A Possible Paiute Story

The story, “Tribal Memories of the Flying Saucers,” written by Oge-Make, a Navaho Indian, recounts a Paiute story about flying saucers and extraterrestrial beings, and appeared in a 1948 issue of FATE magazine. Interestingly enough the same story appears in a book by Bourke Lee, called “Death Valley Men,” published in 1932.

There is very little information on Bourke other than publisher ‘Macmillian,’ acknowledges he had at least two book printed by them. Also, Richard E. Lingerfelter, in his book, “Death Valley & the Amargosa: A Land of Illusion,” describes Lee as, “a talented writer-publicist and former Navy flyer Thomas Burke Lee,” who used “the pen name Bourke Lee.”

Oge-Make is actually science fiction writer L. Taylor Hansen, who contributed a lot of material for Amazing Stories in the late 1940s and probably used the pseudonym to further give the tale an aura of mystery. She passed away in May 1976.

Stranger still is the fact that most Paiute elders in the Northern Nevada area know of this same tale. Many of them were young children when they first heard it from their elders.

As one woman, who lives on the Hungry Valley Reservation, jus’ north of Reno, Nevada said to me: “This could be a White-man’s tale that has found its way into our lore, since most of us were kids back in the 30s and 40s.”