GREAT BASIN INDIAN

Distribution of Numic languages and major groups of Great Basin area Indians. member of any of the aboriginal North American peoples inhabiting the Great Basin and adjacent areas of the United States. The Great Basin Indians occupied a 398,000-square-mile (1,031,000-square-kilometre) area of interior western North America. Population density was sparse, ranging from 0.8 to 11.7 persons per 100 square miles. The area includes the physiographic Great Basin-the interior mountain and basin region of present-day southeastern California, Nevada, southeastern Oregon, and western Utah-and the Snake River Plain of Idaho, the mountains to the northeast, the Bridger Basin of southwestern Wyoming, the Colorado Plateau area of Utah and Colorado, and the mountains of central and southern Colorado. The entire region is arid to semi-arid, annual average precipitation being four inches in the lowlands to 20-25 inches in the mountains. The precipitation falls primarily in the form of winter snow. Ecologically, the area is characterized by a vertical succession of life zones, each with a dominant xerophytic (desert-type) flora and related fauna. The languages spoken by the Indians are of two widely divergent language families. The Washo, whose territory centred on Lake Tahoe, speak a Hokan language related to languages spoken in parts of California, Arizona, and Baja California. The remainder of the Great Basin culture area 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 three Numic branches, Western, Central, and Southern, each branch having a pair of languages. Western Numic languages are Mono, spoken by the Eastern Mono and Owens Valley Paiute of California, and Northern Paiute, spoken by the several Northern Paiute groups of northeastern California, western Nevada (Paviotso), and southern Oregon and by the Bannock of southern Idaho. Central Numic languages are Panamint, spoken by the Koso, or Panamint Shoshoni, near Death Valley, California; and Shoshone, spoken by the Western Shoshoni of Nevada, the Gosiute of western Utah, the now extinct "Weber Ute" of northern Utah, the Northern Shoshoni of Idaho, the Lemhi and Sheep Eater (Tukuarika) Shoshoni of the northeastern Idaho mountains, the Eastern (or Wind River) Shoshoni of western Wyoming, and the Comanche of the southern Plains. The Comanche separated from the Eastern Shoshoni in late prehistoric times, moved southward through the Rocky Mountains, and became Plains Indians culturally. Southern Numic languages are Kawaiisu, spoken by the Kawaiisu band of southern California, and Ute, spoken by the several Southern Paiute bands, including the Chemehuevi of southeastern California and the Las Vegas, Moapa, Kaibab, Shivwits, and Uinkarets bands of southern Nevada, southern Utah, and northern Arizona. Ute is also spoken by the several Ute bands, the Fish Lake, Red Lake, Pahvant, and Tumpanogots of central Utah, the various Northern Ute bands of eastern Utah and the several Southern Ute bands of southern Colorado. 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; those without horses were Southern Paiute. The Numic peoples called themselves "Numa" or "Numu," meaning "people" or "human beings." The Washo called themselves "Washoe," meaning "Washo people" as distinguished from people of other tribes. Linguistic and archaeological evidence indicates that the Washo had long been separated from other California Hokan-speaking groups, possibly for several millennia. Similar evidence indicates that the Numic-speaking peoples spread across the Great Basin from southeastern California sometime after the year 1000. Additional reading There is no general monograph on all Great Basin Indians. Catherine S. Fowler (compiler), Great Basin Anthropology: A Bibliography (1970), lists some 6,500 sources on the area. Summary articles on various aspects of Great Basin anthropology are contained in Earl H. Swanson, Jr. (ed.), Languages and Cultures of Western North America (1970). The earliest systematic study of Great Basin Indians was by John Wesley Powell; his work is detailed in Don D. Fowler and Catherine S. Fowler (eds.), Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868-1880 (1971). Modern ethnographic studies include Julian H. Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups (1938, reprinted 1970); Robert F. Murphy and Yolanda Murphy, Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society (1960, reprinted 1976); Virginia Cole Trenholm and Maurine Carley, The Shoshonis: Sentinels of the Rockies (1964, reissued 1981); James F. Downs, The Two Worlds of the Washo, an Indian Tribe of California and Nevada (1966); and Isabel T. Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography (1964, reprinted 1976). Religious beliefs are treated by Willard Z. Park, Shamanism in Western North America: A Study in Cultural Relationships (1938, reprinted 1975); and Beatrice Blyth Whiting, Paiute Sorcery (1950, reprinted 1971). Don D. Fowler Catherine S. Fowler The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica