Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1995–1996
Paiute Songs:
Manuel “Popeye” McCloud and Marlin Thompson
Manuel “Popeye” McCloud was born and raised
on the Walker Lake Paiute Reservation, like his
parents, grandparents and great-grandparents before
him. His family moved between the lake and the town
of Schurz, ranching and raising hay and making a living
off their connection to the land. “This is my life, this is
my roots here,” Popeye explains. Despite his attachment
to the place of his birth, Popeye (who got his nickname
as a child because he wore a sailor hat) spent many years
working in highway construction all over Nevada and
eastern California, but returned to Schurz for good in
1974.
Popeye sings the old
style of traditional Paiute
and Shoshone songs, usually
unaccompanied but
sometimes with a hand
drum. He recalls the traditional
gatherings of Indian
people, called fandangos,
that happened several times
a year, where many of the
songs were learned and
passed on. “From Christmas
to New Year’s, one
whole week, that’s what
they used to have,” he explains.
“You’d hear singers
come from different parts
of the area, like Fallon,
Reese River, Duckwater,
Tonopah, you know, all
over. Everybody bring their
songs in here. Every individual
one, he got his own
songs, and they sing, maybe
they sing for an hour or so,
and they gave up and pretty
soon another guy would
step in and take over, see, for the circle dance. Some of
them songs stuck in me, see, I never did lose them.”
Popeye also composes many of his own songs, based
on things he observes in the world, both natural and human-made.
He says, “It don’t just come that easy, you
have to work around it, work around and finally it falls in
place. It’s hard to get the tune. After you get the tune you
can really line it out then…Lot of time, you get in the
car, if you open your windows just a little bit, and that air
gets you in a certain way…sometimes you get the tune.
You let your window open, you try it yourself sometime,”
Popeye laughs. He has songs about horses and birds, one
about a boy on horseback, and even one about a jet plane.
Popeye’s apprentice Marlin Thompson, age 41, has a
very strong sense of Paiute heritage. He lives in Yerington,
and his grandparents were from the Walker Lake
and Mono Lake Paiute tribes. Marlin remembers his
grandfather singing when
he was young, although
singers were rare even then,
so when he heard Popeye
he asked if he would teach
him some of his songs. The
learning has been difficult
because Marlin does not
know much of the Paiute
language, but he makes a
point of having Popeye explain
all the words, so he can
sing with meaning. “This is
it here, all the elders we have
left,” Marlin says earnestly.
“If we don’t learn now, it’s
going to be gone.”
Marlin’s words ring all too
true. Popeye McCloud died
at age 79 on May 7, 1996.
He was “sung into the next
world,” as Marlin put it,
with a ritual Cry Dance a
few days later, and is buried
in the Schurz Cemetery.
With care and skill, some
of his songs will live on.
Marlin Thompson and
Popeye McCloud stand
on the shores of Walker
Lake, the subject of many
of Popeye’s songs.
An ancient tradition that
can gain inspiration from
modern life just as easily as
from nature, Paiute singing
is clearly a living entity, a
voice rooted in the past but
alive in the present.
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