The Great Basin

The vast, expansive region of the American West, between the Rocky Mountains in the east and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the west, is commonly referred to as the Great Basin. The region is roughly comprised of what are now known as the states of Nevada, western Colorado, eastern Oregon, southern Idaho, and parts of eastern California. With no river outlets to the sea or easily traveled trails, this region was the last area of the continental United States to be explored and settled by Europeans and Euro-Americans. When it was finally mapped and crisscrossed in 1844 this dry, sparsely populated area was called one “Great Basin.” Although the term has gained popular usage, the area is in fact not simply one immense basin but a series of mountain ranges and river valleys.

For thousands of years the Great Basin region has been home to hundreds of Native American groups that spoke similar languages but were distinct from each other politically. These groups have undergone profound cultural and political changes in the centuries following European contact and colonization and have skillfully adapted to the many changes brought by the foreigners.

Archaeologists and geologists (scientists who study the history of the earth and its life, especially as recorded in rocks) have determined that great lakes and glaciers covered this region during the ice ages and began to evaporate around roughly 11,000–8,000 bce . One of the oldest mummified skeletons in the world has been found in the Lahontan Cave, outside Fallon, Nevada, and is estimated to be over nine thousand years old. There is great debate over how much meaning can be attributed to the Lahontan Mummy and other archaeological findings from this area, which provide only faint glimpses into the material conditions of these ancient societies. What meanings, beliefs, and rituals these peoples attributed to their practices and lives over countless centuries cannot be adequately assessed. It is, therefore, difficult to make extensive, meaningful determinations about the lives of the Native American peoples throughout these many centuries.

The Spanish bring horses

Beginning in the early 1600s European presence greatly changed the lives of the Great Basin peoples living in what are now eastern Utah and Colorado. Located directly north of the Spanish colony of New Mexico, the Utes were the first Great Basin group to experience the pressures introduced by Europeans in the American West. In the seventeenth century Spanish-introduced trade items, particularly the horse, began to make their way out of New Mexico and into the eastern Great Basin. The Ute at this time were not one unified tribal group but many different political units organized under different leaders and living in different parts of Utah and Colorado. The Eastern Ute quickly adopted the horse and began hunting buffalo and trading in the Southern Plains and New Mexico. Many of the Western Ute, however, were slower to adopt the equestrian (horse-riding) culture and economy of their eastern brethren.

With the adoption of the horse, the Ute changed many aspects of their economies and cultures. Previously, like most of the other Numic-speaking (see “Language”) peoples of the Great Basin, they had hunted on foot and gathered useful foods from their local environments. The Ute now vigorously competed for precious Spanish resources in and around New Mexico with the many other tribes around them, such as the Comanche to the east, Navajo to the Southwest, and Apache to the Southeast. In order to gain firearms, horses, and other goods to meet the demands of the New Mexican market, these tribes often raided each other and other neighboring groups. Their economies and political relations now revolved around the horse while many other Great Basin peoples still lived in societies without horses.

Europeans settle in the Great Basin

In addition to introducing the horse trade, beginning in the mid-1700s the Spanish began solidifying their control on the American Southwest and established settlements in California in 1769. In order to link up the New Mexican and California colonies, Spanish traders and explorers forged the Spanish Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, which led directly through parts of the southern Great Basin, home to Southern Paiute groups in southern Nevada, western Utah, and northern Arizona as well as Chemehuevi, Kawaiisu, Owens Valley Paiute, and Western Shoshone groups. These Native American peoples now experienced the many pressures of European trading, particularly the newcomers’ need for Native American slaves, food resources, and water supplies.

The 1800s brought revolutionary changes to all the Great Basin groups. The Western Shoshone of Nevada and eastern California, the Gosiute Shoshone of eastern Utah, the Northern Paiute of northern Nevada and eastern Oregon, and the Southern Paiute, Chemehuevi, Kawaiisu, and Washoe of California all found their previous economies, political organization, and cultural practices fundamentally disrupted by first British and then American traders and settlers. Previously organized in hundreds of small bands that moved seasonally throughout local environments hunting and gathering needed resources, some smaller groups were forced to band together under powerful leaders while others migrated out of areas infested with European disease into more remote mountain locations.

In the early 1800s both Great Britain and the United States vied for control of the western half of North America. Quickly displacing the Spanish, British and then American traders moved rapidly into the northern Great Basin along the Snake and Humboldt rivers and, with the aid of local Bannock, Shoshone, and Paiute guides, trapped any animals they could. With the American conquest of northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War (1846–48; a war fought between the United States and Mexico which led to loss of about one-half of Mexico’s national territory to the United States), the United States acquired control of the Southwest and California in 1848. In the late 1840s and 1850s the California Gold Rush attracted over one hundred thousand miners and settlers. Tens of thousands of these pioneers on their way to California and Oregon passed directly through the Great Basin along both the Overland Trail and Oregon Trail, destroying the fragile ecology with their many horses and cattle, as well as sometimes attacking whatever small bands of Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone they encountered.

Greed becomes abuse

Because of their limited technologies, non-equestrian cultures, and sparse material conditions, most Great Basin peoples have always been considered by Europeans to be inferior. Racism was a precondition for American expansion and development throughout California and the Great Basin as white settlers firmly believed in their right to take Native American lands and abuse Native American peoples. They used both religious and intellectual justification for their violent and criminal acts. Thousands of Native American peoples, especially around the mining settlements in California and Nevada, did not survive these turbulent years of foreign intrusion, while others struggled desperately.

Eastern California and Nevada proved to be extremely abundant in timber, water, and minerals, resources that the growing American economy sought. The American public wanted Native American lands and there was little protection for the Great Basin groups. Although the United States negotiated treaties in the mid-1800s with nearly all the Great Basin Indian groups outside of California, the government played only a limited role in the supervision of the rights granted to Native American peoples by these agreements. Consequently, the reservation lands and annual annuities payments legislated by these treaties were not sufficiently enforced to meet the survival needs of many of these peoples. With the near-destruction of their subsistence economies (in which individuals work to provide the goods needed for their own survival and not for trade or money) and their lands occupied by foreigners, the Great Basin peoples experienced extreme hardships. Forced to work on white ranches, in mines, as domestic servants in white households, or in any capacity possible, many Native American people throughout the region found themselves dealing with wage labor for the first time.

U.S. policies

This period of difficult transitions was made even harder in the late 1800s and early 1900s when the U.S. government began policies that attempted to assimilate Native American peoples into the mainstream of American society. Boarding schools were established for Native American children that attempted to remove children from their native traditions and languages and, often painfully, separated them from their parents. New laws, such as the General Allotment Act of 1887 (also known as the Dawes Act), were passed that curbed tribal ownership of lands and gave reservation lands to Native Americans individually. The results of these policies were disastrous for Native American peoples. The Southern Ute Reservation in western Colorado lost over eight million acres, or 99 percent of the reservation. The Ute Mountain Reservation lost 94 percent.

Throughout the early 1900s the Native Americans of the Great Basin continued to deal with harsh economic, political, and social impositions by state and federal institutions. Only in the 1930s did Native American policy move away from these assimilation efforts as Native American tribal governments received some limited autonomy (self-rule) over their own lives. This Indian New Deal (1930s) also led to the recognition of many new Native American governments as well as the creation of new Native American reservations, such as several for the Western Shoshone of Nevada. Unfortunately for Native American peoples, this era of limited autonomy was quickly followed in the 1950s by another attempt by the government to end the unique legal status of Native American tribes. This policy of termination directly affected several Southern Paiute reservations, such as the Shivwits Reservation in Southwestern Utah, which lost its status as a tribal government entitled to federal resources and exempt from state laws and taxation. In addition, the U.S. government attempted to integrate Native Americans into the larger U.S. economy through relocation programs, which moved Native American peoples away from their reservations to work in cities. Only in the 1970s did these assimilation efforts give way to an era of Native American self-determination, after which Native American peoples and tribal governments helped determine and enforce the laws under which they lived.

Great Basin Indian peoples have maintained their distinct political and cultural identities despite the tremendous changes brought by European and American contact and colonization. Although American pressures have irrevocably altered the quality of life for the Great Basin Indian peoples, throughout this vast region Native American peoples continue to live according to their own beliefs and traditions. From Colorado to California they carry on cultures and traditions that are thousands of years old despite the loss of most of their ancestral lands, the economic difficulties of reservation life, as well as the often overwhelming presence of an intrusive American culture. Struggling to learn the many complexities of living in American society and dealing with a powerful, imposed American government, Native American peoples throughout Nevada, California, Utah, Eastern Oregon, Southern Idaho, and Western Colorado have become politically and economically active and productive members of their societies. The Native American peoples of the Great Basin have survived and creatively adapted to their changing world by learning the ways of the larger society and blending their own unique traditions with those of American society.

Religion

The dramatic disruptions accompanying American contact and colonization have irrevocably altered the ways in which Great Basin peoples understand and give meaning to their lives. Through Native American oral histories and the work of anthropologists (people who study human societies and cultures), it is relatively clear that many Great Basin peoples at the time of European contact lived in a highly spiritual world where humans were simply one part of a greater universe. Animals, the deceased, mountains, and the land itself all had spiritual significance in Great Basin spirituality.

Although it is difficult to measure the amount of religious change brought by European contact, a great deal of religious blending and mixture has occurred throughout the region. Different religious missionaries and denominations, such as the Mormon religion in Utah, have achieved small to large followings among contemporary Native peoples. Following a new religion, however, does not necessarily mean that these individuals and groups no longer follow ancestral teachings and practices. The adoption of certain religious teachings from American society in many ways parallels the many other adaptations Great Basin peoples have undergone. Gaining spiritual strength from outside religions and using it for everyday guidance are integral aspects of communities and cultures that have changed and continue to change according to their own needs.

Language

Related to linguistic groups found outside of the Great Basin, such as the Hopi of Arizona and the Comanche of the Southern Plains, Numic, the primary Great Basin language, has been divided by linguists into three subgroups: Western, Central, and Southern, depending on the location in the Great Basin. Numic is a branch of a larger language family known as Uto-Aztecan, one of the largest North American language families, which stretches south of the Great Basin all the way into central Mexico. The different Paiute, Shoshone, Ute, Chemehuevi, and Kawaiisu peoples of the Great Basin all speak similar yet regionally unique versions of Numic. The Washoe people of western Nevada and eastern California are the only Great Basin groups that do not speak the Numic language. Washoe is a unique language, only distantly related to another North American language family, known as the Hokan. Linguists guess that this uniqueness comes from the long-standing presence of Washoe peoples in their Sierra Nevadan homeland near Lake Tahoe, California.

The Great Basin languages have fallen into disuse in recent years. Children at boarding schools in the region were punished for speaking their language, and discrimination in surrounding English-speaking communities forced many Great Basin peoples to learn English in order to survive. Elders and more traditional Native Americans have fought to keep the language alive, and many tribal leaders have instituted language retention programs in their tribal schools. Only in recent decades have some Great Basin languages been written down and translated. Recording the languages either electronically on tapes or textually on paper is another example of Great Basin Indians adapting their cultures to a technologically changing world.

Subsistence

For centuries the economies of the Great Basin peoples revolved around the gathering of local plants and seeds and the hunting of deer, antelope, rabbits, and various small game. Fishing was common for many groups, such as the Pyramid Lake Paiute, who had access to fish in this generally water-scarce region. For the Northern and Eastern Shoshone, the Bannock, and the Ute, the adoption of the horse brought a fundamental change to their economy. Mounted and mobile, these equestrian hunters roamed the northern plains in search of buffalo. The groups also hunted larger game, such as bear and elk, in the mountain regions of the Rockies. For most Great Basin groups, however, the gathering of local foods remained the main form of subsistence for centuries. The pine nut, or piñon, is a delicious and nutritious nut found in the mountains throughout the Great Basin. Shoshone, Paiute, and other groups have gathered this food for centuries and use it in many different ways. Ground up, pine nuts form a paste that can either be rolled into dough for bread or boiled with other vegetables to form soup. Roasted, they can keep for many months. Nearly all Great Basin groups harvested piñons in the fall, and then saved much of their supply for the cold winter months in underground storage areas. The pine nut plays a significant cultural as well as an economic role, appearing in many Great Basin stories and legends.

European contact fundamentally altered the subsistence economies of all Great Basin tribes. For the Great Basin peoples who hunted on the Northern Plains, the virtual extermination of the buffalo forever changed their lives. For the non-equestrian Great Basin tribes, the settlement of American miners and ranchers disrupted their extremely fragile ecologies. Since small bands so heavily depended on the seasonal harvest of pine nuts and other grasses as well as the hunting of small game, the loss of access to mountain ranges and water valleys plunged many groups into terrible poverty. The mining industries of Nevada and eastern California, for instance, sometimes used up all local timber and water resources, destroying entire stands of piñon trees. Ranching and pioneer travel through the region destroyed fertile marshes and grasslands along the major rivers. Cattle, horses, and sheep ate many of the grasses and seeds that some groups depended on in order to live. Following these ecological disasters, Great Basin peoples came to depend heavily on local white communities and the government for their survival. The government has administered food and other payments to these groups, but poverty and economic problems continue to plague many of these communities.

Customs

All Great Basin groups have maintained social practices and customs that reflect as well as reinforce many of the broader cultural values of their communities. Although it is difficult to make generalizations that apply to all of these different groups, the various artistic, marital, child-rearing, puberty, and burial traditions of these groups offer interesting comparisons and contrasts.

In general, artistic expression and traditions have served both functional and creative purposes. Many of the equestrian Great Basin groups developed artistic styles combining their pre-equestrian traditions with those of their Plains neighbors. The Ute, for instance, embellished their child-carrying cradleboards with many beading and decorative techniques utilized by Plains groups but also used a willow cover for the child’s head as practiced among other Great Basin groups. (Such woven, willow covers serve to protect the child from the sun as well as to designate the gender of the child.) The equestrian groups likewise adopted some of the Plains buffalo dances and ceremonies not found throughout the Great Basin. They also took up the hide-painting traditions of their Plains neighbors, often depicting important events and ceremonies on the hides of large elk and buffalo.

Most Great Basin groups did not have access to the same animal, leather, and wood resources as the equestrian tribes. Yet these groups did develop highly sophisticated forms of functional art, such as baskets. Intricate Washoe, Paiute, Shoshone, and other Great Basin baskets provide clear examples of the creativity and intellectual traditions of these different peoples. Made of woven and coiled branches and other grasses, Great Basin baskets are considered among the highest quality in the world. Washoe baskets became so highly coveted by art collectors in the early 1900s that weavers could not fulfill the demand.

Current tribal issues

As of mid-2007 the Great Basin tribes were mainly located on reservations and colonies in Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and eastern California. These different lands were legally recognized by the federal government as home to the many specific tribes and were subject to the particular laws of these tribes. Many smaller political groups make up the larger Paiute, Ute, and Shoshone tribes. The Ute lived on the largest Great Basin reservation, the Uintah-Ouray Reservation, in eastern Utah and on two other reservations in southwestern Colorado. There were three main Shoshone groups, the Western, Northern, and Eastern, each with numerous different tribes and reservations, especially the Western Shoshone. The many Shoshone reservations were quite spread out and stretch from eastern California to Wyoming. The Southern and Northern Paiute, like the Western Shoshone, consisted of numerous smaller tribes living on many different reservations throughout southern Nevada and Utah for the Southern Paiute and northwestern Nevada and eastern Oregon for the Northern Paiute. The Washoe lived close to the Nevada-California border, near their ancestral homes around Lake Tahoe.

Numerous interrelated concerns and challenges confronted these different tribes and reservation communities. In their efforts to combat the many social problems that stemmed from economic poverty and joblessness, tribes throughout the region had attempted various economic development plans. Some tribes used the federal court system to sue the government for failed treaty payments and lands. Others received federal resources for education and other anti-poverty programs and channeled them into job training and job placement programs. Many of the Great Basin tribes, however, were located in remote locations, far from economic centers. Several tribes adopted ranching on their open ranges as well as various other timber and water resource development projects.

In addition to economic concerns, numerous cultural and political issues were of critical importance. Culturally, most of the Great Basin groups were attempting to develop strong education programs for their youth and to teach their children some of the older traditions and teachings. Many pan-Indian (including Native Americans from all tribes) cultural and recreational activities, such as powwows and athletic tournaments, became increasingly popular in the 2000s. Politically, tribes throughout the region continued to resist state and federal incursion onto their lands and jurisdictions (places where they have the authority to make and enforce their own law). Many Western Shoshone groups, such as the Te-Moak Tribe of Nevada, were still in court trying to recover some of the millions of acres of land lost to the U.S. government in the nineteenth century. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Department of Defense, for example, had illegal ownership of nearly 90 percent of Nevada’s land. Meanwhile, the BLM and military used the lands in ways that were offensive to Native American peoples. The military, for instance, continued to test nuclear and other weapons in Nevada, and the BLM prohibited Native American cattle ranching and pine nut harvesting on traditional Native American lands. Throughout the Great Basin, contemporary political, economic, and social issues continued to concern these many different neighboring tribes.

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Ned Blackhawk, Associate Professor, Department of History, American Indian Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Laurie Edwards