Christian and Indian faith flows from Northern Nevada lake

PYRAMID LAKE INDIAN RESERVATION

On the still and sun-splashed banks of Pyramid Lake, Ed Ely, tobacco pouch and eagle feather in hand, strides slowly toward the clear water, an early morning march he has made every Easter Sunday since 1970.

In the days before, thick fog and clouds had shrouded the mountains around the 112,000-acre lake. But this day is majestic. On an opposite shore is the rock formation known as Stone Mother, the creator of the lake and ancestral mother to the Pyramid Lake Northern Paiutes, according to legend.

Inching closer to the cold water, Ely takes four pinches of tobacco from his pouch and sprinkles dried leaves to each point of the compass. As a second offering to the spirits, he dips his feather in the lake and slings water droplets to the east, west, north and south.

The 79-year-old Ely, a Winnebago Indian who has lived among the Northern Paiutes for five decades, concludes his ceremony with a Winnebago prayer of reverence for the earth. Before climbing back in his pickup, he scoops up a Mason jar full of water from the lake.

Ely's ritual is just the start of the day's religious festivities.

A few hours later and five miles up state Route 445 in Nixon, in a church more than a century old, a special visitor to the Pyramid Lake Reservation oversees the baptism of a Northern Paiute infant with the lake water Ely gathered.

On the holiest day of the Christian calendar, the Very Rev. Dan Edwards, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada, had his pick of churches to visit. He chose to continue the tradition of earlier Nevada bishops by going to the tiny reservation towns of Nixon and Wadsworth.

The Pyramid Lake reservation, about 35 miles northeast of Reno, is home to more than 1,500 Northern Paiutes. It's a youthful place with a median age of only 22. It's also a place of substantial poverty. The unemployment rate among these Northern Paiutes is 44 percent. The median household income on the reservation is a little more than $30,000.

The Las Vegas-based Edwards, who presides over about 6,000 Episcopalians statewide, hopes his outreach to the reservation will stretch beyond Easter Sunday and help a people mired in hard times.

"If you look at every social indicator of well-being, Native Americans are hurting worst of any group," Edwards says.

Even the sacred lake, so vital to the Pyramid Lake Paiutes for recreation and fishing, has had its struggles. The lake's water level has been shrinking at a rate of about four feet per year, and water rights and environmental concerns have provided fodder for various federal court battles over the years.

Religious life, too, has seemingly declined in recent years. St. Mary's Episcopal Church, one of two churches in Nixon, is less a center of activity than it once was. Some artifacts have started to disappear from the church's walls. No one has signed its guest book in several years.

"It was almost like I became the curator of a museum," says Ely, whose roles at St. Mary's include groundskeeper and unofficial spiritual adviser.

One of the reservation's residents used to be a missionary priest at the church. But because of a lack of money, that position was lost in 1971. The only trace of the last missionary is the yellow mobile home next to the church where he used to live.

These days, a part-time reverend named Eric Lawrence travels to Nixon and Wadsworth to hold Sunday services. During the week, Lawrence is a comptroller for a manufacturing company in nearby Fernley.

On Easter Sunday, Edwards, who was consecrated bishop last year, came to lend Lawrence a hand.

"Christianity is a flower that can grow in different soils," Edwards says. "The Episcopal Church's relationship with First Nation people has been a kinder relationship, because our church has not been aggressive in terms of proselytizing. We've said you don't have to renounce your traditions."

The denomination has worked with Pyramid Lake tribal elders to infuse native customs into Christian rituals. Two examples are the use of sacred lake water in baptisms and an Easter Sunday "smudging ceremony" in which sage is burned and smudged on the body of worship leaders to ward off bad spirits.

That blending of heritages appealed to Norman Duncan Jr., who took his place in the overflowing congregation of St. Michael's and All Angels Episcopal Church in Wadsworth on Easter. When it came time for baptisms, he waited his turn at the baptismal font alongside two infants who also were getting baptized.

After living most of his life in Las Vegas, something called Duncan, 42, back home. Last year, the water driller returned to Wadsworth.

He said a key part of reconnecting to his birthplace involves spirituality: "Everyone has their own beliefs about God. Me, myself, I believe in Indian tradition and Christianity. Both are about taking a good path in life."

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The histories of the Pyramid Lake area, the Episcopal Church, and his own family all help explain why Edwards cares so deeply about these reservation towns.

Christianity first came to the reservation in the 19th century when church denominations carved up the western United States into different missionary zones. The Pyramid Lake and Battle Mountain areas became the Episcopalians' responsibility.

At that time, hostilities flared between Northern Paiutes and gold and silver prospectors who flooded the area. The Pyramid Lake War of 1860 took several lives and created bitterness between the groups that lasted longer than the fighting itself.

The legendary Northern Paiute Sarah Winnemucca chronicled the period in her book, "Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims."

While the Pyramid Lake War didn't directly pertain to religion, the Episcopal Church later reflected on untoward motivation for early missionary work among Native Americans.

In 1997, the church apologized for its role in conflicts between European settlers and Native American tribes when its then-presiding bishop condemned the Church of England's original charter that urged settlers to convert the "infidels and savages" of the New World. The Church of England later became the Episcopal Church.

Edwards' own ancestry has prompted him to contemplate the historical predicament of Indian tribes. His paternal great-grandmother was a Cherokee who knew survivors of the Trail of Tears, a forced migration of American Indians from the South and Southeast to lands farther west in the 1830s. Ancestors on his mother's side of the family probably were people who helped force that march.

"I carry both the grievances and guilt of that period," Edwards says.

After the service in Wadsworth, Edwards and his wife, Linda, head up the road to Nixon, where a quickly filling church awaits them. Paintings of Jesus on the cross are on the wall near photos of traditional Northern Paiute circle, owl, and antelope dances. There is also a photo of Stone Mother.

Edwards' sermon at both churches deals with turning despair and fear into hope. It touches on 9/11, historical struggles of the Native Americans, and present-day conflicts in the Middle East.

The theme of his talk: "God steps in when our plans fall apart." Here too, Edwards can reflect on his own life experience.

After attending law school at the University of Texas at Austin, Edwards, a Texas native, spent 12 years as an attorney in Colorado and Idaho.

But a spiritual crisis he experienced while practicing criminal law brought him back to the Christian faith he had let lapse. For a time in his law career, he advocated for migrant farm workers and American Indians.

As bishop, he is still fighting for causes he believes in, not in a courtroom or in legal briefs, but as the top Episcopal official in Nevada.

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A few hundred yards from the church in Nixon, several Northern Paiutes sit in plastic chairs outside a ramshackle home. The group eyes an approaching stranger warily. As far as they know, they're not doing anything wrong, but on this reservation they've seen too many public intoxication arrests to be sure.

It turns out they have nothing to worry about, so they continue drinking beer. A woman from the house emerges with heaping plates of fry bread topped with brown gravy and meat.

On the sleepy reservation, the action this day is clearly down at the church.

Asked if he considered attending the service, 35-year-old Leroy Davis, who was baptized at the church as a child, says he isn't much in the mood for praying.

"That's a white man's world," he says. "We're Indians."

Later in the conversation, he softens his view. Davis says he'd be in church if his young nephew were in town. But others in the circle say they'll stick with sweat lodges and other native institutions that still thrive on the reservation.

Religion aside, what they all want is a better quality of life.

Davis talks about the difficulty finding work on the reservation or in nearby towns. He and his friends haven't worked in years, he says.

The youngest of the group, JoJo Smith, 32, has applied to be a wildland firefighter with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It's seasonal work, but better than nothing. "There's not much really to do around here," Smith says. "It's just real bad most of the time."

Pyramid Lake Tribal Chairman Mervin Wright Jr. says he and the tribal council have considered ways to boost the local economy, including through the construction of golf courses, a spa, or a resort.

"We can talk about these things until we're blue in the face, but if we don't follow through on them, things won't get better," he says.

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It's 2 p.m. in Nixon and time for Ed Ely to lock the doors of St. Mary's church.

He speaks with his grandson, a soldier who in the coming weeks will deploy to Iraq for a third time. Several parents with children wave goodbye to Ely; these adults were once infants baptized with the first jars of water Ely gathered at the lake decades go.

Ely is pleased with the high attendance at the church that day: "It seems to me like hard times bring people together."

As he prepares to return home, his thoughts shift from ruminations on the past to hopes for the future.

Nearing 80, Ely realizes someone else soon will need to take over his role at the church. Until then, he wants to help younger generations on the reservation find spirituality, whether they choose to follow Indian tradition, Christian tradition, or a combination of both.

"A lot of the traditional things are dying out," he says. "But if you believe in the divine, it's important to find ways to keep them going."

Contact reporter Alan Maimon at amaimon @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0404.