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Nebraska
Press Series 1
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Corbett Mack The Life
of a Northern Paiute
Michael Hittman, Cloth: 1996,xvi,396,CIP.LC
96-28492,0-8032-2376-5 Paper: 1996,xvi,396,CIP.LC
96-28492,0-8032-7290-1
Studies in the Anthropology
of North American Indians Series
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This is the compelling yet disturbing
story of Corbett Mack (1892-1974), an opiate addict
who was a member of the Nuumuu (Numa), or Northern Paiute.
The Northern Paiute are best known as the people who
produced Wovoka, the Ghost Dance prophet whose revitalistic
teachings swept the Indian world in the 1890s. Mack
is from the generation following the collapse of the
Ghost Dance religion, a generation of Nomogweta or "half-breeds"
(also called "stolen children"). Paiute of
mixed ancestry who were raised in an increasingly bicultural
world and who fell into virtual peonage to white (often
Italian) potato farmers. Around the turn of the century,
the use of opium became widespread among the Paiute,
adopted from equally victimized Chinese laborers with
whom they worked closely in the fields. The story of
Corbett Mack is an uncompromising account of a harsh
and sometimes traumatic life that was typical of an
entire generation of Paiute. It was a life born out
of the turmoil and humiliation of an Indian boarding
school, troubled by opiate addiction, bound to constant
labor in the fields, yet nonetheless made meaningful
through the perseverance of Paiute cultural traditions.
Michael Hittman is chairman of the Anthropology and
Sociology Department and a professor at Long Island
University, Brooklyn. He is the author of Wovoka and
the Ghost Dance: A Sourcebook and A Numa History: The
Yerington Paiute Tribe.
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