About 56 miles downstream from Lees Ferry, the Colorado River flows over yet another boulder strewn debris fan at the mouth a large side canyon. It is Kwagunt Rapid, with an 6 rating in the Steven's guide, and big hole in the middle. For many river runners, that is all they need or want to know about it. But some people may have wondered, where did that funny sounding name come from? Perhaps you happen to be one who knows that it was named after a Southern Paiute man who once roamed that part of eastern Grand Canyon in the mid-to-late 1800s. If so, did you ever wonder what kind of man he was and why his name is attached to that canyon?
His name is spelled variously as Kwagunt or Quagunt or sometime simply Quah; it is an anglicized version of his Paiute name, Qua-gun-ti, which means “Quiet Man”. As the name implies, Kwagunt, unlike his contemporaries Tapeats and Chuarumpeak, was not a politically outspoken leader. He was born sometime in the first half of the 19th century, probably in the 1850s, and for the first years of his life, he lived with his family around several springs in House Rock Valley. The family traveled seasonally into Grand Canyon to gather “yant” (a clonal species of agave) in the springtime; in the fall, they moved up onto the Kaibab Plateau to hunt deer and gather pinyon nuts and other wild foods. During the rest of the year, they resided along the eastern flanks of the Kaibab Plateau, gathering grass seeds, hunting rabbits, and growing small gardens of corn, beans and squash.
The story that follows is Kwagunt's story, as related to Brigham Riggs, a Kanab cattleman, sometime in the late nineteenth century. It relates some of his personal experiences as a youth and young man in the mid to late 1800s. For all Southern Paiutes, this was a time of severe cultural stress due to decimation of their population from hunger, violence, and the introduction of European diseases, as well as physical displacement from their prime water sources and most productive gardens and collecting areas as a result of Mormon colonization and the introduction of livestock. As this story demonstrates, it was a particularly difficult time for Kwagunt. Here is his story:

The Indian came to Riggs' home one winter day to visit Mr. Riggs. They were talking about days gone by. Riggs asks the Indian why his squaw was crying on a certain day they happened to meet on the road between Kanab and Kaibab mountain. The Indian hesitated a while and then told this story.
“My squaw was crying because I was taking her back to Buckskin. (Buckskin was the name the people gave to the Kaibab Mountain until it began to be advertised for its scenic attractions). She wanted to stay at Kanab with the rest of the Indians but I hated the whiteman and did not want to live where they were, so I was going back to Buckskin, which was home to me. I have hated the white man all my life and have had a good cause for doing so. When I was a little boy I lived in what you call House Rock Valley. I lived with my father, mother, big brother and a sister. There was another family living there with us, a man, his squaw, and a grown girl. I was about the size of your little girl and my sister was about the size of the other girl. (About seven and ten). One evening two Indians came to our camp driving some cows that some Navajos had given them to pay for helping drive cattle over the Buckskin. The Navajos had stolen the cattle over the Buckskin. The Navajos had stolen the cattle down around St. George some where. (Note: So many cattle had been stolen from the settlers by Indians that a company was organized to punish the next raders and this was the first rade). The Navajos took their cattle on to Lee's Ferry and we moved south to South Canyon. We killed one cow to have meat. Next morning about sun up some white men came close to our camp and began to shoot. Our men got their guns and started to shoot at the white men. My sister and myself ran and hid in the rocks. We hid all day and everything was very still. When we dared to come out we looked around and found all the Indians dead but we could not find any of the squaws. We didn't know what to do. There were no Indians living on this side (the east side) of the mountain. My sister had been over on the west side of the mountain once but I never had. We know we had to go where there were some Indians or we would die during the winter. The only place we knew of to go was Moccasin where our tribe lived. (Moccasin is eighteen miles south west of Kanab.) We were afraid to go over the mountain because we were afraid of the white men and it was late in the fall and it may snow so deep that we would be snowed in and freeze to death. We decided to try to make it around the south end of the Buckskin Mountain. We took a small jug to carry water in and some meat and started down South Canyon. I got tired and my feet got sore. I would cry and my sister would carry me on her back till she got tired then I would walk again. Sister's feet got so sore that you could follow her tracks by the blood on the rocks. When we got down off the mountain into the big canyon (Grand Canyon) we stopped two or three days to let our feet get well so we could walk. We had been down in the canyon every spring to gather yant*. About halfway to the bottom of the big canyon we started west. Sometimes we could not find water for a long way. One day sister fell off a rock and hurt her very bad. I thought she was dead, she laid still so long. I was afraid because I could not go on alone. After a long time I saw here move a little, then she made a funny noise. After a long time she raised up and wanted water. She wanted water all the time. I had to go back a long distance after it every day, and then the rest of the day I would have to gather grass seeds to have something to eat. We had to stay three or four days before sister got so she could walk. She couldn't walk very far the first few days. We would have to go a long way up around box canyons and out around points. We had good places to sleep. We found good caves where it was warm. One time we got into a place where it didn't rain and no grass grew. We very nearly starved to death before we got to where we could find some grass seeds. One night it rained down where we were but snowed higher up on the mountain. We went up into the snow and found a rabbits' tracks. We followed it up into the deep snow and caught it. This gave us strength to go on. We came to Kanab Creek and found plenty of water and grass seeds. We followed the creek up out of the canyon. One night we saw a camp fire. We sneaked up close enough to see if it was white men or Indians. It was Indians out hunting antelope. We stayed with them till they went to Moccasin. It took us one moon and a half to make the trip. When we got to Moccasin we found that the white men had left our mother to Moccasin with the Indians there, but she got sick and died before we got there. We never got to see her again. I have hated the white men ever since. I swore I would kill white men enough to pay for my people that the white men had killed. Many times out on the Buckskin I have hid by the side of the road to kill a white man. Every time it would be you or some of the other white men who had been good to my squaw and ipats (boy), so I would let you go by. You, Ed Lamb, Tom Stewart, Walt Hamblin (Cowmen from Kanab and Orderville) were all good to my people so I never did kill a white man. I grew up with the Indians at Moccasin and Kanab, but as soon as I got old enough I left to live on the Buckskin away from the white men. When I was a young man the camp was very hungry. They wanted someone to go find some meat. We didn't have any bullets to shoot in our guns so we had to go with out anything but a bow and arrows. Two other young fellows and myself left to hunt deer on the Buckskin. As soon as we got to the foot of Buckskin we saw a big buck track. We tracked it up and found it. It was a big buck with long horns. We spread out to drive him up on the mountain into the deep snow. One of the fellows gave out and had to stop. The other fellow and myself went on. We kept the deer going up hill. When the snow got deep we got in the trail behind him. When the deer got tired my partner hid behind a little bushy tree. I worked my way around above the deer and scared him back down the trail he had made going up. When the buck came by my partner had a big club all ready and hit him across the back just in front of the hips. That brought him down so he could not get up. We got him killed and ready to go that night. Early next morning we started back with the hide and meat. Another time we went on a rabbit drive. We went out east of Kanab and set up our nets. Then we took a circle out two or three miles to drive the rabbits into the nets. About the time we started back a very bad blizzard came up. We all started for camp as fast as we could go. One man didn't come to camp that night. Next morning we all went out to look for him. We found him about two miles from camp. He was kneeling down on one knee with his bow and arrow in his hand frozen stiff. He looked like he was alive but he was dead. The way we would get rabbits with our nets was a pretty good way. We would find a place where rabbits like to run and set up our nets. The nets were made of yuka strings. They were from ten to twenty-five yards long. We would put all we had out in a long string, sometime a hundred yards long. We would put them up on stakes driven into the ground. When we got our nets set we would take a circle out around the part of the country we wanted to make our drive through. We then formed into a half circle a short distance apart and would go towards the net. The rabbits would go to the nets and follow along it. There would be an Indian stationed at each end and some times along in the center. When the rabbits came along the Indians would shoot them. We would take the rabbits to camp, build a large fire out of sagebrush, and would take enough rabbits to make a meal for the camp and put them in the fire and burn the hair off, when we didn't want the hair to make ropes with. When the hair as all burned off we moved the coals and ashes away and put the rabbits in a pile, then bury them in hot ashes and coals. When they are cooked we take them out and pull the ears off and give them to the older people, chief or Medicine man. That was the best part of the rabbit. The children got a leg or a piece of the back. The liver and heart were eaten, then the intestines were removed and the stuff was stripped out with the finger and thumb, then eaten. The eyes and brain and every bit of the rabbit was eaten but the hide and bones. There were not many rabbits. We kept them killed off for food. They furnished a good part of our food supply. There was a lot of different kinds of roots we could dig at different times of the year. Grass and weed seeds in the summer and fall. Nearly every year we had a good crop of pinyon nuts and acorns that we ate. We would gather all we could get of these kind of things to live on during the winter. We would dry meat when we could get it. Sometimes we would have plenty to eat and sometimes we would nearly starve. There was always deer on the Buckskin and antelope down in the valleys but they were wild and hard to get till we got guns, and then lots of times we didn't have any powder.”

* Yant is a member of the yuka family. It has short stubby leaves, very much like a century plant. It is a multiplying plant. Each year a new shoot comes out by the side of the others and each year one of the cluster goes to seed and dies. It takes many years for the plant to go to seed after it comes up. In the early spring a seed stock comes out of a plant and grows into a stock as high as twelve feet, as big as four inches in diameter at the but, and the seeds grow in the small pods along the stock. In the spring before the stock starts to grow, the plant has a heart in the center. Sometimes four inches in diameter. The heart somewhat resembles a turnip. After it is cooked it is more like a banana. The plant grows in the rocky breaks to the Grand Canyon. The Indians would go into the Canyon in the spring to gather the plant for food. It has very tough roots and is very hard to pull or dig. The Indians would dig out a pit near their camp and build a fire in it to make it very hot. Then they go gather the yant plant that would go to seed that year, and carry them to camp. When they got enough to fill the pit they would put them in and burry them in the hot ashes and leave them over night. When they were cooked the leaves were easily pulled off. What was left after the camp had been fed was pressed into cakes and dried for future use. It was very good to eat.

I often used to wonder if the black haired, buckskin-clad skeleton that the Bus Hatch expedition found at South Canyon on 1934 expedition might have been Kwagunt. But in the course of doing research for this article, I learned a few more things about Kwagunt. According to Southern Paiute oral tradition, Kwagunt, along with a brother and sister, discovered the canyon that now bears his name while trying to hide from Apache raiders. The brother and sister lived there for a while, and after their deaths, Kwagunt claimed the area as his own. They say he discouraged visitors to the valley "because he wanted to keep the sage seeds to himself". He was still using the area when John Wesley Powell undertook his topographic survey of the Arizona Strip in 1871-1872, and it was probably while accompanying Powell and H.C. Demotte on a reconnaissance of the Kaibab Plateau in August, 1872 that Kwagunt informed Powell of his claim to the area. By the mid 1870s, however, most Southern Paiutes had abandoned efforts to live off the land in the traditional manner and had moved into settlements adjoining the Mormon communities at Kanab and Pipe Springs, leaving Kwagunt to eke out a lonely existence without the support of family or friends. Eventually, Kwagunt gave up trying to live on his own in the traditional manner, moved to Kanab, earned meager wages chopping wood and doing other chores for whites, and died on the Kaibab reservation as he had lived— quietly.

Helen Fairley

References:
Altschul, Jeffrey H. and Helen C. Fairley 1989 Man, Models and Management: An Overview of the Archaeology of the Arizona Strip. Report prepared for BLM and US Forest Service. Copies on file at BLM Office, St. George, USDA Forest Service Office, Fredonia and Museum of Northern Arizona Library, Flagstaff.
Euler, Robert C. 1966 Southern Paiute Ethnohistory. University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 78, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Fowler, Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler 1971 Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868-1880. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology No. 14, Washington, DC.
Fowler, Don D., Robert C. Euler, and Catherine S. Fowler 1969 John Wesley Powell and the Anthropology of the Canyon Country. US Geological Survey Professional Paper 670, Washington, DC.
Kelly, Isabel T. 1964 Southern Paiute Ethnography. University of Utah Anthropological Papers no. 69, Salt Lake City.
Quag-unt, Life story told to Brigham Adelbert Riggs, typescript (BANCMSSP-F 314:58), in Utah Biographies, 1934-1940, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Printed with permission