Dennis Defa
Writer/Historian

Dennis Defa is a writer and historian based in Salt Lake City. Born and raised in Utah's Tooele County, he has had a self-described "life long fascination with the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Indian tribe." This fascination led him to research and write an extended essay on Goshute history for the 2000 publication of "A History of Utah's American Indians." [Published by the Utah State Division of Indian Affairs and the Utah Historical Society.]

Interview was conducted at the University of Utah by program Producer Ken Verdoia.

Ken Verdoia: I want to begin with the premise that you start off in your essay in the book. The casual observer finds this to be a harsh, inhospitable landscape where people ask "how could they survive in this setting?" And you point out that the Goshutes have been intimately involved with that land and have been able to survive on that land. Help me describe the notion of the Goshute people and that unique ability they have in that harsh landscape.

Dennis Defa: The Goshute represent, I think, the best example of what's been called the desert culture in modern terms than any of the other groups in the Great Basin. There were never many of them, but there have always been people out there. And for white Americans or the casual observer, it's a desert. It's a harsh desert. It's not even a pleasant desert like the deserts in Arizona, the Sonora Deserts. But yet the Goshutes have always viewed it as their home. They have an intimate understanding of everything that desert provides.

Verdoia: In an environment such as that, what are the attributes of the people that are necessary for survival? What do the Goshute people have to become good at?

Defa: Basically everything. By that I mean they need to be botanists; they need to know what plants one can eat, what plants one cannot, they need to know the cycle of vegetation, what years there will be pine nuts, what years there will not. They need to understand the animals that are out there, like pronghorn, mountain sheep and rabbits. And they need to be very utilitarian. They can't waste anything.

Verdoia: Before white exploration in that area, give me a sense of the way of these people. Were they large tribes that gathered together under one powerful chief which had clear hierarchies established? What was the notion of organization of the Goshute people?

Defa:The organization was very loose and was based primarily on the nuclear or extended family. The resources out there just did not allow for large numbers of people to come together for any regular period of time. There were no chiefs per se. There were no strong political leaders. There were some people who could influence the groups, but in terms of what most people think of as a tribe and a chief, that didn't exist with the Goshutes. They spent almost all their activities securing food. They lived well out there. They understood the environment, and they were superb hunters and gatherers; but I don't want to give the illusion that somehow that it is a virgin wilderness that is flowing with milk and honey. It wasn't at all. It was a very, very hard existence. And some of the numbers that come out in terms of estimating population before white contact was that there were probably no more than one person for every 40 square miles out there. So there were never many of them.

Verdoia: It would seem to me, as the casual observer, that the presence of water in any desert area would be critical, perhaps even more so in the west desert area; critical to maintaining the balance of life. When settlers come to an area, or an Overland Stage comes to an area, or the Pony Express comes to an area, it would seem the first thing they look for, as well, is water.

Defa: Exactly. Water is the common denominator out there. Without water you don't survive. With water you can survive fairly well. As whites moved into the West Desert, they had to have the same thing. They had to have water. They had to have grass for their livestock. And as they moved into those more favorable areas, Indians were forced out. By depriving them of the water and the resources that went along with the water, the Indians suffered horrifically. They lost food sources. They lost places of shelter. They lost access to pinion pines for pine nuts and they came in direct competition with the white settlers. Horses didn't mean anything to the Goshute, these are not buffalo hunting Indians. Horses were direct competition. They ate the grass that provided the seeds for the Goshute. When the Pony Express and the Overland Stage went through, water is the common denominator. And when you're using animals like horses, you have to have water and you have to have feed. Those were the same places that the Goshute used to gather.

Verdoia: By the early 1860s when a young writer by the name of Samuel Clemens transits the area, he comments that he has seen the most miserable form of human existence. You reference it in your chapter. His view of the Goshute people from, I would assume, the Overland Stage route, is one of a horrific existence on a horrific landscape. Is that one of the consequences of this conflict between Goshute and increasing white settlement?

Defa: It is. It's a direct result. To go across the desert in a stage, and especially someone like Samuel Clemens who comes from Missouri, where it is so green and it is so lush that for many of these people, as you read their journals, their descriptions would, would make one think that they had arrived on the backside of the moon, they just could not appreciate, nor could they understand, that kind of a landscape. It provided them with no references in terms of what their experiences had been. It was an area to get through as fast as possible. And by the 1860s, everyone knew about the Donner Party and the early emigrants, and they had all gone through that country, and that it was just a barren, desolate place that no one could survive. And to see these people, these Indians, who did survive out there; but by that point, they were on the margins because their favored places, like Simpson Springs, had stations at them. And so they were denied access to the water, and they were denied access to the food sources, and the shelter that they had relied on for generations. So they were in pretty much abject poverty at that time.

Verdoia: It does result in flashes of violence at times.

Defa: It does. The Indians retaliate for the loss of resources. Stations are attacked, white station keepers are killed and the military gets involved and reciprocates, attacks Indians. It's really not a prolonged war per se, it's more of a war of attrition.

Verdoia: One of the aspects that, for me, weighs in during the 1860s is the arrival of Patrick Edward Conner of the California Volunteers in the early 1860s as part of the Civil War deployment of troops from California. They are stationed in Salt Lake City, nominally to maintain the Overland Stage routes and the mail routes from west to east. One of the first things they engage in, of course, is the Battle of Bear River, where Shoshone are killed in great numbers. Does that send a rather powerful signal in this region among the native people?

Defa: I think it does; I think to all people. And even though at that point we still think of them as being fairly isolated, there was communication, and they, as a people, as groups of people, knew what happened. It sends a chilling message to native people throughout this part of the country.

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