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Don D. Fowler , Catherine S. FowlerEmeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno. Author of In the Shadow of Fox Peak: An Ethnography of the Cattail-Eater Northern Paiute People of Stillwater Marsh; Tule Technology.
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Great Basin Indian, member of any of the indigenous North American peoples inhabiting the traditional culture area comprising almost all of the present-day U.S. states of Utah and Nevada as well as substantial portions of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado and smaller portions of Arizona, Montana, and California. Great Basin topography includes many small basin and range systems and parts of the mountains, high desert, and low desert that define its external boundaries. The region’s northern basin and range systems transition rather gradually to the intermontane plateaus of Idaho and Oregon; likewise, the differences between the Great Basin Indians and the Plateau Indians are culturally continuous. Anthropologists sometimes refer to the Plateau and Great Basin jointly as the Intermontane culture area.
The Great Basin is arid to semiarid, with annual average precipitation ranging from as little as 2.1 inches (53 mm) in Death Valley to 20–25 inches (500–630 mm) in mountainous areas. Precipitation falls primarily in the form of snow, especially in the high country. Because of the surrounding topography, water does not leave the basin except by evaporation or industrial means; brackish and even salty water are common on basin floors, as at the Great Salt Lake. The area is characterized by a vertical succession of ecological zones, each with a dominant xerophytic (desert-type) flora and related fauna. Before industrialization, the region’s population density was sparse, ranging from 0.8 to 11.7 persons per 100 square miles.
This region was originally home to peoples representing two widely divergent language families. The Washoe, whose territory centred on Lake Tahoe, spoke a Hokan language related to those spoken in parts of what are now California, Arizona, and Baja California, Mexico. The remainder of the Great Basin was occupied by speakers of Numic languages. Numic, formerly called Plateau Shoshonean, is a division of the Uto-Aztecan language family, a group of related languages widely distributed in the western United States and Mexico. Linguists distinguish Western, Central, and Southern branches of Numic.
Western Numic languages are spoken by the Owens Valley Paiute (Eastern Mono), several Northern Paiute groups, and the Bannock. Central Numic languages are spoken by the Panamint (Koso) and several Shoshone groups, including the Gosiute, Timbisha, Western Shoshone, and Comanche. Although they originated in the Great Basin, the Comanche acquired horses during the early colonial period, moved to present-day Texas, and became nomadic buffalo hunters; they are thus typically regarded as Plains Indians.
Southern Numic languages are spoken by the Kawaiisu and a number of Ute and Southern Paiute groups including the Chemehuevi. The distinction between Southern Paiute and Ute is cultural rather than linguistic; Ute speakers who had horses in the early historic period are regarded as Ute, and those who did not readily adopt horses are regarded as Southern Paiute.
The Numic peoples called themselves “Numa,” “Nungwu,” or “Numu,” meaning “people” or “human beings”; the various tribal names such as Paiute and Shoshone were designations given them by other tribes. The Washoe called themselves “Washoe,” a true self-name. Linguistic and archaeological evidence indicates that the Washoe separated from other California Hokan-speaking groups as long as several millennia ago. Similar evidence indicates that the Numic peoples may have been spreading across the Great Basin from southeastern California for the last 2,000 years, reaching their northernmost areas less than 1,000 years ago.
The traditional cultures of the Great Basin are often characterized according to their use or rejection of horses, although people inhabited the region for thousands of years before horses became available. Groups that used the horse generally occupied the northern and eastern sections of the culture area. The Southern Ute and Eastern Shoshone were among the first peoples north of the Spanish settlements of New Mexico to obtain horses, perhaps by the mid-1600s. These bands subsequently acted as middlemen in the transmission of horses and horse culture from New Mexico to the northern Plains. As the Northern Shoshone of Idaho obtained horses in the 18th century, they were joined by Northern Paiute speakers from eastern Oregon and northern Nevada to form the Shoshone-Bannock bands of historic times. By 1800 the Southern and Northern Ute, the Ute of central Utah, the Eastern Shoshone, the Lemhi Shoshone, and the Shoshone-Bannock had large herds of horses, used tepees or grass-covered domed wickiups, and were increasingly oriented toward the tribes and practices found on the Plains; bison became their major prey animal, and they began to engage more heavily in the kinds of intertribal trade and warfare characteristic of the Plains Indians.
The tribes to the south and west in the Great Basin proper and on the western Colorado Plateau did not take up the general use of horses until 1850–60. The Washoe did not use horses prior to colonial settlement in the region and rarely used them thereafter. The Numu and the Washoe built two types of shelters: semicircular brush windbreaks in the summer and domed brush, bark-slab, grass, or reed-mat wickiups in the winter. Whether equestrian or pedestrian, Great Basin peoples generally sited their winter villages along the edge of valley floors near water and firewood; their summer encampments were moved frequently so as not to exhaust the food resources in any given locale.
Aside from horse-related technology, such as halters and saddles, the tools of equestrians and pedestrians were quite similar and very typical of hunting and gathering cultures: the bow and arrow, stone knife, rabbit stick, digging stick, basket, net, and flat seed-grinding slab and hand stone. Some Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute, and Southern Ute groups made a coarse brownware pottery; some Northern Shoshone made steatite jars and cups. Lines and hooks, harpoons, nets, and willow fish weirs were used on rivers and lakes. Rodents were taken with snares and traps or pulled from burrows with long hooked sticks. Rabbits were driven into nets and clubbed or were shot with bows and arrows; rabbit drives provided an occasion for people to congregate and socialize, gamble, dance, and court. Antelope were driven into corrals and traps. Waterfowl were netted, trapped, or shot with arrows that had rounded heads and were intended to stun the bird; some groups made decoys of tule reeds covered with duck skins. Deer, elk, and mountain sheep were taken by individual hunters with bows and arrows or in traps or deadfalls.
Great Basin peoples followed an annual round that encompassed several ecological zones, exploiting plant and animal resources as they became available. Typically, more than 70 percent of the food supply was vegetal. More than 200 species of plants were named and used, principally seed and root plants. Pedestrian groups gathered nuts from piñon pine groves in the upland areas of Nevada and central Utah each autumn, storing large quantities for winter use; early spring was a difficult time, as such resources were often exhausted, plants immature, and prey animals lean and wary. Some Southern Paiute bands practiced limited horticulture along the Colorado and Virgin rivers, and some bands of Owens Valley Paiute, Northern Paiute, and Western Shoshone irrigated patches of wild seed plants to increase their yield. Groups with large lakes in their territories did considerable fishing, especially during spawning runs.
Like the pedestrian peoples of the Great Basin, the horse-using groups followed an annual round; however, the latter were able to range over a much larger area than those on foot. They hunted bison, deer, elk, and mountain sheep and collected seed and root foods as these became available. After autumn bison hunts on the northern Plains, groups returned to the Bridger Basin, the Snake River area, or the Colorado mountains for the winter. Shoshone and Shoshone-Bannock peoples caught salmon during the annual spawning run each spring; fresh salmon was an important food source after the long winter, and some salmon was also dried or smoked for later use. Certain kinds of roots, and especially camas, were also an important food source, although the latter’s onionlike bulbs required detoxifying by pit roasting or steaming.
Clothing for those groups that did not use horses consisted of sage bark aprons and breechcloths, augmented by rabbit-skin robes in the winter; their artistic efforts were often expressed through fine basketry and rock art (petroglyphs and pictographs). The horse-using peoples wore Plains-style tailored skin garments. Like their Plains trade partners, these groups painted their tepees, rawhide shields, and bags and containers, as well as decorating clothing and other soft goods with dyed porcupine quills and, later, glass beads.
Traditionally, western Great Basin groups engaged in trade involving shells (including marine shells), tanned hides, baskets, and foodstuffs. Horse-using groups actively traded among themselves and with others, including fur traders; Shoshone clothing was particularly prized in trade for its beauty and durability. Between about 1800 and 1850, mounted Ute and Navajo bands preyed on Southern Paiute, Western Shoshone, and Gosiute bands for slaves, capturing and sometimes trading women and children to be sold in the Spanish settlements of New Mexico and southern California.
