ELY, Nev. — White attackers turned a lush, high desert oasis in eastern Nevada, with its bubbling springs and a rare stand of Rocky Mountain junipers, into killing fields. They massacred hundreds of indigenous people there in the 19th century – a gruesome story once told in hushed tones behind closed doors.
That was until tribal members reluctantly defended the valley’s historical significance at state hearings. In the 2000s, they shared their painful past with authorities who questioned whether to divert substantial amounts of groundwater that feeds the valley their relatives have long considered sacred.
Bahsahwahbee – Shoshoni for ‘Sacred Water Valley’ – is where the spirits of their dead live on in the trees that grow between the open graves, the final resting place of ancestors left where they were killed.
Now they want to tell their story on their own terms. The Ely Shoshone, Duckwater Shoshone and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation — a coalition representing about 1,500 enrolled tribal members — are lobbying the federal government to designate nearly 60 square miles as Bahsahwahbee National Monument.
“The goal is to commemorate what happened there to protect the memory of that place,” said Warren Graham, president of Duckwater Shoshone.
This lush part of the valley was frequented by Shoshone and Goshute people, all of whom were related and called themselves “Newe” for centuries, and served as a sacred place for healing and celebration. It was desecrated at least three times. In the mid-19th century, federal soldiers carried out two massacres in Bahsahwahbee in retaliation for attacks on settlers and their property.
During the last massacre in 1897, two girls were walking during the fall harvest. When they returned, they found vigilantes killing their family and friends.
One of those girls was Laurene Mamie Swallow, grandmother of 86-year-old Delaine Spilsbury, an Ely Shoshone elder who has worked for years to gain federal recognition of the holy site.
“The people who died here were left here,” Spilsbury said, sitting in a camp chair among the trees at dusk. “Their minds and their bodies are in those trees. And so we are confident that we are going to protect those people.”
For over a century, the history of the massacres was told on a need-to-know basis. Charlene Pete’s mother closed the doors and drew the curtains the day she told her children about the violence against their Goshute ancestors – trained since her days at boarding school to believe she would be punished for remembering her heritage remembered.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen my mother so emotional,” Pete said, narrating a whining sound that she later discovered was common in grief. It was one of the few traditions her mother remembered from a time before the government forced her to attend a boarding school established to assimilate Native American children into white society.
When Las Vegas, which nearly doubled its population between 1990 and 2000, built a pipeline in the early 2000s to divert groundwater from the Bahsahwahbee area and pump it 300 miles to the fast-growing desert city, tribal members felt compelled to speak up.
“It got to a point where we had to start talking to save it,” said Ely Shoshone elder Alvin Marques. He testified in a legal battle that lasted decades, along with farmers, local officials and environmental groups who all opposed the Southern Nevada Water Authority project.
David Charlet, a professor of biology at the College of Southern Nevada, said the trees would likely not survive for more than half a century if the water table was depleted.
“It can be cold, but in the summer it can’t stand the heat and the lack of water,” Charlet said of the rare stand of trees.
Rocky Mountain junipers – known locally as swamp cedars because of the resources they depend on to survive hot summers – are usually found thousands of feet higher on mountains. Birds likely dispersed their seeds, and they thrived thanks to the shallow springs in the valley that nourished the soil, Charlet said.
Ultimately, the Nevada Division of Water Resources denied the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s applications to pump water based on protecting the cultural resource, said state engineer Adam Sullivan, who worked for the department during the ruling and was later appointed to oversee the to lead.
Protecting water for sacred trees is not something the agency has done before, Sullivan said. When permitting projects, “we look broadly at what is in the public interest, and that has evolved.”
The water agency appealed to a district court but was denied and withdrew its permit applications in 2020.
Even if the land becomes a national monument, the water under Bahsahwahbee would remain under the jurisdiction of the state. Today, there are no major applications for water permits in the valley, and any future applications to extract significant amounts of water would be subject to high scrutiny, Sullivan said.
But the land and its heritage would be managed by the National Park Service, whose mission is to preserve them, explains Neal Desai of the National Parks Conservation Association.
The designation would send the message that “we have decided as a country that this place is absolutely essential and that we are committed to doing our best to ensure that this place, this story, the reasons why it is important, are preserved and will be interpreted.” for the benefit of future generations,” he said.
Bahsahwahbee is already listed on the National Register of Historic Places – a largely symbolic title. It remains under the Bureau of Land Management, whose focus is the management of multi-use public lands. Becoming a monument would transfer the land to the National Park Service, which would work with the tribes to preserve the site and its history.
Tribal members involved in historic preservation say it’s important to have enough water for the sacred trees, but the designation is really an opportunity to tell their story on their terms.
“They don’t talk enough about what happened to Native Americans in history,” Graham said.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority supports landmark designation that would allow the continuation of existing ranching and farming operations, said Bronson Mack, spokesperson for the water authority. The agency maintains a working farm in the valley with limited water rights to support the operation.
As a national monument, the story would join other painful American memories elevated to the national stage, including Japanese internment camps, sites associated with the lynching of African Americans and sites of other mass killings of indigenous people.
It would also join Avi Kwa Ame, a stretch of biologically rich mountains and valleys in southern Nevada, and Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, an expanse of canyons, plateaus and streams in northern Arizona – both sacred to the indigenous population in those areas. They are two of five national monuments that President Joe Biden created in 2023, using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
The nomination has broad support from the three tribes, as well as Nevada’s Legislature and the state’s U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both Democrats who have lobbied Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on the issue. Cortez Masto’s office said the senator expects to soon introduce a bill in Congress to designate the monument.
A monument would be an important step toward reconciliation after more than 150 years, explained Monte Sanford, director of the tribe’s monument campaign.
“There has never been an attempt by the U.S. government to reconcile and acknowledge what happened to the Newe people in Bahsahwahbee,” he said.
Looking at the trees that have grown from the same soil where her ancestors died, Spilsbury said she hopes the monument would help people heal, no matter who they are. She knows locals in nearby Ely, whose ancestors were involved in the vigilante group that killed her grandmother.
“I know if they could say, this is where we made amends with these people, it would be as important to them as it is to me,” she said. “Or maybe more.”
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