Sacred Spirit Mountain listed among historic places

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

Spirit Mountain, a sacred place to Indian tribes in Southern Nevada, has become the first Indian land in the state listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The mountain, considered the beginning of creation, is so sacred to 10 Indian tribes in Nevada, California, Arizona and Mexico that background from its application for the national listing is not available to the public, even through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The agreement that placed it on the national register was signed Sept. 8 but not made public until Monday after each tribe approved the wording of an announcement.

Tribal elders call the mountain "The place where shamans dream." The tribes consider it a place where ancient ancestors emerged into this world.

The outcrop near Laughlin joins other traditional cultural treasures such as the Gettysburg National Historic Battlefield and the Virginia City National Historic Landmark after five years of intense negotiations between the tribes and federal agencies.

The mountain has been so significant to Indian spiritual leaders for thousands of years that they were reluctant to allow federal archaeologists Stanton Rolf and Cynthia Pinto of the Bureau of Land Management to put its secrets on paper.

Instead, the federal application says, "Location is restricted," keeping its exact spot secret.

The mountain, called "Avi Kwa ' Ame," rises from the desert floor near the Colorado River capped by white granite bluffs.

It came to the attention of the BLM when the agency reviewed a mining claim near the site, Rolf said.

"It was a long, drawn-out process to convince the tribes that we were sincere in doing this," Pinto said in a telephone interview from the BLM's Reno office.

Publicity about the mountain's status, the Indians feared, could harm the tribes both physically and spiritually, Pinto said.

Federal listing of traditional cultural properties are so few that the process itself is difficult, explained BLM archaeology leader Pat Barker also in Reno.

Only if all the tribes agree will the BLM use the Spirit Mountain process as a model for other listings, he said.

"We're really happy it finally got done," Barker said.

The BLM's Rolf is working with the tribes to establish a monitoring and management plan to protect the mountain as a cultural resource in the future.

The National Park Service also worked on the listing, archaeologist Rosie Pepito said from the Boulder City office of the agency.

"The register accepts 'areas of strong cultural significance,'_thinspace" Pepito said. "Certainly, Spirit Mountain qualifies as a place loaded with cultural meaning."

The tribes attached to Spirit Mountain include Hualapai, Mojave, Havasupai, Yavapai, Chemuavi, Quechan, Maricopa and the Hopi.

The Pai Pai and Kumeyaay tribes from Mexico and Southern California, respectively, also consider the mountain sacred.

"It's a significant landmark to the Hopi, who say you can see Spirit Mountain from the Arizona mesas," Pepito said.

The National Park Service is working with the tribes to reestablish native plants on roads that have since been closed, Pepito said.

"It's called 'healing the land' by the Indian," she said.

The Hualapai and Mojave tribal lands lie closest to Spirit Mountain at the tip of Southern Nevada.

The Mojave tribe is considered the mountain's caretaker.

The tribes are part of the Yuman peoples, who practiced agriculture in all communities with enough water. Most of the tribes lived along the Colorado and Gila rivers.