Paiutes - Lets Play Cards! - Early referrences to Paiutes playing card games.

     After Paiute areas were inundated by Non-Indians, the whites put many restrictions on the Indians who used to make a livelihood off of hunting and gathering. Paiutes were nomadic and many times they would return to their best hunting and gathering areas only to find that someone had now put a cabin or ranch on their old camping grounds within a years time. They now could not hunt, gather or fish in areas that was once theirs. Many times the Paiutes were reduced to asking for food, or doing menial jobs for Non-Indians who now held possession of their best land.

     The Paiutes were in a period where they were becoming less nomadic and depending on employment of ranchers and settlers. Ranchers killed ground squirrels, rabbits and other animals in mass because they were destroying their crops. They also fenced off the best land that had Indian clover and other plants. These foods were once the main staples for Paiutes. Because of this interruption the Paiutes during early western days became more sedentary, less nomadic and more dependent on ranchers and homesteaders for a living.

     Paiutes and other Indians love to gamble. Gambling is an integral part of our culture. Where once they spent the majority of their lives hunting and gathering now with more time on their hands and the introduction of playing cards, Paiutes spent a lot of their time playing cards. Sometime during early pioneer days poker and other card games were introduced and the Paiutes picked up the game. In fact Paiutes created their own versions of poker and other card games.

     Many writers and newspapers wrote about Paiutes playing poker and other card games. Here are some of the early observations of Paiutes playing card games by Non-Indians:

                          Paiutes in an impromptu card game. Many Anglos watched with interest as the Paiutes would be focused on their card game.

     The town Indians subsist by begging at the kitchens of residences, hotels, restaurants, and miners' cabins, and the majority of them pass their time in sleeping in the sunshine or gambling at cards. With all, gambling is the chief aim of life—whether it be at Indian poker or monte, by day on the street corners, or at night in their miserable wickiups, or playing marbles " for keeps " among themselves, or with small white boys. Some of the men work at odd jobs, such as cutting firewood, scavenger work, washing dishes in restaurant or hotel kitchens, and other odd chores, while many of the women do rough washing for families and perform various easy menial services. The women are much more industrious than the men, but all their earnings go to their lords and masters, to furnish them with gambling capital.

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     A Piute passed down Main Street yesterday, whose appearance excited the attention of the white beholders, the jealousy of his male companions, and the admiring glances of the Indian maidens who were sitting on the curbstones pursuing investigations in natural history in their hair. He was mounted on a sleek pony, and was attired in a flaming red flannel shirt, two pairs of new blue overalls, a stiff-brimmed Peruvian sombrero, and a yellow linen duster, whose ample folds spread gracefully over the back of the pony, almost hiding that animal from view. As he rode along, he seemed to be aware that he was the admired of all admirers, and carried himself with an air of conscious pride, occasionally bestowing a contemptuous glance on some less fortunate Indian whose clothes were held together by bits of hay rope, or vouchsafing a patronizing glance on the dusky maidens of his tribe. Grant would have been required to give about eleven horses, sixteen squaws, and a barrel of whisky to have changed places with that Indian. But Indian happiness is as short-lived as that of his white brother; and it is sad to think that this noble red man, so happy yesterday, may have struck an Indian poker game last night, and to-day he may be a total wreck, with nothing to cover his manly form but an old plug hat and a lariat.

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     A short time ago, a couple of Piute Indians went to a store on Main Street and purchased the entire stock of playing cards contained therein. They took them to their camps, and having secretly marked each one, came back to the store, and putting on that look of misery which only an Indian knows how to assume, whined out that they were "heap broke," and offered to sell them back for one-fourth of what they had paid. The paste-boards were purchased on these terms, and were subsequently sold, a pack at a time, to the Shoshone Indians. The Piutes knew that the Shoshones made their purchases at this particular place; and the guileless Shoshone, unaware of the manipulation, bought and played poker with the wily Piute, without a suspicion that all was not—as Governor Bradley would say— " on the dead squar'." The result was, the Piutes won all the money the Shoshones possessed, and now there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and sackcloth and ashes, in the camp of the Shoshone.

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     The sun has shone brightly to-day, and the daughters of the forest took advantage of the circumstance to squat on the street corners where its rays could strike them squarely, and get out their fine-tooth combs and sticks of cosmetic, and shine up their luxuriant locks and make it warm for insect life. At noon to-day, they could be seen scattered all over the north side of Main Street, and all busily engaged in some occupation. Some were playing cards, some making gowns, some spanking their pappooses, and others stringing beads. They seem to be a happy set, and the summit of bliss is reached by them when they have full stomachs and can find a streak of sunshine to bask in.

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     On Saturday night last, a Piute, with disheveled hair, distended eyes, and a general look of wildness, rushed into Sower's store, and throwing down a dollar, excitedly exclaimed :

"Gimme deck cards and four bits candles!"

We knew by his excitement and eagerness to obtain the articles that a big poker game must be in progress on the hill, so we questioned him regarding it.

"Yes," he replied, "heap big poker game; me heap loser; play 'em all night— maybeso get even; hell! dam!" and grabbing the cards and candles he struck a bee-line for the camp on the hill.

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     We did not attend the grand ball given by the Piutes to the Shoshones in Crow Canyon last night; but Captain Steve informs us that it was a grand success, and that Pine-nut Jane was the belle throughout the early part of the evening; but that, unfortunately, she became involved in a game of Indian poker with Horned-toad Sally, in which she lost her gorgeous attire on a queen-full, and her place as belle was taken by the afore-said Sally. Steve says everything passed off peaceably. "No dlinkum whisakee; no fightum."

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     A resident of Austin has an Indian employed in chopping wood at his residence, and that the aforesaid is an aborigine who goes through the world with his eyes open is evidenced by what is as follows narrated:

Yesterday (Sunday) the Indian refused to chop any wood, and when his employer asked him the reason of his refusal, he replied:

"Heap no work Sunday; all same whita man, heap play poker."

Jim evidently recognizes Sunday as a day of rest in its full sense.

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     Belmont Johnny, a Shoshone Indian, hailed us on the street yesterday, and asked us if we knew how to "mark stamped cards." Of course we immediately denied the possession of any such wicked knowledge; but the guileless Indian thinks a newspaper editor knows everything. However, we asked Johnny the object of his question, and he explained that he wanted to get some white man to mark a deck of cards for him, and teach him to read them by the backs.

"And what then, Johnny?"

And in reply he said:

"Me heap break every Piute son of gun in Austin."

The Indian did not use the word "gun" as above quoted, but we substitute it for the word he really did say, as a figure of speech, as it were. Johnny speaks English plainly, and has acquired to its full extent the white man's facility of forcible expression.

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     In front of the Cosmopolitan Saloon, yesterday afternoon, three stalwart Piutes were engaged in a game of Indian poker, the stakes in which were chewing-gum. Each Indian would bite off a piece from the wad of gum in his mouth and place it in the " pot," and the one holding the high hand would rake down the three pieces and put them in his mouth. The sons of the forest were as deeply absorbed in the game as if the stakes had been thousands.

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     Some white men tackled some Indians in a game of Indian poker to-day ; but the son of the forest rung in a cold deck and cleaned up all the money on the blanket, and then the pale faces said he was a son of some-thing else than the forest.