Vivienne Caron Jake and Matthew Leivas
Vivienne Jake's dream has been to preserve these songs and to visit the sacred sites, historical places and the landmarks described in the journeys. Her delicate health has made the recording sessions even more immediate. Vivienne served in the United States Marine Corps and has been the chairwoman of the Kaibab Paiute Indian Tribe. She is a mentor to many Southern Paiute women who value the guidance of the elders and who long to practice their traditions. Her gentle and soft-spoken ways are combined with a foundation of determination.
Vivienne's next project is to travel the bitter trail of the Southern Paiute people's encounter with the colonizers of North America, perform ceremony and sing the Salt Songs to assist their ancestors to a final resting place.
"There's a lot of work to be done. We have to visit all these places, the massacre site areas, the boarding schools where our children never went home, where they were buried and they were never given the rite of passage to go into the spirit world, because there was no ceremony for them. And so the spirits of the children are at unrest today. So we need to go and we need to help them. We are people who have the power to overcome. We are people with great strength. We are people who are survivors in today's world. This is what
the Salt Songs mean to me."
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"These songs are very powerful. They are the songs that are going to unite our people again. It's going to be a spiritual awakening of the Native American people, especially other Paiute people. It has to happen. It has been prophesized. How do you stop prophecy? You can't stop prophecy."
Vivienne Caron Jake (Kaibab Paiute)
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In April 2001, the Storyscape Project was invited to record the Salt Songs of the Nuwuvi people by Vivienne Caron Jake (Kaibab Paiute) and Matthew Leivas Sr. (Chemehuevi), founders of the Salt Song Project. We gathered at the Las Vegas Paiute Tribal reservation in North Las Vegas. The gaudy hotels along the Strip were a stark contrast to our assignment to help the Nuwuvi preserve their sacred storyscapes. After months of planning, the singers gathered for the historic sessions. Like the Creation and Bird songs, the Salt Songs describe the ancient landscapes of the Southern Paiute people since Ocean Woman and Coyote set the world into motion at the beginning of time. And although they describe a world belonging to a dusky past, the Salt Songs are alive today guarding the lands that define the indigenous people of the Colorado Plateau and Mojave Desert regions.
After a short break of donuts and coffee the singers returned to the council chambers. In the center of the room a series of microphones stood between two rows of chairs. A small audience of people sat in the back of the room. A line of seated men faced a line of women, most of them elders, thirteen in all. The singers came from the far ranges of the thirteen bands of Nuwuvi or Southern Paiutes and Chemehuevi people -- from the dry desert along the Colorado River in southwestern Arizona, southern California and southern Nevada, and the rich red rich canyon country of Utah with plateaus alive with deer and pine and winter snow.
In the middle of the group sat Willis Mayo, the 89 year old Salt Song singer from the Kaibab Paiute Tribe in northwestern Arizona. Willis made his living as a rancher and his hands have the leather to prove it. He is blind in one eye from an accident in his youth. He has dedicated his life to keeping the songs alive and is one of the only singers left who can recant the 142 Salt Song cycle from beginning to end.. Seated next to Willis was Ralph Pikyavit, a well-known singer from the Kanosh Paiute Tribe in Millard County, Utah. Ralph leaned over to Willis and yelled into his ear asking him if he was ready to sing. The old man nodded and began to strike his blue gourd rattle against his left hand. I picked up the earphones and listened to the recording. Willis' voice was clear through the background of the other singers. The story of ancient travel by spirit mentors, the very song for the passage of the dead into the next realm inhabited the tribal chambers with a profound presence.
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Salt Song Singers
In 1997, the 29 Palms Band of Mission Indians, one of the thirteen bands of Southern Paiutes, founded the Native American Land Conservancy (NALC) to protect the endangered plants, animals, native homelands and cultural sites of Southern California. In 2000, The Salt Song Project became part of the NALC's cultural preservation efforts. Other tribes including the Chemehuevis, Serranos, Cahuillas and Wyandots have joined the effort to purchase and protect 2,500 acres of wildlands including the Old Woman Mountains of the southeastern Mojave Desert.
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Willis Mayo
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In summer storms, flash floods tumble down canyons surrounded by golden granitic peaks. Petroglyphs and pictographs dance on the varnished ceilings and walls of caves used by Chemehuevi holy men on sacred pilgrimages. These pristine lands are threatened by off-road vehicles, mining, grazing, pot hunters and vandals. The consortium of tribes plan to establish a culture and nature preserve with an interpretive center describing the unique natural and cultural treasures within a protected and respected area. The Salt Songs travel through the Old Woman Mountains and their continued practice will become an integral part of the nature preserve. The Native American Land Conservancy is leading the way toward a nexus of cultural preservation and environmental protection and the recognition of the intimacy of human relations with the landscape in a way that is designed to promote biological and cultural diversity.
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Matthew Leivas has been a leader of his people, serving as chairman of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe and currently as a council member. He has worked passionately to promote the Salt Songs and to record them so that future generations of Nuwuvi revive their customs and traditions. He introduces the songs at the beginning of our recording session.
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After one night and a day of recording the Salt Songs, we chronicled the singers as they spoke about the importance of their songs to present and future generations of Southern Paiutes.
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"What you are going to hear in these songs is a variety of songs that begin customarily at sundown and are sung through the night-- evening songs, midnight songs, morning songs--and lastly, in the morning, before sunrise. There's approximately 140 songs that we sing. To me, the last four songs are the most important. Those last four songs sing about the inevitable death and also the excitement and desire to get to the other side and how these individuals on the other side are waiting. The spirit that will soon join them is drooling at the mouth in their excitement, just tasting what they were coming for, which is referred to as the happy hunting grounds, or heaven."
"These songs make the connection between the people and the spirit. It's a healing ceremony in many ways that people who are grieving, surviving family members, are able to express themselves and cry when we go to these ceremonies. Most important is the spirit of the person who has passed on to help them on their journey into the spirit world."
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"The Salt Songs tell about the different sacred sites on the thousand-mile journey beginning at the Bill Williams River, and visiting all the sacred sites within the circle from Chemehuevi Valley, Mojave Valley, Hualapai Valley, Utah, Nevada, and California, and different sacred sites that were visited on this journey and the things that they saw and experienced. It explains the whole history of our people and the connections we have with the elements."
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"We sing the songs to purify us. To put us in balance with ourselves and with all that which femininity means to us-what does it mean to be a woman? We forget those things. And you go back, you see the ceremony, you see the women dancing. You see the ceremony being conducted outside-it's because we have to make that connection to the earth. We have to be in balance. Because we are the people of the earth. We came from here."
"The songs talk about the upper world, it talks about the other people, it talks about Pueblo people in the songs. You're talking about houses, about the places where people lived, you're talking about the land, you're talking about the water. All of these things are in the song and you have to listen. You have to listen with your spiritual ears and see it with your spiritual eyes."
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The Salt Songs have been archived at the University of California Berkeley Language Center and were distributed to the thirteen bands of Southern Paiutes so that they may continue to live through the breath of the singer. The songs inspire a grounding in a geography that traverses the borders and boundaries of life and death, the physical and spiritual, past and present, natural and supernatural.
The Old Woman Mountains rise above the long tilting valley and present monuments of rose-colored stone, valleys with hidden falls and ponds of water, and amphitheaters of piled rocks. In the rocks, in a small cave with a floor of stone worn smooth by many feet are the petroglyphs and pictographs Matthew Leivas Sr. and others are trying to protect. On the ceiling of the cave, carved into the iron red varnish, were the signs for three mountains, a dancing figure, dark red paintings of hatch patterns. The cave opened onto a high perch in a canyon facing a wall of rock and then to a grand vista of valleys and mountains, Turtle Mountains, Chemehuevi Mountains, all the way to the Colorado River. As we climbed the rocks at sunset and squeezed into the cave, Matthew explained the vision he had when he came to this place. He showed us on the rocks where the Colorado, Gila and Bill Williams Rivers converge into a wandering band of water that pours down and around the stone all the way to the Gulf of California. With his sacred staff or poro in hand, Matthew spoke of the message brought to him by the Creator about the urgent need to protect the river from threats to its health to realize its essential place in our lives.
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