Si-Te-Cah

According to Paiute oral history, the Si-Te-Cah are a legendary tribe whose mummified remains were discovered (under four feet of guano) by miners in what is now known as “Lovelock Cave” in Lovelock, Nevada, United States. Although the cave had been mined since 1911, it was not until 1912 when miners notified authorities. An archeological excavation ensued producing 10,000 artifacts. "Si-Te-Cah" literally means “tule-eaters” in the language of the Paiute Indians. Tule is a fibrous water plant. In order to escape harassment from the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cahs were said to have lived on rafts made of tule on the lake.

According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were a hostile and warlike tribe who practiced cannibalism. The Si-Te-Cah and the Paiutes were at war, and after a long struggle a coalition of tribes trapped the remaining Si-Te-Cah in Lovelock Cave. When they refused to come out, the Indians piled brush before the cave mouth and set it aflame. The Si-Te-Cah were annihilated.

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of Paiute Chief Winnemucca, related many stories about the Si-Te-Cah in her book Life Among the Paiutes. "My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with the reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called a mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family." (Hopkins, page 75).

Adrienne Mayor writes about the Si-Te-Cah in her book Fossil Legends of the First Americans. She suggests that the 'giant' interpretation of the skeletons from Lovelock Cave and other dry caves in Nevada was started by entrepreneurs setting up tourist displays and that the skeletons themselves were of normal size. However, about a hundred miles north of Lovelock there are plentiful fossils of mammoths and cave bears, and their large limb bones could easily be thought to be those of giants by an untrained observer. She also discusses the reddish hair, pointing out that hair pigment is not stable after death and that various factors such as temperature, soil, etc can turn ancient very dark hair rusty red or orange, though it may not account for the Paiute tradition of red-haired people existing here before the cave was excavated. Another explanation for the 'giant' interpretation of the skeletons may also come from the fact that some of the first remains unearthed by the guano miners in 1911-12 were described as “giant". A written report by James H. Hart, the first of two miners to excavate the cave in the fall of 1911, recalls that in the north-central part of the cave, about four feet deep, "was a striking looking body of a man “six feet six inches tall.” His body was mummified and his hair distinctly red." (Loud & Harrington, page 87). Unfortunately in the first year of mining, some of the human remains and artifacts were lost and destroyed. "The best specimen of the adult mummies was boiled and destroyed by a local fraternal lodge, which wanted the skeleton for initiation purposes." (Loud & Harrington, page 5). Also, several of the fiber sandals found in the cave were remarkably large, and one reported at over 15 inches (38 cm) in length was said to be on display at the Nevada Historical Society's museum in Reno in 1952. The Paiute tradition asserts that the Si-Te-Cah people practiced cannibalism, and this may have had some basis in fact. During the 1924 excavation of the cave, a series of three human bones were found near the surface towards the mouth of the cave. "These had been split to extract the marrow, as animal bones were split, and probably indicate cannibalism during a famine." (Loud & Harrington, page 13).

References

• Life Among the Paiutes, by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins.

External links

• Adrienne Mayor's homepage
• Stone Mother, a Paiute Legend
• Paiute Indian Legends
• Paiute Legends and Stories
• Lovelock Culture