Shamans, Portals, and Water Babies: Southern Paiute Mirrored Landscapes in Southern Nevada

Abstract

Delamar Valley is a unique landscape located in southern Nevada that contains places associated with ceremony and Southern Paiute Creation. This ceremonial landscape is composed of volcanic places, a large Pleistocene Lake, and an underground hydrological system that allows for the movement of spiritual beings known as water babies between Delamar Valley and neighboring Pahranagat Valley. Paiute shamans traveled to Delamar Valley to interact with the portals along a volcanic ridge that allowed them to travel to a mirrored ceremonial landscape in another dimension of the universe. While in this mirrored landscape, shamans engaged with elements of Creation. This essay examines the ways in which Paiute shamans interacted with various components of the physical and spiritual landscapes.

1. Introduction

Delamar Valley is a special landscape located in southern Nevada in the United States. This valley contains places that are associated with Southern Paiute Creation and ceremony. The landscape is punctuated with volcanic places that surround a large Pleistocene lake with underground waterflows, linking Delamar Valley to neighboring ceremonial centers such as Pahranagat Valley. Within Delamar Valley, there is a prominent volcanic ridge that is covered with hundreds of rock peckings/petroglyphs that are associated with spiritual travel between dimensions and rain-making (Figure 1).

Delamar Valley traditionally was occupied and used, Indigenous-owned, and historically related to the Numic-speaking peoples of the Great Basin and western Colorado Plateau. Tribes specifically involved in the field consultations that are summarized here are the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, Pahrump Paiute Tribe, and the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah (PITU), who represent the cultural interests of the Southern Paiute people. These Numic-speaking peoples have gone on record in past projects and continue to stipulate here that they are the American Indian people responsible for the cultural resources (natural and manmade) in this study area because their ancestors were placed here by the Creator and have lived in these lands since time immemorial, maintaining and protecting these places, plants, animals, water sources, and cultural signs of their occupation.

These Numic-speaking peoples further stipulate that because they have lived in these lands since the end of the Pleistocene and throughout the Holocene, for approximately 40,000 years (Bennett et al. 2021; Pigati et al. 2023), they deeply understand the dramatic shifts in climate and ecology that have occurred over these many millennia. While Indigenous lifeways were dramatically influenced by natural shifts in climate and ecology, certain religious and ceremonial practices persisted unchanged. These traditional ecological understandings are carried from generation to generation through the recounting of origin stories occurring in Mythic Times and by strict cultural and natural resource conservation rules.

Delamar Valley is a unique place within Southern Paiute territory in that the volcanic ridges with the numerous water babies, mountain sheep, and shaman peckings serve as portals to another dimension. The portals serve as the spiritual conduit that a shaman or Puha’gant can pass through from this present physical dimension to a dimension that is inverted. While in this other dimension, the Puha’gants are transformed both physically and spiritually, as evident in Figure 2.

2. Methods

The ethnographic analysis in this essay has its foundation in a series of ethnographic studies that have been conducted by ethnographers since the late 1970s. The study area was visited by Southern Paiute and Shoshone Tribal representatives during the MX/Missile Defense Environmental Impact Assessment in 1980 (Facilitators, Inc. 1980). Representatives from Tribes across that state of Nevada were interviewed by an ethnographer hired by Powers Engineering Inc. Southern Paiute elders returned to Delamar Valley two years later as part of the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) in 1983 (Stoffle and Dobyns 1983). Richard Stoffle and his research team conducted 15 interviews at this location. Almost 30 years later, Richard Stoffle and ethnographers from the University of Arizona returned and brought elders out from three Southern Paiute Tribes as part of the Solar Programmic Environmental Impact Statement Ethnographic Study (Stoffle et al. 2011).

The Solar PEIS field visits occurred in November 2010, March 2011, May 2011, and July 2011 with tribal representatives from the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, Pahrump Paiute Tribe, and the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. During these Solar PEIS visits, 35 interviews were conducted. This total includes two Native American Cultural Resources forms, four Ethnoarchaeology–Rock Art forms, three Cultural Landscape forms, and 26 personal statements from the involved Tribal representatives. In addition to formal interviews conducted in situ during the Solar PEIS, a seminar with Tribal representatives was held regarding the cultural understanding of water babies and how they were used and acquired in the Delamar Valley area.

3. Indigenous Cultural Landscapes

Human societies form complex connections and relationships with the environment that surrounds them; researchers use the concept of cultural landscape to describe these relationships. Hicks et al. (2007) write that the concept of cultural landscapes provides ways of explaining and capturing complex intersections among people, material culture, and geography. For many American Indian people, these intersections are grounded in their epistemologies and oral traditions (Anyon et al. 1996; Basso 1996; Deloria 2003). Scholars have theories pertaining to cultural landscape and models for documenting and interpreting these connections.

Cultural landscapes develop from a people’s historical memory. Their cultural understanding of the land is shared and transferred over generations (Hicks et al. 2007;) through oral traditions and ceremony. Cultural landscapes differ from a culture’s special places to which one or more cultural groups have attached specific cultural meanings. The notion that not all places within a landscape have the same cultural value or power is central to the conception of cultural landscapes. Value is given to places because of the type of experiences or interactions people have with the location (Zedeño 2000). According to Greider and Garkovich (1994, p. 8):

Cultural groups socially construct landscapes as reflections of themselves. In the process, the social, cultural, and natural environments are meshed and become part of the shared symbols and beliefs of members of the groups. Thus, the natural environment and changes in it take on different meanings depending on the social and cultural symbols affiliated with it.

Tilley (1994) distinguishes between the concepts of place and landscape. Landscapes encompass relationships among singular locales and events. A cultural landscape should make sense from the perspective of the connected human group or groups. Indigenous places are connected through songs, oral history, human relations, ceremony, and both physical and spiritual trails. These connections create synergistic relationships between people, places, and objects. Sometimes the best way to understand these complex relationships is to look at them on a smaller scale or on a local level. These smaller landscapes are sometimes referred to as local landscapes, and they are composed of place connections in small geographic areas like a particular mountain range or river system as opposed to an ethnic group’s entire traditional territory. These landscape connections can be associated with understanding how and why people traveled along trails from their communities to ceremonial and resource use areas (Van Vlack 2012).

4. Natural Setting

The Late Pleistocene ecology of the Great Basin region was rich in fauna and flora. Central to this supportive habitat were wet, forested uplands, full grasslands, and long wetlands located along a complex network of streams feeding into medium and large lakes (Grayson 1993). American Indian people lived, hunted, gathered, made trails, built communities, and engaged with the topographically interesting landscape through ceremonial activities. Large mammals like mastodons ranged throughout these habitats from the lowest wetlands up to 8990 feet, where the Huntington Mammoth remains were found in what was once a subalpine environment in the Late Pleistocene (Grayson 1993, p. 165). While contemporary scholars often focus their studies on charismatic species like the mastodons, dozens of medium sized mammals have also been found, including camels, horses, ground sloths, skunks, bears, Saber-tooth cats, American lions, flat headed peccaries, muskoxen, mountain goats, pronghorn antelope, and American cheetahs (Grayson 1993, p. 159). A great diversity of smaller Late Pleistocene mammals was also present. Like their cousins, avian species were abundant and occurred in many sizes. Their sizes ranged from the largest, such as the Incredible Teratorn with a wingspan of 17 feet and the Merriam’s Teratorn with a wingspan of 12 feet (both related to the condors and vultures), to the smallest, namely hummingbirds (Grayson 1993, p. 168). Other birds included flamingos, storks, shelducks, condors, vultures, hawks, eagles, caracaras, lapwings, thick-knees, jays, cowbirds, and blackbirds (Grayson 1993, p. 167). The biodiversity of the land and air was matched by the fish species in the streams and lakes. There were at least 20 species of fish, including whitefish, cisco, trout, chum, dace, shiner, sucker, and sculpin (Grayson 1993, p. 187). The fish species traveled widely across the Great Basin through a variety of interconnected lakes and streams. Late Pleistocene lakes were a central portion of this hydrological network that supported fish species and a great biodiversity in flora and fauna.

During the Pleistocene epoch, the Delamar and Pahranagat Valleys had a very different climate and ecology than they do today. During the Pleistocene, the pluvial lakes in Dry Lake Valley and Delamar Valley were full. Tschnz and Pampeyan (1961) estimated that the maximum shorelines of the lakes were 50 feet deep in Delamar Lake and 75 feet deep in Dry Lake (see Map 1). These estimates, however, are conservative because the measurements were observed in reference to present day levels. It is worth noting that during periods of above average precipitation, the depth would increase temporarily beyond the observable shorelines. The surface areas for Dry Lake and Delamar Lake are 30 square miles and 16 square miles, respectively (Earkin 1963). In the neighboring Pahranagat Valley, the Pleistocene epoch yielded a meandering stream—the ancestral White River (Reso 1959). The stream has changed greatly since the Pleistocene when it once truncated the alluvial deposits growing in the Pahranagat Valley. Contrastingly, the current streambed has been breached by local alluvial-fan deposits (Jayko 2007).

The flora of Delamar Valley transitioned during the Pleistocene, from predominantly cooler weather trees and shrubs such as pine, fir, juniper, maple, alder, currant, woods rose, and snowberry, to warmer weather, more xerophytic plants such as the creosote bush and the four-wing saltbush. These warmer weather plants are the ones that continue to be ubiquitous in the present day (Wells 1983). The impact of the Pleistocene is also seen in the distribution of plants in the playa today; the time spent underneath the pluvial lakes corresponds to high levels of salts and fine textured soils, which limit plant growth (Charlet 2007). Consistent with the understanding of past impacts, Earkin (1963) explains that the drier, modern Delamar Valley lacks a perennial waterway, but the physiographic features of water found throughout the valley, such as stream channels, were likely formed during the wet Pleistocene times.

While the environmental setting of Delamar Valley has changed dramatically over the geologic timescales of Southern Paiute use and inhabitation, the Southern Paiute people have continued to thrive. Countless shifts in the plant and animal communities have been met with constant co-adaptation; traditional ecological knowledge is continually developed and maintained in harmony with the natural setting. Ultimately, the sustainability of the landscape is ensured through the implementation of thoughtful, active management as a part of the Southern Paiute sacred ecology.

The following Pleistocene map was developed by superimposing images of the Delamar Valley Pleistocene hydrological system onto topographical maps of the Delamar Valley by using image-manipulation software (see Figure 3). It is important to note that this map does not present definitive boundaries of the Pleistocene hydrological system but is designed to geographically contextualize this hydrological system and its role in understanding the Delamar Valley area.

4.1. White River Ecoscape

As part of understanding the Delamar Valley cultural landscape is placing it into context of the larger White River hydrological system that is punctuated with numerous Southern Paiute ceremonial places, which include but are not limited to Coyotes Jar, the Mount Irish rock art ceremonial areas, Crystal Spring, the water baby peckings found in Pahranagat Valley, and the Red Tail Hawk origin site at Maynard Lake.

Most of the peckings found along the ridge have been identified by Southern Paiute people as water baby spirit helpers, mountain sheep spirit helpers, and transformed shamans. The presence of these peckings has been linked to Delamar Valley’s hydrological connections to the White River ceremonial landscape. This large hydrological system flows all the way from central Nevada, down towards the Colorado River, eventually towards the ceremonial salt cave at Saint Thomas, which is in present-day Lake Mead. This region is not only important for training rain-making shamans and acquiring water baby spirit helpers but also part of the Southern Paiute Salt Song Trail to the afterlife (Stoffle et al. 2025) (Figure 4).

4.2. The Delamar Valley Dry Lake

The Delamar Valley dry lake/playa is the dominant geological feature of this landscape. Due to intermediate wet and dry periods that occur seasonally over decades, the lowest portions of the Delamar playa are thick, white mud flats. Intruding into this rather vast sea of white flats is a dark, thin, and tall volcanic ridge. A few black volcanic outcrops also occur along the bottom of the playa. Generally, places that contain the presence of volcanic activity are considered sacred and powerful to Native people. Southern Paiute people believe that volcanic events are moments when Puha (power) deep inside the Earth is brought to the surface as a way for the land to renew itself and to distribute Puha across the landscape.

Due to its unique geological composition, Southern Paiute people have used Delamar Valley as a multi-component ceremonial landscape since time immemorial1. The places and cultural resources located within the valley are linked to Southern Paiute rain-making, power acquisition. Furthermore, it is linked to the Southern Paiute Trail to the Afterlife and Creation. As such, Delamar Valley is central to the lives of Southern Paiute people because they have a deeply rooted spiritual connection to the land that weaves stories and songs into the landscape and connects all elements of the universe.

5. Special Features

Southern Paiute people have used Delamar Valley for thousands of years. They believe that the Creator gave these lands to the Southern Paiute people and that they have a responsibility to maintain cultural connections to the land and its resources. During the ethnographic field sessions, Tribal representatives identified the valley (Figure 5) as part of a large ceremonial landscape that contains many traditional use features like hot springs, volcanic places, and important plant and animal communities (see

Table 1. Special features identified in Delamar Valley.

Feature Type	Special Feature
Source for Water	Seasonal Delamar playa lake, Pleistocene lakes and wetlands, Pahranagat Valley
Evidence of Previous Native American Use	Grinding slicks, rock shelter, offerings, water babies, Ocean Woman’s Net, mountain sheep peckings, Knotted Strings, Twins peckings
Geological Features	Volcanic mountains (Southern Pahroc Range), Delamar Mountains, isolated knoll (Turtle Butte), Seasonal Delamar playa lake, viewscape
Source for Plants	Ceremonial plants, medicinal plants, food plants, utilitarian plants
Source for Animals	Birds of prey, game birds, migratory birds, predatory mammals, game mammals, small mammals, lizards, snakes, spiritual animals
Native American History	Labor mine camp, Native American doctoring, Native American cowboys, family history

). Delamar Valley is central to the lives of Southern Paiute people because they have a deeply rooted spiritual connection to the land that weaves stories and songs into the landscape, connecting all elements of the universe.

The topography is accentuated by high snow-capped and forested mountains whose rain and snow drain into and periodically fill the playa. The combination of water, expansive vistas, white mud earth, and a dark black volcanic ridge produces a landscape that, according to the Native American people, identifies this place as a source of Puha and powerful natural and spiritual resources.

The power of the topography was also enhanced by the presence of a steep-sided knoll located in the playa just east of the volcanic ridge, which was labeled as Turtle Butte by Native American representatives (Figure 6). Turtle Butte was also identified as a location for vision questing.

In Southern Paiute culture, vision questing destinations are selectively marked, and offerings and prayers are left for placation and gratitude. Both remain to indicate the meaning of the place as it was defined at Creation.

6. Ceremony at Delamar Valley

The topography of any place, area, or region speaks to its purpose according to the beliefs of Numic-speaking peoples. The inherent purpose of the land was defined during Creation and can be read by Native American people who share culturally defined place logic. An earlier chapter in this report was devoted to describing this place logic and its epistemological foundations; however, given the special geology of Delamar Valley, it is necessary to discuss this ideology. The energy of the world, previously defined as Puha, was placed at Creation in all elements of the world (water, rocks, wind, animals, and plants) and both were then organized in special ways by the Creator and by the elements themselves who also were given agency—the ability to move to where they wish and do what they want. When powerful elements come together in a place, area, or region, it is understood that this is where Native American people were intended by Creation to come in order to conduct ceremony and seek advice or additional power.

The key to interpreting such places or areas is the visual juxtaposition of powerful elements and the associated viewscapes. The high snowcapped mountains, wide valley, black volcanic ridges and outcrops, isolated steep-sided buttes, and pure white mud flats of the seasonal lake constitute the primary elements that have been placed together in Delamar Valley. The viewscape from any of these features contributes to the cultural importance of the place. The viewscape from the steep-sided butte east of the petroglyphs was noted by Tribal representatives as especially interesting and Turtle Butte captured the attention of Southern Paiute consultants as a potential location for vision questing.

7. Delamar Valley Pilgrimage

Southern Paiute pilgrimages traditionally were unique ceremonial and ritual actions occurring beyond normal worship and were not a part of daily cultural activity, like prayers said to greet the morning sun. In Southern Paiute society, only a select group of shamans, Puha’gants, made pilgrimages, which they did on behalf of the entire community, as well as for themselves. Those who went on these journeys were medicine men or medicine men in training. These spiritual journeys were not to be taken by everyone because there were great physical and spiritual risks involved. While ceremonial activities such as ritual cleansing and daily prayers occurred in a pilgrim’s home community, most of the ritual associated with pilgrimage took place far from daily living space in controlled settings along the trails. The pilgrimage into Delamar Valley is noted in Figure 7.

A pecking known as the Twins (Figure 8) occurs a few times at the third site location on the volcanic ridge. It is believed that the Twins pecking notes the beginning of the pilgrimage trail into Delamar Valley. The Twins also appear clearly the downstream in Pahranagat Valley and at the outlet of the Pleistocene Lake, known today as Maynard Lake. This place is known as the Red Hawk origin spot.

The Twins are also found in other powerful ceremonial areas in Southern Paiute territory like the Grand Canyon and Kanab Creek in northern Arizona (Van Vlack et al. 2024). One suggestion was that the Twins represent the Salt Song sisters who participated in the formation of the trail to the afterlife that is traveled through a thousand miles of spiritual and physical paths and places.

7.1. Point of Rocks

When Puha’gants entered Delamar Valley, the first place they reached was an area called Point of Rocks (Figure 9). This site is located at the southernmost point of a long volcanic ridge. A pecking panel was identified as providing the ceremonial travelers who entered this area with directions and guidance to reach their destination place. Puha’gants would have prayed at this spot and left offerings to prepare themselves to reach their destination point and to acquire a water baby spirit helper.

7.2. Rock Shelter

After visiting Point of Rocks, the Puha’gants visited the nearby rock shelter as part of their pilgrimage preparation (Figure 10). The rock shelter is located between Point of Rocks and the water baby peckings. Around the base of the rock shelter were a series of grinding slicks which were used in preparing medicines. Additionally, lithics were left at the shelter as offerings.

7.3. Volcanic Ridge with Storied Rocks

The volcanic ridge has three concentrations of rock peckings. One small panel occurs at the very southern tip of the ridge. A second set of peckings occurs on the northeast side of the ridge in and around a set of large boulders which forms a shelter (Figure 11) at the base of the ridge located just across from the steep knoll. Several grinding slicks were also found.

7.3.1. Water Babies

Water babies are a recurrent theme among Numic groups from California to Wyoming. Contemporary ethnographic research with Numic speaking peoples have identified five other major sites where water babies are prominent cultural features, such as the Grand Canyon; Coso Hot Springs, California; Black Mountain-Thirsty Canyon, Nevada; and Thermopolis, Wyoming (Miller 1983; Ruuska 2025; Stoffle et al. 2009, 2025; Whitley 2024). Water babies are spirit helpers that traditionally were used by extremely powerful Puha’gants in rain-making ceremonies. According to Southern Paiute spiritual leaders, water babies are extremely dangerous and that most Southern Paiute people learn to avoid them and treat them with respect. In Southern Paiute culture, only special Puha’gants interacted with water babies in ceremony because they have high enough levels of Puha to use them properly and to not be harmed physically and spiritually in the process (Van Vlack 2012). Paiute people as well as other Numic-speaking peoples have interpreted these places to be areas where Puha’gants visit to transition to the supernatural world to interact with and acquire water babies for ceremonial use.

These images are similar to those at Black Butte (Figure 12) ceremonial area and the Red Tail Hawk Origin Lake, each located a few miles away from Delamar Valley in Pahranagat Valley. Black Butte is a place where water babies live, and powerful persons came to acquire water babies as spirit helpers. Previous studies documented that water babies were acquired by established rain shamans (Stoffle et al. 2002). A similar interpretation has been suggested for Delamar Valley.

7.3.2. Mountain Sheep Peckings

Some spirit helpers, such as mountain sheep, were associated with rain-making. The medicine men that possessed mountain sheep spirit helpers frequently dreamed of the mountain sheep, the associated songs, the ceremonial activities they needed to perform, and how to perform a particular task.

Figure 13 shows a series of mountain sheep peckings that wrap around a large boulder on the volcanic ridge. The mountain sheep appear to be moving in a procession, and this could be understood as the mountain sheep passing from one dimension to another, possibly guiding the visiting shamans through a portal. In Figure 13, it should be noted that changes occur in the mountain sheep procession. On the far left, a sheep has water baby style feet, a straight tail, and a slightly distorted face. The next two sheep appear to be in a transitional state as they exit the portal before resembling a mountain sheep in the fourth pecking.

Located below the transforming mountain sheep peckings is a square image with horizonal lines going across it. This imagery is believed to represent the shamans transforming as they pass through the portal along with their mountain sheep spirit helpers. It is likely the responsibility of the mountain sheep to lead the shamans to the water babies, thus allowing the shamans to acquire a water baby spirit helper to help in ceremonial activities.

7.3.3. Transformed Shaman Peckings

The peckings seen in Figure 14 and Figure 15 show Puha’gants who were transformed by entering the portals. These peckings are below the mountain sheep seen in Figure 13. According to Southern Paiute representatives, these Puha’gants had to be properly trained and prepared to experience the mirrored landscape on the other side of the portal (Stoffle et al. 2011).

Another ceremony-related pecking is the tapitcapi (Figure 16) or knotted string (Stoffle et al. 2004). It is displayed alongside and incorporated into other peckings. Tapitcapi peckings tend to occur at places where medicine men travel. The tapitcapi is associated throughout the new world with spiritual ceremonies and other important events.

7.3.4. Ocean Woman’s Net

One pecking of the Ocean Woman’s Net occurs alone on a large rock cliff face that defines a moderately sized flat area located near the top of the volcanic ridge (see Figure 17). This location is well above all other peckings and is the highest and last pecking on the steep-sided volcanic ridge. Ocean Woman is linked to the Southern Paiute Creation Story, and these type peckings of only occur at ceremonial places (Stoffle et al. 2021).

7.3.5. Turtle Butte

The power of the topography was also enhanced by the presence of a steep sided knoll located in the playa just east of the volcanic ridge, which was labeled as Turtle Butte by Native American representatives. Turtle Butte was also identified as a location for vision questing (Figure 18). Vision questing destinations are selectively marked, and offerings and prayers are left for placation and gratitude. Both remain to indicate the meaning of the place as it was defined at Creation.

Turtle Butte is situated in the center of Delamar (seasonal) Lake. Shamans would visit the Butte and use it for vision requesting. The Butte also serves as a portal through which the shamans can move between their present dimension and the inverse dimension. It allows them to connect with the water babies flowing underground traveling back and forth between Pahranagat Valley and Delamar Valley and between dimensions.

During the 2011 Solar PEIS Ethnographic Study, one Southern Paiute representative shared his thoughts regarding the peckings, portals, and Turtle Butte:

We’re here at the location where we found eight doctors or images that have the water baby hands: they’re all on one panel. They’re all looking over the entire valley. There is one that has two distinctive dark eyes in the middle. It’s very intriguing because it’s meant for you either as you come up or go down, you find different things. And for this panel I found the way that they may have gotten up here. We say the little people are the ones who make these, and they are able to get up here and all over. But this is definitely probably the biggest concentration of these kinds of things that I’ve seen in probably one of the most powerful spots in this little area where people came. They had to come here to gather to bring all that power to this one place. It’s a very centered place within this whole valley and probably within the belief of Paiute people as well.

I was just thinking about this area here that has the different drawings, and there are differences between the drawings and images that are here. The variations of the water babies and the power come from this place. Along time ago, Indian people would come to a place like this, and they would bring their own medicine, their own doctors, their own images, this would be a place where people would come to gather. So, the one place where there were the eight images of the medicine men, it was a place where people would have to come to keep the balance in the area because if not then things start going crazy. This is a very interesting location because although it’s a long hill, it’s only concentrated where the volcanic flow comes down. This is where we are seeing these images. There are plenty of other surfaces where they could have gone but they chose these areas, and you can truly feel the power of the place.

It is a place that is so significant looking at the twins, and they’re armless, there were these things (inverse triangles), they were almost like areas to go in, so you go into the underworld or to another dimension, you can exit out of those as well. Anyways, those were right by the twins, and it was something that was facing right towards that volcanic knoll over there, which I referenced earlier. And like I said, it’s like a magnet for this area. It also accounts for why there are variations in some of these drawings. Some of these are extremely old and are beginning to be covered with desert varnish and lichen and things, but they are all the same kind of things but with variations.

(Stoffle et al. 2011)

8. Cultural Significance of Portals in Delamar Valley

The portals in Delamar Valley allow for Puha’gants to enter into another dimension that mirrors the current conditions of the valley. This mirrored landscape is similar to a negative of a colored photograph. This is demonstrated in Figure 19. In this mirrored landscape, Puha’gants interacted directly with water babies and with other elements associated with Creation.

Portals in Southern Paiute Territory

Portals serve different purposes depending on their locations and on their users. For example, there is a portal located near present-day Zion National Park in the state of Utah that is used exclusively by certain types of animals. According to Southern Paiute elders, when Paiute hunters do not follow proper hunting protocols and cause harm to the deer herds, the deer will retreat to this portal and go into another dimension. The deer will stay in this dimension for a period until humans learn that they cannot be greedy and take more than what is needed. Additionally, and most importantly, the hunters need to learn to properly thank the deer that willingly gave their lives to the hunters for food.

Humans and animals are not the only ones who move between dimensions of the universe. Landscape features such as mountain ranges and water sources move from this dimension to others. For example, the Spring Mountains, which are Southern Paiute Creation place, constantly move in and out of this current dimension. As Larry Eddy, Southern Paiute Spiritual leader, explained:

The Spring Mountain range is a powerful area that is centrally located in the lives, history, and minds of Nuwuvi people. The range is a storied land, which exists as both physical and mythic reality, both simultaneously connected by portals through, which humans and ocher life forms can and do pass back and forth. This is as it was at Creation.

(Stoffle et al. 2009, p. 32)

Caves, too, function as portals and serve as gateways for Puha’gants to acquire Puha. Laird (1976, pp. 38–39) recorded a Chemehuevi Paiute’s description of a large cave that functions as a portal in southern Nevada where a shaman acquired his various songs, powers, and spirit helpers. The cave was notable in that it had a will of its own and would reject those whom it did not like or who were not properly prepared to enter. A unwanted/unprepared intruder would keep on walking deeper into the cave but would unknowingly be turned around and would find themselves coming out the way they came in. Some caves like one located in the Southern Paiute Origin Mountains, the Spring Mountains are known to change a person’s gender while the Puha’gant is inside the cave and if a person stays too long, that person will come out as a mountain sheep (Stoffle et al. 2004).

Places associated with time-keeping have also been identified as portals such as a Paiute Solar Calendar in southwestern Utah. This calendar was the destination place along a pilgrimage trail used by special time-keeping Puha’gants (Stoffle et al. 2008). According to Tribal representatives in 2006, Puha’gants prepared themselves to enter the cave with the Solar Calendar, and when they entered, they carved pictures from their pilgrimage to the calendar into the rock. The rock itself serves as a portal between time dimensions. The stories are all in a singular voice in which only the timekeepers could understand (Stoffle et al. 2008).

The importance of being spiritually prepared to enter a portal like the Solar Calendar is highlighted in an account from a field visit during the Intermountain Power Project (Stoffle and Dobyns 1983). Dr. Richard Stoffle who took a Southern Paiute medicine man and a Tribal member to the Solar Calendar recounted that the Tribal member who was with him experienced the landscape switch from positive colors to negative colors. The representative unintentionally entered the portal and was not physically or spiritually prepared to experience the negative landscape. He then needed to be supported and counseled by the accompanying elder for the next year to understand what exactly he experienced.

9. The Nevada Regional Landscape

The Delamar seasonal lake area was interpreted as a ceremonial area having many features. This ceremonial area is interpreted as being a part of ceremonial places such as Black Butte and the Red Tail Hawk Origin Lake located in and responsive to the Pahranagat hydrological system. The presence of water babies links this connection due to their ability to travel through underground waterways. This water system is among the most famous in the region because of its abundant water, wetlands, and good soils that would have supported large, irrigated farming communities and extensive fauna and flora communities. The area is especially important for local and migratory birds.

In addition, this hydrological system contains a series of culturally and functionally interconnected ceremonial areas. These include (1) White River narrows pecking area, (2) Coyote’s Jar (a human Creation mountain), (3) Crystal Spring, (4) Black Butte, (5) Red Tail Hawk origin spot, (6) Arrow Canyon Range (which has extensive pecking panels in the canyon, an associated Mythic Time story regarding the range itself, and was the site of an 1890 Ghost Dance), (7) Potato Woman (a Creator Being in the shape of a long ridge extending from the Mormon Mountain massif), and (8) the Salt Cave at the junction of the Muddy (Moapa) River and the Virgin River. Delamar Valley and seasonal lake is hydrologically and ceremonially connected and integrated into the larger Pahranagat Valley systems (Stoffle et al. 2025).

Delamar Valley and Pahranagat Valley have always been connected culturally and hydrologically. Delamar Valley sits higher than Pahranagat Valley does, causing water to flow from the former into the latter (Earkin 1963). Delamar Valley contains a large playa that drains from the north to the south and into the southern portion of the valley where a large and usually wet lake is located.

During wet periods, the large wet playa lake overflows to the south, where it meets with the Pahranagat Valley hydrological system. From there, the water flows to the Muddy River, subsequently into the junction of the Virgin River, and then to the Colorado River. The last junction is currently submerged by Lake Mead. The Delamar Valley hydrological system is fed by surrounding mountains such as the Southern Pahroc Range to the west and the Delamar Mountains to the south and east. Notable peaks are Lookout Mountain, Big Lime Mountain, and Chokecherry Mountain—all bordering the eastern edge of the valley.

The water flow underneath Delamar and Pahranagat Valleys is linked together by the Carbonate Aquifer. This aquifer is not characterized by one master flow system; instead, the local topography of the region breaks up the groundwater flow into a number of regional and sub-regional flow systems. For example, Cave Valley, Dry Lake Valley, and Delamar Valley are in the White River Subregion (Stoffle et al. 2025), which outflows to the Pahranagat Valley.

Although scientists have only recently lent credence to this theory, the Native American people have always believed these water sources to be connected. The strong presence of water babies connects the Delamar area to other water baby sites. One Southern Paiute man stated that the water babies travel through these underground waterways.

Delamar Valley is linked in a variety of ways to the well-documented spiritual landscape of the White River, Pahranagat Valley system, the Muddy (Moapa) River, and subsequently the Virgin River. When ceremony or power seeking is successful at such places, they are selectively marked so that future human visitors can more fully understand the purpose of the place. Offerings are left at such places as are prayers of placation and gratitude. Both remain, like the physical markings, to be seen and heard to indicate the meaning of the place as it was defined at Creation.