KVIG Informative

Washington kept its 1874 promise to the Agai Dicutta people down to the acre. It never made the same promise to the lake that promise was built around, and the lake has been paying for it ever since.

The land around Walker Lake, then part of the Utah Territory, was set aside for “Indian purposes” in 1859, according to Nevada State Historical Marker No. 183, placed by the State Historic Preservation Office with the Walker River Paiute Tribal Council. President Ulysses S. Grant formally established the Walker River Indian Reservation by executive order on March 19, 1874, 15 years later, the marker states.

Indian agent Calvin Bateman reported to the federal government that August that the reservation was already home to at least 600 Paiutes, and he described the government’s promise of a lasting home there as a binding obligation, according to the marker.

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The reservation’s total land area, including the northern end of Walker Lake itself, exceeds 300,000 acres and has not changed since 1874, according to the marker. The tribe calls itself the Agai Dicutta, or Trout Eaters, and is centered in Schurz, Nevada, according to the Walker River Paiute Tribe’s own government website.

The tribe’s own government lists its current land base at about 325,000 acres spanning Mineral, Lyon and Churchill counties, with roughly 830 community members, according to the same website. Its stated mission is advocating for tribal sovereignty and pursuing self-determination through co-management agreements with federal and other partners.

Walker Lake’s surface has dropped about 150 feet since 1882, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report, as streamflow that once reached the lake was diverted upstream for irrigation. By 1882, the report states, Mason Valley upstream of the lake was already largely given over to agriculture.

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Dissolved solids in the lake have risen from 2,500 to 16,000 milligrams per liter since 1882, the same U.S. Geological Survey report states — a measure of just how much saltier a shrinking lake becomes when the fresh water that used to reach it is taken out upstream instead.

The federal government kept its end of the 1874 bargain on paper. The Walker River Paiute Tribe still holds every acre of the reservation Grant’s executive order described, down to the boundary of a lake that no longer looks anything like the one the order was written to protect.