THE PRAYERSTONE HYPOTHESIS

IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE 45 million annual visitors to Las Vegas, you might happen to glance west at some point during your stay and notice that the horizon in that direction is dominated by the Spring Mountains. For most visitors, these craggy limestone peaks—Nevada’s most biodiverse range—are a distant backdrop to the glitz and bustle of Las Vegas. To the area’s residents, they might be a destination for camping and hiking. For the 2,000 people of the 11 tribes of the Southern Paiute, though, the Spring Mountains are sacred, the place where they were first created. They call the range’s highest peak, Mount Charleston, Nuvagantu, or “where the snow sits.” Some Southern Paiute believe Nuvagantu marks the end of the Salt Song Trail, the path to the afterlife. On Nuvagantu, they believe, portals connect the physical and spiritual worlds.

In the early 2000s, Southern Paiute elders shared some of these traditions regarding the Spring Mountains with ethnographers from the University of Arizona’s Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. As part of a joint project to record Southern Paiute beliefs related to the landscape, the elders also shared their knowledge about archaeological artifacts that