in the Carson River Valley of western
Nevada, clashed with troops at this battlefield north of the valley. In
the late 1850's the fertile valley, a welcome sight to emigrants passing
over the Carson Branch of the California Trail after traversing an
inhospitable stretch of desert, had become the site of two trading
posts, the Buckland and Williams Stations. They were Central Overland
Mail and Pony Express stations and supplied miners and emigrants. On May
7, 1860, the Paiutes, aroused by the abduction of two Indian girls by
traders at the Williams Station, burned it and killed five men. In
retaliation the miners at Virginia City, Carson City, Genoa, and Gold
Hill organized at Buckland Station a punitive expedition of 105 Nevada
Volunteers, under Maj. William M. Ormsby. They marched northward into
the Paiute country around Pyramid Lake. Riding carelessly up the Truckee
River Valley, on May 12 they fell into an ambush just south of the lake
that took the lives of 46 men.
News of the defeat threw miners and settlers into a
frenzy of fear and temporarily halted stage and Pony Express service
over the western end of the Central Overland Mail route. Reinforcements
rushed in from California. By the end of the month 800 men, including
some Regulars, were under arms in Carson Valley. This force, commanded
by former Texas Ranger Col. Jack Hays, also marched northward and
encountered the Paiutes on June 3, at the site of the May 12 clash. In a
3-hour battle, 25 of the Indians died and the survivors fled into the
hills. The next month the Army founded Fort Churchill near Buckland
Station to keep watch over the defeated Paiutes and guard stage and mail
routes.
The battle site, on the Pyramid Lake Indian
Reservation, is virtually unchanged from its historic appearance. It
lies in the lowlands along the east bank of the Truckee River. Just
above the site, on the western rim of the Truckee River Gorge, runs Nev.
34 and a railroad. A marker across the street from the Nixon Post Office
commemorates the battlefield.
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WOVOKA ("JACK WILSON") HUT
Nevada
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Location: Lyon County, on an unimproved road,
along the northeastern side of Mill Ditch, Nordyke.
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This hut in the Mason Valley of west-central Nevada
was one of the abodes of the Paiute mystic Wovoka, or "Jack Wilson"
(1858-1932), the Indian messiah who founded the Ghost Dance religion.
Upon the death of his medicine-man father, when Wovoka was only 14, the
rancher David Wilson took him into his family and employed him as a
ranch hand. Despite the Christian training and other education he
received from the Wilsons, he found assimilation into white society
impossible. Entering manhood, he left the ranch. Before settling down in
the Mason Valley and raising a family, he worked his way through
California, Washington, and Oregon. During the trip he became fascinated
with the Shaker religion, whose extensive rituals and death-like trances
one of the Washington tribes practiced.
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Wovoka, or "Jack Wilson," Paiute
messiah and founder of the Ghost Dance religion. (photo James Mooney,
National Park Service) |
As time went on, Wovoka synthesized Shaker and other
Christian doctrines and his native beliefs into a religion he evolved to
uplift the despairing Indians. Its revelation came to him in 1889 after
a serious illness. Instead of encouraging his race's hatred of the
whites, whom Wovoka believed would disappear supernaturally, he preached
temporary submission, love, and brotherhood. The old order would be
restored; the Indians would reinherit their lands; the buffalo, symbol
of past greatness, would return; and prosperity would reign. Until the
millennium came in the spring of 1891 and brought immortality and
resurrection, all Indian dead would reside in a special heaven.
Salvation was attainable only by adherence to a code similar to the Ten
Commandments and the performance of certain rituals. The climax of these
was the Ghost Dance, preceded by ceremonial purification and painting of
the body. This hypnotic dance, which allowed for the expression of
repressed hostility and frustration, made possible communion with the
dead and promoted the coming of the millennium.
During the years 1889-91 the religion spread to some
eastern and most of the western tribes, whose bitterness and impotence
made practically all of them susceptible to its messianic fervor. Their
bleak prospects for the future were salved only by nostalgic memories of
the past. This was particularly true of the Sioux, who added aggressive
and anti-white elements to Wovoka's pacifistic religion. As a result,
troops crushed them at the Battle of Wounded Knee, S. Dak. The battle
and the nonoccurrence of the millennium destroyed the belief of most
Indians in Wovoka's teachings. Yet the Sioux incorporated some aspects
of the Ghost Dance into their tribal dances, and the religion lingered
for awhile among other groups, especially the Paiutes.
In the late 19th century a fire destroyed the Wilson
ranchhouse. Apparently Wovoka only visited there and resided in a crude
semi-subterranean hut, which has survived on the modern Nordyke Ranch
just east of the ranchhouse. Of mud and wood, it measures 10 by 6 feet.
It is largely intact, although some of the roof mud has collapsed. The
site, used for ranching purposes, is not open to the public, but the
owner has cooperated with a local civic group in protecting it. Wovoka
is buried in the cemetery at Schurz, Nev., about 20 miles northeast of
Nordyke.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec10.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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