Paul J. White

Troubled Waters: Timbisha Shoshone, Miners, and Dispossession at Warm Spring

For the majority of Death Valley's prospectors, the only entity proving as elusive and desirable as a profitable mineral deposit was a good water supply. Yet, contrary to perceptions of the valley as a vacant land, miners also found that most water locations had long seen use by indigenous Timbisha Shoshone families who showed little indication of leaving. This article tracks the history of ownership disputes over Warm Spring, a perennial water source located in the southern section of Death Valley, California, where conflicts between a Timbisha Shoshone family and miners began in the late 19th century and lasted into the mid-20th century. The analysis of historic documents and physical evidence permits detailed insights into Warm Spring's different land use and land claiming histories. In addition to identifying difficulties that Native people faced in securing land title, this study reveals how the mining landscape developed in response to Native claims, including how miners used and manipulated property developments to legitimate their control of a valued water source.

Introduction

To those visiting the southern reaches of Death Valley's rugged Panamint Mountains, Warm Spring comes as a welcome surprise. Here, a dense cluster of tall trees, abandoned cinder block buildings, and a swimming pool present an eye-catching sight that promises coveted relief from desert temperatures (see figure 1). Although many remnants are associated with historic talc mining operations, a closer inspection of the camp reveals several aberrant features. Behind the camp buildings, a copse of fig trees and a tangle of grapevines suggest greater permanence than usually associated with mining endeavors. A small 1930s-era gold mill located a short distance away on the valley floor also seems at odds with the talc outcrops worked in the immediate vicinity and visible for 2 miles down the length of the canyon. Most curious of all, however, are the corner stakes of an Indian allotment, dated 1936, located amid a plethora of mining cairns and boundary markers dotting the camp.

Figure 1. View from the miners' dormitory at Warm Spring, showing an important exercise of water rights. The 1930s-era gold mill, visible at photo center, helped launch the mining company and later supported miners' claims to Warm Spring. Photo by author.

Remnants of past land conflicts should be an expected occurrence on mining landscapes. The history of Western mining is indeed replete with accounts of litigation and speculation over a wide range of mineral and nonmineral resources. Lenient resource policies like the General Mining Act (1866, 1872) are well recognized as providing prospectors, land speculators, and industrial capitalists with abundant opportunities to wrest enormous wealth from North America's public lands. Much historical attention centers on disputes among Euroamericans, but the westward expansion of industrial enterprise in the 19th and 20th centuries also went hand in hand with a sustained endeavor to divest Native Americans of their land base.¹

Although dispossession was not a straightforward process, mining companies often ranked as beneficiaries. During the mid-19th century, the federal government funded campaigns to clear newly discovered mineral regions of Native peoples. Legislators in later decades located Indian reservations away from known precious metal reserves and carved mineral lands from existing holdings.² The Dawes Act or General Allotment Act (1887), responsible for decreasing the Native land base by two-thirds within five decades, not only fragmented Indian reservations into units of private property but also transferred additional mineral lands into the public domain under the principle that Native Americans were to become farmers. As noncitizens, Native people were largely prevented from filing under public land laws until the passage of the Citizenship Act in 1924.³

Despite these firm and continuing connections, the examination of longer-term historic interactions between Native Americans and the mining industry has largely evaded scholarly attention. Mining histories and Native American histories share considerable overlap concerning the discovery rush period (1849–1865), when the combined effects of violence, disease, and starvation decreased Native populations in some states by a precipitous 90%. After this, however, these literatures rarely meet. Mining histories discuss themes such as the growth of big business, the shift to low-grade ores, and the gradual mechanization of the industry. Native histories emphasize topics such as reservation life, the failure of government assimilation programs, and the rise of tribal sovereignty movements.⁴ Yet, the historic Indian allotment marker at Warm Spring serves as an important reminder that Timbisha Shoshone people never left their lands. The industrial landscape at Warm Spring also preserves complicated stories of land use, land conflicts, and cultural perseverance.

This article presents a detailed account of successive resource conflicts at Warm Spring, where disputes over water rights between a Timbisha Shoshone family and various miners began in the late 19th century and culminated in a court trial in the 1940s that set the General Mining Act and Dawes Act at cross purposes. The integrative reading of physical and documentary evidence identifies how the 1930s-era mining landscape at Warm Spring developed in relationship to Native claims as well as how miners used physical improvements to secure their long-term control of water. The inspection of the legal landscape through physical evidence, claim records, court documents, and interagency correspondence also reveals key ways that notable inequities in the mechanics of resource laws and Indian policies played out at the local level to the advantage of mining interests. Far from being a cut-and-dried case of land loss, however, the cultural landscape at Warm Spring belies simple categorizations of "Native American" and "mining" periods. Land use and land claiming by Timbisha Shoshone families and miners occurred concurrently; they were informed by each other's actions; and both activities left complex signatures in the land.

Changing Land Use at Warm Spring, 1870–1934

Contrary to popular perceptions of Death Valley as an uninhabitable and barren land, people have chosen to live in the valley for some 10,000 years. Because of the region's high aridity, however, population numbers were probably low for much of this time. When Euroamericans first ventured into Timbisha Shoshone lands in the mid-19th century, as many as 150 people resided in the valley and its immediate environs. In common with other Native American groups in the Great Basin, the Timbisha Shoshone tended to live in small, extended family groups, with families shifting residence seasonally as mesquite beans and pine nuts (the two primary dietary staples) became available. Visitors to the area frequently classified this seasonal movement as nomadic and inferred incorrectly that the Timbisha Shoshone held neither any concept of land ownership nor much attachment to the land.

Timbisha Shoshone people, who continue to reside in Death Valley, relate a very different account of resource use. While no formal system of private property existed, families moved within territories, and a family's use of particular areas was known and generally respected. These territories could cover large areas and sometimes overlapped but all included winter and summer locales. During the mid-19th century, three families are known to have occupied the southern portion of the Panamint Mountains bordering the west side of Death Valley (figure 2). George Hanson's family lived during the winter months at the mouth of Hall Canyon, located on the west side of the Panamint Range. His brother-in-law "Hungry Bill" summered 10 miles away in Johnson Canyon and wintered in Death Valley. Hungry Bill's brother, "Panamint Tom," lived with his family several miles farther south, residing in Warm Spring and Anvil canyons in the winter months and in Pleasant Canyon, on the west side of the Panamints, during the summer. All of these locations included residences near perennial, good-quality water sources, places that soon became of interest to incoming prospectors and land speculators.⁵

Figure 2. Death Valley region showing places mentioned in text. Map by author.

Mining began in the Panamints as early as the mid-19th century when prospectors passed through the valley en route to the central California gold fields. Prospectors identified promising gold outcrops near the upper reaches of Warm Spring Canyon in the 1860s. Following the discovery of rich silver deposits a decade later, miners rushed to Surprise Canyon (3 miles south of Hall Canyon). Miners rushed again to the Panamint Mountains in the early 1900s, by which time the mining industry was well established throughout the Death Valley region.

The advent of mineral prospecting in Death Valley marked a period of significant change in Timbisha Shoshone subsistence strategies. Miners depleted several foods of central importance to the Timbisha Shoshone, felling pinyon pine for timber, charcoal production, and supports in the mines, with pine and mesquite also cut for firewood. Cattle, horses, and burros reduced other crops and spread diseases to local game herds already threatened by intensified hunting. Miners frequently camped at water springs and, in some cases, actively sought to evict Timbisha Shoshone residents. The combination of these stresses rendered impossible a full reliance on long-held subsistence strategies. Timbisha Shoshone families increasingly supplemented traditional activities with opportunistic involvement in the monetary economy. Women made baskets for sale and found work as domestic servants and laundresses. Men worked variously as construction laborers, woodchoppers, herders, packers, and guides.⁶

Despite major changes in livelihood, the economic adjustments of Timbisha Shoshone families during the 19th and 20th centuries continued to reflect strong attachments to place. The local gathering of mesquite beans, pine nuts, and the occasional hunting of bighorn sheep all persisted, and these activities often took priority over wage work schedules. As early as the 1870s, many Timbisha Shoshone families had also established horticultural plots at water springs, using techniques borrowed both from Euroamericans and the Southern Paiute. This practice spread rapidly through the region, and winter camps commonly included a garden with corn, melons, beans, and squash plants as well as an orchard of grapevines, fig, peach, and other fruit trees. Some Timbisha Shoshone families also planted cash crops for sale to miners, such as alfalfa, barley, and wheat.⁷

Accounts of cultural adjustment typically end there, but historical records indicate that some individuals pursued legal title to their lands from an early date. In 1896, Panamint Tom filed water appropriation notices, a system developed by the California legislature for prioritizing water-use rights, to formally claim Warm Spring and several other water sources in his territory. Panamint Tom did not file notices each year in order to maintain this priority, as required, but the wording of these claims suggests either a general misunderstanding of the regulations or a reluctance to accept these rules wholeheartedly. One of Panamint Tom's filings declared bluntly, "I the undersigned have lived here 43 years and claim all of these springs now and others."⁸

Had Panamint Tom intended to stave off other interested parties, it proved to be only a temporary fix. Discoveries of copper deposits in the Black Mountains east of Death Valley in 1907 spurred a flurry of claims on nearby water sources. In December 1908, B. K. Brockington filed for 50 inches of water from Warm Spring in "Panamint Tom Cañon" for mining, milling, and domestic purposes, expressing his intent to pipe the water 15 miles across the floor of Death Valley. Within 10 months, two other claimants had filed on the spring, each for 100 inches and one adding a warning against trespass. One miner wrote to the U.S. Land Office on Panamint Tom's behalf, objecting that a white man was claiming Warm Spring "on the ground that the Indian has no right to locate or hold it." The superintendent of the Carson Indian School responded that Panamint Tom should file for a homestead. Some uncertainty arose because Panamint Tom's inquiries coincided with a homestead application by his brother, and administrators questioned whether Panamint Tom and Panamint Bill (Hungry Bill) were the same person.⁹ Although Panamint Tom's inquiries stagnated, the immediate crisis at Warm Spring blew over quickly. No pipeline across Death Valley ever materialized, and Brockington soon shifted his speculative endeavors farther north.

Panamint Tom's use of Warm Spring became infrequent after the first decade of the 20th century. By 1910, his son, Robert (Bob) Thompson, had picked up work in the region as a seasonal laborer. In addition to working with other Timbisha Shoshone as a ranch hand and construction worker, Thompson prospected with several miners in the area, staking a few claims for himself. In 1907, Thompson prospected with other rushers in the Black Mountains. Mining records also indicate that he later staked outcrops in Saline Valley and ranged even farther afield by prospecting in the eastern Sierras and western Nevada (see figure 3). Thompson conducted much of this activity during separate and relatively short time periods. The southern Panamints is the notable exception, for here Thompson filed claims nearly every decade. Like other Timbisha Shoshone who staked outcrops during this period, Thompson tended to prospect within his family territory.¹⁰

Figure 3. Robert Thompson's mining claims in and outside of Death Valley, 1900–1943, as recorded in mining records for Inyo County, California, and Nye and Esmeralda counties, Nevada (see n. 10). Map by author.

On one of these ventures, Thompson located a few outcrops in Warm Spring Canyon on behalf of Louise Grantham, a 25-year old Ohioan who had come to the desert to find out why a miner her father had grubstaked for years "produced nothing but cancelled checks." Although the exact relationship between Thompson and Grantham is indeterminate, claim records indicate that Thompson was one of several prospectors listed for the claims and suggest that it was a one-time arrangement. No further work occurred on these prospects, but Grantham stayed in the area and recruited the help of two close friends, Dorothy Ketchin and Frances Franklin. The group teamed up with Nina Bradley and Ernest Huhn, a seasoned miner whose efforts concentrated on four patented lode claims near the head of Warm Spring Canyon.¹¹ Beyond the promising gold value, the "Panamint Treasure" claims presented two significant advantages over other prospects in the region. The existence of a rough road through Warm Spring Canyon improved the volume of supplies deliverable to the claims. It also connected the mines to a reliable water source. Here, at the outflow of Warm Spring and under the shade provided by fig and peach trees, Grantham's company, Grantham and Associates, set up canvas tents to serve as a base camp.

Although Thompson probably had little other involvement with Grantham and Associates' activities in the area, he nevertheless remained mindful of their movements. In 1929, Thompson requested Grantham to pay him for the use of Warm Spring. Thompson had no document in hand to prove his ownership, but he knew of his father's earlier claim and had no doubt heard of the lands recently awarded to his uncles based on use rights. In 1927, the federal government awarded 160 acres in Johnson Canyon posthumously to Hungry Bill. A year later, George Hanson received a 560-acre rancheria that included his camp in Hall Canyon. Hanson also received $21 per month from a mining company that was piping water from a spring near Searles Lake, indicating that lease arrangements between miners and Timbisha Shoshone had precedent.¹²

Grantham and Associates entered into a five-year lease of Warm Spring in late 1929 for 10 dollars per month. Grantham, however, remained skeptical of the arrangement. Her subsequent investigation of land deeds found no claim in Thompson's name to Warm Spring nor any legal record that Native Americans had used the area. Grantham consequently defaulted on payments six months into the lease and demanded that Thompson produce papers indicating his rightful ownership to the land. It remains unknown whether Thompson himself ever searched claim records, even though he continued to request that Grantham pay up for her water use. After four years without success, Thompson visited the Walker River Indian Agency, 250 miles away in Schurz, Nevada, to apply for a land patent.¹³

The Expansion of the Mining Landscape

The uncertainty cast over Warm Spring's ownership did not hinder the pace of prospecting. Within the four-year period Thompson took to officially file for an allotment, Grantham's company turned the Panamint Treasure property into a working mine and formalized its claims to Warm Spring. Modifications began in 1932, when the company built a short aerial tramway to the Panamint Treasure claims and a diesel-powered milling facility close to their camp (see figure 4). The Gold Hill mill started up later that year, with the company trucking the ore 4 miles between the tramway's lower terminal and Warm Spring. Seen in terms of the intensifying dispute, these changes importantly demonstrated the monetary investment and intensive land use that courts favored. Thompson's longer connection with Warm Spring fared poorly by these economic criteria, his use being domestic, seasonal, and increasingly irregular. Although the legal implications of mining improvements probably were far from Grantham's mind at this early stage of this dispute, a closer inspection of milling and mining equipment enables insights into the tentative character of Grantham's operations and a basis for assessing statements later made in support of her gold mining endeavors at Warm Spring.

Figure 4. Gold Hill c. 1935, showing mill with canvas awning over the concentration tables, tents in the background. Note fig trees at photo center, with possible fruit trees behind the tents at left. The X marks a small cave, now collapsed, where Robert Thompson would shelter during heavy rainstorms. Stone walls evident around the camp may predate Louise Grantham's occupation, but all have been demolished by successive camp additions. Photograph by C. C. Smith (see n. 25).

Milling equipment was much in keeping with contemporary trends for small-scale gold mills (see figure 5). A jaw crusher and ball mill reduced ore received from the mine to sand-sized particles. A rake-type classifier, positioned after the ball mill, returned heavier particles for further crushing while allowing lighter sediments to continue into the recovery circuit. An amalgamation device (collecting gold by inducing the formation of a gold-mercury amalgam) and flotation unit may have been installed, but the mill recovered gold primarily through the gravity concentration method. Here, ore passed over three shaking tables, arranged in series. When in motion, gold and other heavy minerals caught against wooden slats affixed to the tabletop. The slats guided the sediments to fall off the short end of the table for bagging as concentrate. Lighter sediments flowed over the slats and off the long edge, becoming the feed for the next table, and so on, until they were ejected finally as tailings.

Figure 5. Plan view of the Gold Hill mill. Labels 1 through 8 replicate the direction of ore flow through the mill. Waste from the Plat-O Table flowed north through a launder (not illustrated) between the classifier and sand tables. The arrastra (9) was added in 1946 and may have processed mill tailings. Drawing adapted from 2001 HAER documentation by Cristy Fletcher, Johnny Yu, Arin Streeter, Nancy Hung, and Dana Lockett.

The construction of the mill likely set Grantham and Associates back several thousand dollars, but the company also instituted cost-cutting measures. Parsimony was expressed in mill design by the absence of walls and a covering roof. Discounted equipment likely brought further savings. The early age of patent dates embossed on one of the concentration tables, for example, suggests it was a second-hand piece. Irregular weld seams on the classifier and the absence of any company markings on the classifier and ball mill, whether as embossed lettering or as holes for nameplates, imply these two items were assembled either onsite or at a lesser known machine shop, possibly from scrap materials (see figure 6). Economizing measures extended to the mine workings as well, where miners employed a mine car fashioned from one-half of a steel drum welded on top of a support frame to convey ore along wooden tracks.¹⁴

Figure 6. The classifier (a) and ball mill (b) at the Gold Hill mill were possibly assembled onsite. The diagonal weld seam along the side of the classifier suggests the machine's assembly from scrap materials. Note also the irregular hole cut into the side of the device for introducing the ore slurry and the attachment of a chute to direct the slimes spilling over the lip. Braces on the ball mill include painted numbers, suggesting it may have come as a kitset. Photo by author.

Such money-saving solutions were prevalent among small-scale operators, although the arrangement of milling machinery also suggests some lack of expertise. In a newly built facility, a mill's physical layout typically approaches the schematic, linear order of the flow sheet, with the ore generally flowing in one direction. Ore going through the Gold Hill mill traveled a complete circle: east from the primary crusher to the secondary ore bin, north and west through finer crushing and classification, west and south through the recovery circuit, and ending with tailings moving northward through the center of the mill. The compact placement of machinery made this arrangement particularly problematic. A millwright could access each machine from the outside, but access within the circuit was restricted. This resulted in less-than-ideal conditions for machine repair and additions, not to mention creating awkward work spaces. Manual shoveling, for instance, was likely needed on occasion to move ore from beneath the jaw crusher onto the conveyor. The limited available space meant that a worker had to accomplish this task hunched over and with little freedom of movement. The compact layout also forced some compromises to structural integrity. One of the conveyor support posts shows scalloping to accommodate the jaw crusher's drive wheel (see figure 7). Other operative problems, such as uneven wear on belts or occasional belt slippage, may have resulted from differences in the alignments of equipment. These complexities were avoidable, and their presence implies that a professional millwright did not supervise the mill's construction. Grantham's diary seems to confirm this, noting initial problems in starting the mill from using the wrong fuel.¹⁵

Figure 7. The compact arrangement of the Gold Hill mill left little room for workers and compromised structural integrity. This timber support for the ore conveyor was modified to accommodate the jaw crusher's drive wheel. Photo by author.

The jerrybuilt improvements to gold mining operations nevertheless provided Grantham and Associates with a means to raise capital for development work. The company made its use of the area official on 5 February 1933, when Ketchin and Bradley claimed a 5-acre mill site near the spring. The mill claim spanned the floor of the canyon, with the southern portion of the claim incorporating the base camp at the outflow of the spring, the short watercourse of the spring, and some of the fruit trees.

Although the staking of the mill site after the construction of a mill was not a recommended practice, it proved to be excellent timing. The formation of the Death Valley National Monument six days later entailed land acquisition at a much larger scale. At its creation, the monument carved out 1.6 million acres of the Timbisha Shoshone homeland to preserve the area's "unusual features of scenic, scientific, and educational interest."¹⁶ Grantham's claims held legal precedence as long as they remained in use, but legislators also quickly diffused any tension that the monument's formation threatened to create with the mining industry. The Department of the Interior extended mining laws to the monument in June of that year. In addition to the right to prospect, locate, and patent claims, mining interests in the valley benefited from infrastructure developments necessary to open the area to tourism. These developments included the purchase of a private road situated on the floor of Death Valley and improvements to roads and water sources by the Civilian Conservation Corps.¹⁷

In contrast to the favorable attitude toward mining, neither the monument's founding proclamation nor its addendum recognized the ancestral and contemporary use of the valley by Native American groups. The Timbisha Shoshone tribe was visible enough, however, for monument officials to discuss the "Indian problem" regularly. Native use of the Death Valley area for grazing domestic animals, for instance, conflicted with the monument's edict to preserve and exhibit a natural environment. Although the National Park Service (NPS) did not restrict the seasonal collection of pine nuts and mesquite beans at this time, officials viewed other Timbisha Shoshone practices like duck and sheep hunting as "taking toll of the sparse wild life of the desert region" and barred these through the application of game laws. Evidence of hardships also abounded in the 1930s, enough to spur food-relief efforts by NPS and the Carson Indian Agency to assist the Timbisha Shoshone. Contemporary conditions, however, seem only to have partly informed the superintendent's contention that wage labor at Furnace Creek provided the Timbisha Shoshone with "an opportunity to work and live under better conditions than they could have ever experienced under their own system of life."¹⁸

Agency attitudes toward the Timbisha Shoshone impeded the progress of Thompson's application for a patent to Warm Spring. NPS officials met news of Thompson's inquiries with trepidation, in no small part because other Timbisha Shoshone had also inquired recently into their water rights. The superintendent expressed no doubt "that every water hole in Death Valley has at sometime been used by the Shoshone and other Indians" but stressed in communications to the NPS director that the monument's development hinged on securing public access to water sources.¹⁹ Correspondence between the monument superintendent and the Carson Indian Agency additionally reveals specific concerns about Thompson's economic motives. Thompson had apparently not camped at the springs for several years, nor had he expressed any intention to do so in the future. Instead, Thompson had been candid about the financial benefits of claiming the springs, remarking when asked why he pursued their ownership, "What the hell you think? I want money. I sell him!" As with Grantham's earlier inquiries, an investigation of land deed records by monument officials found no official record in support of Thompson's legal claim, and the NPS director ultimately referred the matter to the service's director of investigations.²⁰

Although the question over Warm Spring's ownership showed signs of becoming protracted, none of the agencies involved requested that Grantham and Associates suspend work until the matter was resolved. This was especially fortuitous for Grantham's company, since the economic climate for gold mining was undergoing rapid, favorable shifts. In April 1933, the U.S. Congress abandoned the gold standard in an effort to revive the national economy. The value of gold rose steadily over the next few months from the moderated selling price of $26 per fine ounce. Gold mining incentives improved further with the passage of the Gold Reserve Act in November 1934, which fixed gold prices at a high of $35 per fine ounce and guaranteed the purchase of all gold by the U.S. Treasury. These changes permitted higher profits at working mines and greatly improved the feasibility of gold mining for small-scale operators throughout the 1930s.²¹

In May 1934, amid these favorable conditions, Grantham and Associates staked the Old Mill Stream Quartz mining claim following the discovery of two mineral outcrops just south of the mill site: a vein of lead and silver "not far west of the spring" and a quartz outcrop carrying "rather good gold values" on the hillside east of the spring.²² The physical positioning of the mining claim suggests that Grantham and Associates knew of Thompson's continuing inquiries into ownership and had sought countermeasures. According to Grantham, the quartz outcrop trended westward, directly beneath the spring. The claim abutted the southern edge of the mill site, placing the mineral outcroppings at the extreme ends of the mining claim and Warm Spring near the claim's dead center. The location notice also claimed "all water and timber and any other rights appurtenant, allowed by the law of this State or of the United States," a rote yet more explicit statement than used for the mill site notice posted the previous year.²³ The company likely knew by this time that its best prospects lay in the working of talc rather than gold deposits. Between 1931 and 1935, Grantham and Huhn staked more than 10 claims on talc exposures proximal to the camp on the south side of the canyon and extending east of the spring for 2 miles in length. Huhn also ventured beyond Warm Spring to stake talc outcroppings in the southern reaches of Death Valley.²⁴

Counter Claims and Litigation, 1943—1942

Thompson filed for a fee patent to 40 acres at Warm Spring in November 1934. Although the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act earlier that year had technically ended the government's allotment policy, Thompson's application under the Dawes Act remained valid because this moratorium applied only to reservation lands. In June 1935, the General Land Office (GLO) sent Special Agent Cassius Smith to Death Valley to investigate the validity of Thompson's claim. After interviewing Thompson and others, Smith concluded that Thompson and his ancestors had a long history of occupation at the spring that spanned more than 75 years. Smith noted various developments at the spring, snapping a picture of Thompson standing in front of his shanty, which miners had since taken over (see figure 8). Intriguingly, Smith was also "unable to find anything showing of mineral within the boundaries of the [Grantham] claims that would justify the expenditure of time and money in the hope of developing a paying mine."²⁵ Although unstated at the time, these observations were an early indication that the gold mining claims staked at Warm Spring were not all that they seemed.

Figure 8. Robert Thompson in front of his residence at Warm Spring in 1935. The bedding visible inside the tent frame belonged to miners. Photograph by C. C. Smith (see n. 25).

The Department of the Interior approved Thompson's application in August 1935, authorizing the GLO to award a trust patent that would give Thompson fee title after 25 years. Officials of the Carson Indian Agency and Death Valley National Monument concurred with the Interior Department's decision, in no small part because a patent of this type prevented Thompson from realizing the quick sale he desired.²⁶ Government surveyors arrived at Warm Spring early the following year to record Indian allotment 330. The surveyors marked out a 40-acre parcel spanning both sides of the canyon, with Warm Spring 200 feet inside its southern border. As such, the Indian allotment overlaid Grantham and Associates' 5-acre mill claim entirely and approximately three-quarters of the 20-acre mining claim, just missing the discovery site on the hillside east of the spring (see figure 9).²⁷

Figure 9. Competing claim boundaries at Warm Spring. Property boundaries are identifiable partly by the construction styles of cairns, although claim notices also survive in a few cases. Notices for the Old Mill Stream claim indicate a significant discrepancy between the claim's actual and projected boundaries in mine maps—a difference likely attributable to the steep terrain. Recording by Paul White and Thomas Urban, 2005.

In a written complaint to the Office of Indian Affairs sent shortly after the GLO survey, Grantham pointed out that her company had spent "many thousands of dollars," built "the only road of fourteen miles in the Warm Spring Canyon," and installed "a complete fifty ton mill and recovery plant which we are operating in conjunction with our mines."²⁸ In the absence of further qualifiers, both of these latter claims exaggerated the sense of permanence and scale. A road through Warm Spring Canyon existed around the turn of the century, and the route was listed as a county road until the formation of the Death Valley National Monument. A present-day assessment of milling equipment capacity at the Gold Hill mill verifies Grantham's assertion that the facility was capable of processing 50 tons per day (see table 1), but other physical evidence indicates that the milling system was unlikely to have run at even half this rate. The primary ore bin held only five tons—a volume that would have cleared within two to two and one-half hours of the mill running—and the secondary ore bin fared little better at seven tons capacity.²⁹ To run the mill at close to its actual capacity would have necessitated either the continuous relay of ore between the mine and the mill or a major reconfiguration of the circuit, on account of the difficulty at which a larger bin could be added to the mill's overly compact design.

Table 1. Dimensions and Estimated Daily Tonnage of Milling Equipment at Gold Hill

Machine

Diagnostic characteristics

Tonnage¹

Jaw crusher	7 × 10 in. opening, 1 in. gap	60
Ball mill	3 ft. diameter × 4 ft. length	70–100
Classifier	Rake-type, single trough	400
Deister sand table	(none ascertainable)	10–200
Deister Plat-O slime table	Riffles run length of table	10–200

¹Estimates compiled from Arthur Taggart's Handbook of Ore Dressing (n. 15); tonnage calculated at tons per 24 hours.

It is also significant that Grantham's letter juxtaposed her company's developments at Warm Spring with the lack of an Indian presence in the region. Grantham asserted that the land around Warm Spring was not agricultural, that no Native Americans had made their home at the spring for at least 50 years, and that the only Indians present in the area were those "working in the district for us [Grantham and Associates] or other white mine operators, but for this purpose only." She attributed the fig and peach trees around the spring to the work of "an Englishman [who] came to Death Valley for his health." Grantham went so far as to argue that neither Thompson nor his father had ever lived at Warm Spring. Panamint Tom, she contested, had lived in the next canyon south, while Thompson lived in Cottonwood Canyon, some 40 miles to the north.³⁰

The public attention generated by the escalation of the company's protests convinced government officials that the Warm Spring dispute was "being used only for promotion purposes," including the monument superintendent who had originally sided with Grantham's cause.³¹ Thompson received the trust patent in December 1936, and the Carson Indian Agency subsequently requested Grantham and Associates pay for current water usage and back rent or leave the property. Grantham chose instead to contest the validity of the allotment on the grounds that Thompson's official filing postdated her mining claims. The company soon filed appeals to the GLO and Department of the Interior. Undeterred by these actions, the Indian agency advertised Thompson's allotment for five-year lease, awarding the lease in December 1937 to two well-known area prospectors. Grantham retaliated by serving the lessees a trespass notice upon their arrival at the spring.³²

Outside of the growing flurry of protests and threatened actions, little is known of Grantham's activities at Warm Spring, except that her company was not idle. Each year Grantham filed proof of labor forms for several claims in the canyon. By these records, filings on a given talc claim occasionally skipped a year, but no such discontinuity happened with either the Old Mill Stream Quartz or Panamint Treasure claims.³³ Physical evidence infers this behavior reflected more upon the importance of maintaining title in the face of a growing legal dispute than upon work actually performed. A present-day reconnaissance of the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim finds three adits driven on a thin quartz vein, oriented east-west, and located 100 feet north of the discovery point—the total extent of underground workings not exceeding 60 feet (see figure 10). The Panamint Treasure Mine fares better, with development work consisting of a shaft, two pits, and five adits, two of which were lived in and a third used for storage. Here, the total work approaches 500 linear feet, an excavation three workers could have accomplished within two years. Corroborating these findings, the state mineralogist reported only 22 tons of gold milled from the Panamint Treasure Mine between 1939 and 1940 and listed the mine's production between 1931 and 1941 (in all likelihood the mine's total output) at 300 tons milled and 150 tons shipped.³⁴ From an economic standpoint, the extent of underground work at both mine locations does not explain why the filing of proof of labor forms continued unbroken through the 1950s.

Figure 10. Mining developments on the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim did not make it past a few, short exploratory adits, this one being the longest at 30 feet. Note the narrow quartz vein running diagonally from upper center of the photo to the bottom of the scale bar. Scale divisions at 10 cm. Photo by author.

The Secretary of the Interior rejected the company's appeals in August 1939, basing this decision on the facts gathered by the special agent in 1935 and that the original lease agreement recognized Thompson's prior occupancy by default. Thereafter, Grantham did not obstruct other miners from using the spring, but neither did she express any intention of leaving. The Carson Indian Agency served eviction notices in late 1939 and, after the 30-day grace period expired without any response, the Indian agency initiated court proceedings against the company. In the months leading up to the trial, held in the Northern Division of the Southern California District Court in April 1941, attorneys took upwards of 30 depositions from local residents, including George Hanson, Senator Charles Brown, and several long-time area prospectors. Twelve witnesses were also scheduled to appear in court.³⁵

Given that the nonjury trial began as a case to evict Grantham, it is surprising that the judgment passed a year later ordered that Thompson be "forever restrained, enjoined and debarred from asserting any claim or claims whatsoever" over the Old Mill Stream Quartz and Gold Hill mill site claims. Armed with the decisions of the Secretary of the Interior and GLO, the federal government's case against Grantham had certainly appeared robust. In a pretrial conference, the court held that the Secretary of the Interior and GLO had no statutory authority to adjudicate contests over Indian allotments. Consequently, prior findings of fact that had rejected Bradley's appeals were held not binding on the court.³⁶ Although Thompson now owned a patent to Warm Spring—next to executive enactment, the highest form of legal title—the prior filing of mining claims established legitimate grounds for protest. The court required that the U.S. Government (plaintiff) and Grantham and Associates (defendant) provide evidence to establish their respective claims' priority in time and priority in right.

Witness testimony in favor of the plaintiff confirmed that the Timbisha Shoshone had long used Warm Spring for a seasonal camp and that Panamint Tom had planted the fruit trees there sometime before the turn of the century. George Hanson's deposition disclosed the spring's Shoshone name, and he and a number of other witnesses recalled seeing Panamint Tom, Robert Thompson, and their wives camped at the spring on occasion, including as late as the 1920s. Senator Brown recollected one of the wickiups being a "kind of a rock wall affair," of which there was still apparently an indication of its location. Witnesses saw Thompson regularly throughout the area, the senator recalling that Thompson used to visit his (Brown's) father-in-law at Greenwater, that Thompson often came to the town of Shoshone to buy supplies, and that he had met Thompson occasionally near Furnace Creek. Other witnesses remembered Thompson living in the towns of Ballarat and Beatty and as far away as Big Pine in Owens Valley (some 200 miles from Warm Spring), moves no doubt facilitated by Thompson owning an automobile. Despite traveling widely, Death Valley apparently remained a central place. When asked how long Thompson had resided at Furnace Creek, Adolf Neveras, a prospector and farmer who owned lands near there, replied, "Well just like Indians do; they live here a while and they move on to the next town and they live there a while and they come back. ... I don't know where [Thompson] is, but he lands here. He comes back here."³⁷

The plaintiff could not establish, however, that Thompson resided at Warm Spring at the time of Grantham's arrival, and this provided an important inroad for the defense, given that court rulings tended to support Indian land rights only through evidence of continued occupancy at a specific location. The defense attorney cast doubt upon Thompson's historic place of residence, given that several witnesses only heard of, rather than saw, Thompson living at Warm Spring, and a few witnesses evidently confused the orchard at Warm Spring with one in Johnson Canyon. The defense attorney's focus on Thompson's various places of residence also fueled an argument for itinerancy, in which Thompson's attachment to Warm Spring was doubtful, and his interest in leasing or selling the property blatantly opportunistic.

In favor of Grantham, both the mine and the mill site were located as required by the law, and the company used the mill site for milling purposes. Even if Indian allotment 330 supposedly held superior title, both the mine and mill claims preceded the date of Thompson's official application for an allotment, and they preceded the official survey of the area. Grantham and Associates benefited also from the lenient definition of a valid mineral location. The General Mining Act, in fact, offered no criterion, but by the early 1900s, court rulings favored the definition of a valuable mineral deposit as one that "would justify a man of ordinary prudence, not necessarily a skilled miner, in the expenditure of his time and money in the development of the property."³⁸ Mining law stipulated the necessity of completing $100 annual assessment work to keep ownership over an unpatented claim, yet the federal government had suspended this requirement each year from 1932 to help revitalize the national economy (a practice that continued until after World War II). Consequently, Grantham's title to the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim remained legitimate, despite development work consisting only of a couple of prospect holes and contrary to a court-ordered ore specimen found to carry a meager 0.065 ounces of gold and 0.90 ounces of silver per ton, some five times poorer than the quality needed to justify extraction at such a remote location.³⁹

The judge ruled that Grantham and Associates had provided a preponderance of evidence, sufficient to "counterbalance" Thompson's patent. After the verdict, murmurs of filing an appeal circulated within the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. By mid-1942, however, the commissioner had rejected the idea, citing the poor chances of reversing the court decision and asserting, counter to known tendencies of bureaucracy, that "the value of the land involved did not warrant the cost of printing the voluminous record in the case."⁴⁰ As such, the ruling of the District Court ended the 12-year-long dispute over Warm Spring. Although Thompson still kept possession of the Indian allotment, the 20 acres of land existing outside of the mining claims comprised "nothing but a sand and rock area," of little merit for seasonal use and essentially valueless for leasing to other miners. Grantham and Associates had by this time torn down Thompson's tent house and a wooden fence built around a garden plot, reusing these materials for firewood. The court decision importantly recognized the existence of an Indian land base within a U.S. National Monument, but it did little to ensure its vitality.⁴¹

Aftermath

Thompson did not live long enough past the court trial to receive any financial remuneration from his property. Upon his death sometime in the 1940s, ownership of the allotment transferred to his wife and children. Within a decade of the trial's conclusion, Indian allotment 330 had been conveyed out of the family's ownership. Beginning in the postwar era, the Office of Indian Affairs, now termed the Bureau of Indian Affairs, overturned the principles of cultural pluralism that had underscored the Indian Reorganization Act and endorsed a policy of termination. With many parallels to earlier allotment policies, termination endeavored to end the federal government's trust responsibility over Indian tribes by expediting the sale of Indian lands. In 1951, the Bureau of Indian Affairs slated Thompson's allotment for auction along with more than 200 other Indian land holdings in the region. Grantham offered $835 for the property, but the NPS trumped her bid. The lands encompassed by Indian allotment 330, exclusive of the mining claims, returned to federal ownership in 1954.⁴²

For Grantham, the fortunes of her company improved markedly after the trial. Wartime conditions had forced gold operations nationally to close until 1945, but the demand for talc soared because of its uses as a ceramic insulator for radio, radar, and other communications instruments. With talc prices in California soon fetching from $17 to $40 per ton, Grantham's long-term interest in the area's talc deposits paid off immensely. The sizable deposits at Warm Spring proved too high in carbonates for use in military applications, but the talc remained suitable for a variety of domestic industries, including insecticides, paint, paper, and rubber manufacture. Beginning production in the early 1940s, Grantham and Associates weathered the $70,000 ostensibly spent on the court trial and systematically secured ownership over all the talc claims in the canyon. From 1960, the Warm Spring mine became California's largest talc operation, producing around 60,000 tons annually and accounting for one-seventh of the nation's talc production.⁴³ The company employed consistently less than one dozen workers, and former miners recall Grantham as a generous and fair boss—her camp held a reputation as the best in the area. Grantham financed several camp improvements in tandem with the mine's increasing profitability, including a few one-story cinder block buildings fitted with showers and flush toilets and a swimming pool in front of the miners' dormitory (see figure 11). The company at some point installed a fitting security measure, a barbed wire fence around part of the mill site claim, with drill steels serving as fence posts.

Figure 11. Plan view of Warm Spring camp today, showing buildings and amenities erected after the trial, as well as exotic vegetation planted to beautify the camp and provide additional shade. Note the older fig orchard and grapevine thicket located behind the buildings and the occasional mesquite. In addition to the fencing evident around Grantham's residence, a barbed wire and drill steel fence runs along the northern edge of the mill site claim. Recording by Paul White and Thomas Urban, 2005.

Grantham and Associates maintained a nominal interest in working the gold claims during the postwar era. In 1946, the company supplemented the Gold Hill mill circuit with a mechanical arrastra—a rudimentary device that crushed ore by dragging boulders around a circular rock-lined pit (figure 5). The physical inspection of this device, however, reveals few wear marks, implying it either saw minimal use or perhaps that it found use only for tailings reprocessing, in which the feed was already well ground to sand- and silt-sized particles.

Curiously, National Monument records indicate that Grantham and Associates entertained the possibility of constructing another gold mill on the property during the 1950s, one large enough to "probably require the use of all of the water available [at the spring]." Other correspondence infers that this proposal was actually a thinly veiled threat responding to increased NPS interest in the area. Shortly after the government's acquisition of Thompson's allotment, NPS sought to establish a "splendid camp and picnic site" for tourists one-quarter mile from Warm Spring. Pending Grantham and Associates' permission, NPS planned to pump surplus water to the campsite, for an assessment of flow rates indicated that nearly three-quarters of Warm Spring's discharge went unused. Monument staff apparently took the company's mill proposal at face value and duly shelved plans for a campsite.⁴⁴ From the mid-1950s, if not before, Grantham and Associates abandoned efforts to work the gold claims and left the Gold Hill mill to deteriorate on its own accord. The second mill was never built.

The Thompson-Grantham dispute has resonances in events occurring well after the trial and after mining operations ceased in the 1970s. Thompson's allotment later assisted the Timbisha Shoshone in gaining federal recognition as an Indian tribe, in part because the act of documenting his long-term association with Warm Spring also helped document an ancestral and contemporary Timbisha Shoshone presence in Death Valley. The Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act (2000) awarded the tribe a land base within and around Death Valley National Park (upgraded from National Monument status in 1994). Warm Spring today has returned to some semblance of tribal oversight, falling within a large portion of the park now slated for co-management between the Timbisha Shoshone and NPS. These recent developments highlight that processes of legal possession and dispossession have cycled at Warm Spring, but they also underscore that histories of coexistence, adjustment, and perseverance have long shaped Death Valley's cultural landscapes.

Untangling the Legal Landscape

The growth and expansion of North American mining districts during the mid-19th century is well known to have spurred a period of incredible violence and physical dislocation for many Native American groups, yet the effects were neither evenly distributed nor limited to one-time events. The property records, court documents, cairns, and fences that collectively comprise Warm Spring's legal landscape highlight what should be a banal fact: historic mining activities and historic Timbisha Shoshone lives occupied neither discrete spaces nor successive time periods, nor entirely separate worlds.

By the mid-20th century, the Timbisha Shoshone were certainly familiar with the hurried pace at which most prospectors ventured into Shoshone lands, staked mineral claims, excavated outcrops, and left, disenchanted. Irrespective of whether mining companies left or stayed, few industrial entrepreneurs showed concern for shared resource use. Such attitudes had significant long-term consequences, not just for the ownership of mineral resources but also for access to water springs, so essential for mining and nonmining interests alike. Despite prevailing conceptions of Death Valley as a barren land, the desire to control water rights brought miners head to head with Timbisha Shoshone families who had long used water springs as sites of settlement. That several Timbisha Shoshone pursued legal title to water springs in the 19th and 20th centuries indicates that Timbisha Shoshone people actively sought ways to both prevent unwanted encroachment and ensure a role in negotiating resource use. Such strategies also guaranteed that miners could not long ignore these claims.

The recurrence of ownership disputes at Warm Spring over a 40-year period highlights both the tenacity of one Timbisha Shoshone family in seeking legal recognition to its lands and the difficulties the family faced in perfecting title. Although Panamint Tom failed to maintain his appropriation to Warm Spring, he arguably faced a greater problem with how his claim was filed in county records. Rival claimants made no mention of this appropriation, despite the relatively simple investigative procedure involved and despite Thompson's insistence in later years that such a claim existed. In defending his rights to Warm Spring, Thompson confronted difficulties of an altogether different kind. During the trial, Thompson faced prejudices that defined "Indian-ness" according to livelihoods rendered unfeasible by events of the previous decades. Courts tended to support Native American rights through evidence of continuing occupancy, narrowly defined. Although Thompson still made return visits to his family territory during the 1930s, and even prospected there, attorneys used evidence of Thompson's wider travels against him. Thompson's financial interest in Warm Spring may also have hindered his efforts. Contrary to the goals of government policies to incorporate Native Americans into the "American body," local officials expressed discomfort with the idea of Thompson as a capitalist.⁴⁵

A closer analysis of the Thompson-Grantham dispute reveals several inequalities in the mechanics of land- claiming procedures. For example, the court's decision to privilege time of first filing on unsurveyed land (to Grantham's advantage) importantly did not address whether claimants had equal knowledge about applicable laws—a key consideration for nonreservation Indians to whom the federal government extended sporadic recognition and assistance. Tellingly, notable differences exist in how Panamint Tom, his brother, brother-in-law, and son pursued title to similar lands. Whereas Panamint Tom submitted a water appropriation in 1896, Hungry Bill applied for lands 11 years later under the Homestead Act (ultimately awarded as an Indian allotment). George Hanson's inquiries, occurring later, eventuated in a specific congressional enactment. Robert Thompson's filing for an Indian allotment under the Dawes Act occurred after his visit to the Walker River Indian Agency, some four years into his dispute with Grantham. That each of these land applications involved multiple agencies also reflects deeper-seated problems. The jurisdictions of Indian Agency offices changed, and officials in and outside the Indian service were often uncertain of appropriate claiming procedures for non-ward Indians and where to direct such inquiries.

Grantham's actions, by contrast, show a remarkable prescience of knowing when to file as well as a savvy use of claiming stipulations. The staking of the mill site a few days before the establishment of Death Valley National Monument ensured her claim had a superiority of title. An earlier staking date could have been fabricated, given that Grantham filed the mill site claim in the courthouse two weeks after the monument's founding. The staking of the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim in May 1934 preceded Thompson's official inquiries into land title by only two months and may have responded to a letter that Thompson sent to Grantham a month earlier.⁴⁶

Stark differences occur also in the relative speed of the claiming process. Grantham staked and registered her claims quickly under mining law, filing the Gold Hill mill site within 19 days and the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim within 7. Thompson's application under the Dawes Act took two years. Grantham's competing claim to Warm Spring necessitated additional checks on Thompson's application, including the visit of the special agent, but the Dawes Act created additional delays because Indian allotments could only be awarded on surveyed land. Significantly, at no point during the allotment application did any government agency insist that Grantham and Associates suspend activities until matters were resolved. Grantham's steadfast refusal to accept the superiority of Thompson's allotment was rewarded by the Indian Agency's failure to effect an eviction. Had the court decision actually upheld Thompson's rights to Warm Spring, Grantham and Associates had worked the area for 12 years—a period exceeding the working life of most mining enterprises.

These disparities impacted the expression of dispossession on the ground. During the course of the dispute, Grantham and Associates transformed Warm Spring from the site of a tent camp into a staging area for a wide range of operations. A gold mill, claim monuments, and a few mine prospects modified the immediate vicinity around the spring. Just as the growth of the mining infrastructure reflected miners' increasing confidence in the area's mineral deposits, these improvements were also intimately connected with the ongoing dispute. In order for Grantham to support her case, claim boundaries had to be clearly marked, the mining claim needed to show evidence of investment, and the mill site needed a mill. There is little doubt that Grantham used these property improvements to bolster the legitimacy and superiority of her mining interests, as was indeed within her rights. Yet, material evidence, like documents, was not incorruptible. The location of Warm Spring at the center of Grantham's lode claim strongly suggests the presence of an ulterior motive, as does the later destruction of Thompson's shanty and garden fence. While the gold mill was certainly functional, its physical capability and jerrybuilt construction, together with the state of development on the gold mining claims, impart very different impressions from those inferred by Grantham's statements. They also stand in stark contrast to the development work on the neighboring talc claims occurring contemporaneously with and subsequent to the court trial. In the final analysis, both the Gold Hill mill site and the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim served double lives, and they arguably found greatest service in legitimating and safeguarding Grantham's control of water.

Although resource litigation is well recognized as being rife in mining districts, the Warm Spring dispute is a sobering case of the ease at which laws concerning mineral resources could slide to the control of nonmineral resources. The long history of contested ownership to the spring is an important reminder that mining sites were also places where different value systems became superimposed and contested and that such entanglements, in turn, could influence miners' actions. At Warm Spring, this legacy of complex interaction is perhaps no better realized than in the physical landscape, where monuments still mark competing claims and where the spring's short watercourse passes through a dense patch of grapevines and an old fig grove before meandering through the center of a mining camp. Here, outside the miners' dorm, a mature stand of trees shades the company swimming pool from the afternoon sun, and the view from the diving board directs one's attention to the Gold Hill mill.

Acknowledgements

The National Park Service funded initial historical research as part of HAER documentation in the summers of 2000 and 2001. Brown University and the Canon Science Scholars Program for the Americas funded additional field investigations in 2005–06. I am grateful to Patrick Martin and Richard O'Connor for providing the initial impetus behind this project and to Patricia Rubertone and Patrick Malone who assisted in turning this project into a broader research endeavor. Special thanks to Gianfranco Archimede and Thomas Urban for field assistance in 2000 and 2005, respectively. Numerous aspects of this study would have been impossible if not for the assistance and support of Barbara Durham, Pauline Esteves, and Madeline Esteves of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe and Linda Greene, Kelly Turner, Blair Davenport, and Tim Croissant at Death Valley National Park. I am likewise indebted to Judy Palmer, Lynn Johnson, and Steve Crum who generously shared their knowledge of the valley and its historic occupants. Thanks also to Susan Martin for her astute suggestions on shaping the manuscript and to the anonymous reviewers. Lastly, special thanks to Leah Rosenmeier, whose insights into federal Indian policies some years back took me down a very different path.

Notes

^1.� For overviews of resource law in the West, see Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987); Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

^2.� U.S. Statutes indicate such actions occurred at small and large scales. Two examples of sizable land loss include the opening of the northern half of the Colville Reservation, Washington, to mineral entry in 1896 and reductions to the Moapa Reservation, Nevada, in 1875, each involving more than one million acres. Legislators often justified these measures under assumptions that mineral resources should be developed when found and that Indians were to become farmers, not miners. For an exemplary example, refer to debates concerning the opening of Indian reservations to metal mining, eventually passed in 1919 as a rider to the annual appropriations to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Congressional Record, 65th Cong., 2d sess., 1918, 56: 7893–5, 7932–44, and 65th Cong., 3d sess., 1919, 57: 2633–7.

^3.� Janet McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887–1934 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1991).

^4.� Native population loss occurred most dramatically in California. See Albert L. Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1988). The separation in literatures is not without some crossovers. For two outstanding studies that reveal the continuing complexities between Native lands and industry, see Melissa L. Meyer, The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1994) and H. Craig Miner, The Corporation and the Indian: Tribal Sovereignty and Industrial Civilization in Indian Territory, 1865–1907 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1976). For a detailed case study of the nonreservation experience, see Martha C. Knack, Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 1775–1995 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001).

^5.� Julian Steward, "Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups," Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 120 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1938), 72–4, 84–93; Catherine S. Fowler, Molly Dufort, Mary Rusco, and the Historic Preservation Committee, Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, "Residence without Reservation: Ethnographic Overview and Traditional Land Use Study, Timbisha Shoshone, Death Valley National Monument, California" (1994), manuscript on file at Death Valley National Park and Timbisha Shoshone Tribal Office, Death Valley, Calif.

^6.� Beth Sennett, "Wage Labor: Survival for the Death Valley Timbisha" in Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives, ed. Alice Littlefield and Martha Knack (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 218–44.

^7.� Ibid. Fowler et al., "Residence without Reservation," (see n. 5); William Wallace, "Death Valley Indian Farming," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 2 (1980): 269–72; Frederick V. Coville, "The Panamint Indians of California," American Anthropologist 5 (1892): 351–61; B. H. Dutcher, "Piñon Gathering among the Panamint Indians," American Anthropologist 6 (1893): 377–80; E. W. Nelson, "The Panamint and Saline Valley (Col.) [sic] Indians," American Anthropologist 4 (1891): 371–72.

^8.� The quote derives from the notice Panamint Tom claimed with "Indian Harry" for Anvil Spring, one of three water appropriations that he filed that year. Panamint Tom did file specifically upon Warm Spring, albeit place names were not fixed during this period. I interpret Panamint Tom's mention of living "here" as referring less to a specific place and more to the collective area. Indeed, contemporary mining notices refer to Pleasant Canyon and Warm Spring Canyon both as "Panamint Tom's Cañon," or "Panamint Tom's place," indicating a recognition of Panamint Tom's wider territory. Depositions during the later court trial specify that Panamint Tom planted fruit trees at Warm Spring. An 1897 newspaper article also reports a flashflood causing severe damages to Tom's orchard. See Inyo County Land, Water, and Mining Claims, Book I: 410, 413, Inyo County Courthouse, Independence, Calif.; "Cloudbursts on a Ranch," San Francisco Call (1 August 1897); deposition of Panamint George [George Hanson], 15 March 1941, U.S. v. Grantham et al., Timbisha Genealogy Papers, 1933–38, Catalog Number (D) 28138, Death Valley National Park Archives, Death Valley, Calif. (hereafter DEVA).

^9.� Inyo County Water Appropriation Notices, Book B2: 236, 250, 310, Inyo County Courthouse, Independence, Calif. J. E. Busch to U.S. Land Office, 7 February 1910, Galen Dixon to C. H. Asbury, 11 February 1910, C. H. Asbury to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 14 February 1910, C. H. Asbury to J. E. Busch 14 February 1910, and John Francis to C. H. Asbury, 4 March 1910, Central Classified Files (CCF), 14124–10 Carson 313, Record Group (RG) 75, National Archives (NA), Washington, DC.

^10.� Information on Robert Thompson's mining endeavors derives principally from claim records held at the Inyo County Courthouse (Independence, Calif.), Esmeralda County Courthouse (Goldfield, Nev.), and Nye County Courthouse (Tonopah, Nev.). To limit errors in identification, Thompson's name was crosschecked with census records, pay stubs, diary entries, court testimony, and the names of other claimants. Supporting information came especially from the depositions of Johnny Mills and Johnny Boland, 15 March 1941, the deposition of Charles Brown, 7 March 1941, in U.S. v. Grantham et al., and Louise Grantham to Roy Nash, 20 April 1936, L30 Land Use Indian Village 1930–1939, D28140 a-d, DEVA (see n. 8).

^11.� Quote from Norris Leap, "Woman Mine Boss Triumphs in 25-Year War with Desert," Los Angeles Times (4 March 1951); Judy Palmer, "She Mines Talc in Death Valley" (2005, draft manuscript in author's possession) [Grantham's life is the subject of a biography (in process) by Judy Palmer]; Sally Zanjani, A Mine of Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850–1950 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997), 210–15. R. J. Sampson, "Mineral Resources of a Part of the Panamint Range," State Mineralogist 28, no. 3, 4 (Sacramento: Calif. State Printing Office, 1933), 369.

^12.� H. P. Knight to Don Foster, 20 March 1940, Sacramento Area Office, Land Transaction Case Files, Joe Peterson Allotment (IA 121), RG 75, National Archives Pacific Region, San Bruno, Calif.

^13.� Ray Parrett to Col. John White, 1 July 1934, and Parrett to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 13 July 1934, L-30 Landuse, Indian Village 1930–1939, D28140 a-d, DEVA (n. 8); Grantham to Nash (see n. 10); Alida Bowler to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 23 January 1939, L1425 Private Holdings—Warm Springs, D44409, DEVA (n. 8).

^14.� The cover plate for the Plat-O-Table's eccentric mechanism is embossed with patents for 1908, 1914, and 1922, and "Other Pats Pending." Mine car described in Linda Greene, Historic Resource Study: A History of Mining in Death Valley National Monument, Vol. 1 (Denver: National Park Service, 1981), 116.

^15.� The diesel engine, secondary ore bin, ball mill, and classifier are oriented at 17 degrees northeast, 3 degrees off from the rest of the equipment. For a discussion of design principles for milling plants, see Arthur Taggart, Handbook of Ore Dressing (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1927), 1288–302. Louise Grantham, "Diary," entry 24 November 1932, courtesy of Judy Palmer.

^16.� Herbert Hoover, Presidential Proclamation No. 2028, Death Valley National Monument, February 11, 1933, U.S. Statutes at Large vol. 47, pt. 2, Stat. 2554.

^17.� "Death Valley National Monument Is Now Open to Mining." State Mineralogist 30, no. 4 (Sacramento, Calif.: 1934), 444–45; Richard Lingenfelter, Death Valley and the Amargosa: A Land of Illusion (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1986), 467.

^18.� Both quotes in John White to Director, National Park Service, 19 July 1934, L30 Landuse Indian Village 1930–39, D28140 a-d, DEVA (n. 8). Monument policies toward the Timbisha Shoshone were in accord with other National Parks, and Death Valley borrowed substantially from Yosemite National Park's approaches. See Mark D. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of National Parks (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000) and Hal K. Rothman, "To Ride Alone in a Forever Unpossessed Country: An Administrative History of Death Valley National Park" (2004), manuscript on file at DEVA (n. 8); Steven J. Crum, "Pretending They Didn't Exist: The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe of Death Valley, California and the Death Valley National Monument up to 1933," Southern California Quarterly 84, nos. 3, 4 (2002): 223–40.

^19.� White to Director (see n. 18).

^20.� T. R. Goodwin to Dane Coolidge, 11 May 1936, Alida Bowler to John Collier, 30 April 1936, and A. E. Demaray to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 6 August 1934, L30 Landuse Indian Village 1930–39, D28140 a-d, DEVA (see n. 8).

^21.� See Charles W. Miller, The Automobile Gold Rushes and Depression Era Mining (Moscow: Univ. of Idaho Press, 1998).

^22.� Grantham to Nash (see n. 10).

^23.� Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, "Indian Allotment Survey No. 330, Death Valley Monument and National Park," 16 March 1954, Central Files 1931–78, Solander Box 12, D44377, DEVA (see n. 8). The earlier claim accounts for timber and water rights in the clause "together with all and singular the hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging or in anywise appertaining." Claim notices included in U.S. v. Grantham et al. (see n. 8).

^24.� Greene, Historic Resource Study, 262–63 (see n. 14); John A. Latschar, Historic Resource Study: A History of Mining in Death Valley National Monument, Vol. 2 (Denver: National Park Service, 1981), 727.

^25.� C. C. Smith to General Land Office, 12 June 1935, CCF, 35483–34-Carson-313, RG 75, NA (see n. 9).

^26.� Alida Bowler to General Land Office, 14 April 1936, L30 Landuse Indian Village 1930–39, D28140 a-d, DEVA (see n. 8); Bowler to Collier (see n. 20).

^27.� Robert Wilson, "Field Notes of Indian Allotment Survey No. 330 and Establishment of U.S. Location Monument No. 195" (March 1936), manuscript, Bureau of Land Management, Ridgecrest Field Office, Ridgecrest, Calif.

^28.� Grantham to Nash (see n. 10).

^29.� Bin volumes are calculated from field measurements, with the weight of quartz approximating 90 pounds per cubic foot (see Taggart, Handbook of Ore Dressing, 1037 [n. 15]). The mill bins at Gold Hill differed from textbook practices, which recommended a primary bin hold twice the daily capacity of the mill plant, enabling the mill to run somewhat independently of fluctuations in mine output.

^30.� Grantham to Nash (see n. 10).

^31.� White to Goodwin, 21 May 1936, L30 Landuse Indian Village 1933–39, D28140 a-d, DEVA (see n. 8).

^32.� Bowler to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 23 January 1939 (see n. 13); Louise Grantham to H. P. Gower, 21 November 1938; R. C. Boczkiewicz, "Invitation for Bids," 28 October 1937, L1425 Private Holdings–Warm Springs, D44409, DEVA (see n. 8).

^33.� Proof of labor forms for the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim list work as roadwork or open cuts. Curiously, a few were also included later as plaintiff rather than defense exhibits in the later trial between the United States and Grantham. Records on file at Inyo County Courthouse, Independence, Calif.

^34.� L. A. Norman and Richard M. Stewart, "Mines and Mineral Resources of Inyo County, California," Journal of Mines and Geology, California Division of Mines: Report of the State Mineralogist 47, no. 1 (1951): 43, 47. National Park Service staff conducted underground surveys of the Panamint Treasure Mine in 1975 and 2003 as part of resource characterization studies. See Greene, Historic Resource Study, 108–26 (n. 14), and Emily Brown, Tony Drake, Mark Mortier, Heather Atherton, Glenn Simpson, Death Valley National Park, Historic Preservation Report, Vol. III, Abandoned Mine Lands Documentation and Condition Assessment (Santa Fe, N. Mex.: National Park Service Intermountain Support Office, 2003), 134–42. The author and Thomas Urban conducted a reconnaissance of the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim in September 2005. For an example of mine work accomplished by a similarly scaled operation, see R. C. Fleming, "A One-Man Gold Mine," Mining and Metallurgy 13 (1932): 86.

^35.� Harry Slattery, "United States Department of the Interior: Nina Bradley v. Robert Thompson, Motion for Rehearing, 15 August 1939," T. R. Goodwin to Don Foster, 2 August 1940, and Foster to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 9 January 1940, L1425 Private Holdings, Warm Springs, D44409, DEVA (see n. 8).

^36.� Judgment, U.S. v. Louise Grantham et al., 20 February 1942. U.S. v. Grantham et al. (see n. 8); William Fleet Palmer to Attorney General, 11 October 1940, and Norman Littell to Fleet Palmer, 18 October 1940, CCF, 35483–34-Carson-313, RG 75, NA (see n. 9).

^37.� Deposition of Senator Charles Brown, 7 March 1941, and depositions of Panamint George [George Hanson], Johnny Mills, Johnny Boland, and Adolph Neveras, 15 March 1941, in U.S. v. Grantham et al. (see n. 8).

^38.� J. W. Thompson, "United States Mining Statutes Annotated," U.S. Bureau of Mines Bulletin 94 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1915).

^39.� Ore samples were presumably taken from the Old Mill Stream Quartz claim rather than the Panamint Treasure location, since it was the former claim that conflicted with Thompson's allotment. Twining Laboratories to Joseph Anderson, 25 April 1941, in U.S. v. Grantham et al. (see n. 8); Slattery, "United States" (see n. 35).

^40.� Judge Reeves to Walter V. Woehlke, 8 July 1942, and Woehlke to Don Foster, 13 July 1942, CCF, 35483–34-Carson-313, RG 75, NA (see n. 9).

^41.� W. E. Walk, Jr., to Senator Thomas Kuchel, 20 July 1954, L1425 Thompson Indian Allotment Land Rights, D44375, DEVA (see n. 8); Charles Buell to Don Foster, 9 May 1942, CCF, 35483–34-Carson-313, RG 75, NA (see n. 9).

^42.� Steven J. Crum, "A Tripartite State of Affairs: The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1933–1994," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 22, no. 1 (1998): 128; Crum, The Road on Which We Came: A History of the Western Shoshone (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press, 1994), 119–47; Donald L. Fixico, Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945–1960 (Albuquerque: Univ. of N.M. Press, 1986); Walk to Kuchel (see n. 41).

^43.� Leap, "Woman Mine Boss" (see n. 11); J. Robert Wells, "Talc, Soapstone, and Pyrophyllite" in Minerals Yearbook 1965, vol. 1, Metals and Minerals (Washington, DC: GPO, 1966), 909; Pfizer Inc., Big Talc Open Pit, Plan of Operations, DEVA (see n. 8). T. A. Klinefelter, Sidney Speil, and Sidney Goltheb, "Survey of the Suitability of Domestic Talcs for High Frequency Insulators," U.S. Bureau of Mines Report of Investigations 3804 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1945); W. W. Roff, "Western Talcs," Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society 22, no. 8 (1943): 292–95. When Grantham sold her interest in the early 1970s, the mines had produced some 830,000 tons. Zanjani, Mine of Her Own, 214 (see n. 11).

^44.� Fred Binnewies to Regional Director, 30 July 1954 and 7 January 1955, L1425 Thompson Indian Allotment Land Rights, D44375, DEVA (see n. 8). Walk to Kuchel (see n. 41). The quote "splendid camp ..." derives from an earlier discussion of Warm Springs that stemmed in part from an uncertainty as to whether Grantham held water rights. T. R. Goodwin to Regional Director, 3 and 23 July 1951, L30 Landuse Indian Village 1950–59, D28142, DEVA (see n. 8).

^45.� Alida Bowler, superintendent of Carson Indian Agency, reported to her superiors that the monument superintendent "would be very much opposed to [Bob Thompson] obtaining fee patent because he would promptly sell to some white person. I am very much afraid that Bob's principal interest in this tract is for the money he would get out of it." Bowler to Collier (see n. 20). Such sentiments dovetailed with the direction of the "Indian New Deal," spearheaded by the Indian Reorganization Act (1934) that ended the allotment of reservations, yet they also had connection to earlier assimilationist policies that sought to convert Indians to farmer-citizens and teach money management through labor. See Robert F. Berkhoffer, Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 166–86.

^46.� The content of Thompson's letter is unknown, but it was included as an exhibit during the court trial. See U.S. v. Grantham et al. (n. 8).

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