The Northern Paiutes and the Owens Valley segment developed cultures and societies well adapted to the harsh realities of a desert environment. Generally speaking, the Owens Valley environment was favorable to that prevailing elsewhere in the Great Basin, allowing the Owens Valley Paiute to develop a semi-settled life unknown in other parts of Numu territory. Depending on the season, most northern Numic speakers occupied a specific camping place centering on either a foraging range or a lake or wetland that provided fish and/or waterfowl—although dependence on fishing and communal duck hunting was virtually unknown among the villagers of Owens Valley. Pronghorn antelope, mountain sheep, deer, and rabbits were the objects of communal hunts, while piñon nuts would be gathered in the mountains. The Paiutes traded pine nuts and salt for acorns and acorn flour from the California tribes. Grass seeds and edible roots supplied nutrients in the meadows and marshes.12
Owens Valley Paiute housing took a variety of forms. Most Paiutes had a “mountain house” that was a high altitude structure (above 6000 feet) used during fall and winter consisting of two upright posts with side beams sloped from the ground in the shape of a tent. The roof was made of pine boughs. The winter “valley house” was larger in diameter, 15 to 20 feet, built around a 2-foot deep pit with tules and earth covering the outside. Summer houses were simple semicircular brush windbreaks, not unlike the general Great Basin wikiup. The most durable structure was the sweathouse or communal assembly lodge, a semi-subterranean house that could be as much as 25 feet in diameter. It was used as a men’s house or dormitory, a community meeting house, a sweathouse, and a ceremonial center. The erection of a sweathouse was supervised by the group’s headman, who also nominally owned and maintained the structure.13
Like their eastern cousins, the Western Shoshone of southern Nevada—individuals, nuclear, and extended families—moved freely between communities and tribelets, which, again like the Shoshone, named their subgroups after food sources. For example, the Kuyui Pah (Pyramid Lake) Paiutes were known as Kuyuidokado or Cui-Ui Ticutta (kuyui eaters). The kuyui (or cui-ui) is a bottom feeder sucker ancient to, and found only in, Pyramid Lake and sacred to the Numu. Likewise, the Carson City Paiutes were known as “tule eaters,” while the Mono Indians of California were “brine fly eaters.”14
The Owens Valley Paiutes were unique in that from at least the beginning of the nineteenth century (and maybe dating from aboriginal times) they were practicing irrigation that was, as one source described it, “simply ‘an artificial reproduction of natural conditions’ existing in the swampy lowlands of Owens Valley.”15 The practice continued until the forced exodus of the Owens Valley people to Fort Tejon in 1863 and the subsequent depopulation of the area. Communal labor was utilized to construct and maintain check damns and feeder ditches that directed the spring runoff to swampy grounds where yellow nut-grass and other bulbous plants were harvested by Indian farmers using digging sticks in the fall. As anthropologists Sven Liljeblad and Catherine Fowler have noted, “At the time of European contact, artificial irrigation of wild crops in Owens Valley was an integral part of communal activity and an essential feature of traditional village organization.”16 As several scholars have observed, the Owens Valley group is the best example in North America of a group that developed its own system of “vegeculture.”17
Politically, the Paiute subgroups and bands were led by headmen or head speakers, usually referred to by outsiders as “chiefs.” Ordinarily, the main leadership positions were chosen by consensus or election by a small group of Paiute elders, and most often the speaker was a hereditary leader. Apart from the headman, other lesser but important roles included those of shaman (who could be either male or female), rabbit boss, mediator, and spokesman or spokeswoman.
One of the more important “chiefs” of the Northern Paiutes was Captain Truckee of Pyramid Lake. He was well known to emigrant parties since Truckee often served as their guide through the Sierra Mountains to California. The emigrants even named the Truckee River after him. At one time he joined John C. Fremont in the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846. When he died in the fall of 1860 his son, Winnemucca (“Old Winnemucca,” not to be confused with his nephew Numaga, “Young Winnemucca”), followed his father’s policy of maintaining friendship and peace with the taibo or white man (see Figure 2.1). Winnemucca left Pyramid Lake in 1865 after the Mud Lake massacre, traveled to the mountains in Oregon, and never returned to Pyramid Lake. He died in 1882. His daughter, Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmetony), became an important mediator and translator for the Paiute people and championed their cause throughout her life (see Figures 2.2 and 2.3).18
Figure 2.1 Chief Winnemucca (or Old Winnemucca), ca. 1870. Noe and Lee Studio, Virginia City, Nevada.
Courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society.
Figure 2.2 Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmetony). Numu/Northern Paiute.
Courtesy of Nevada Historical Society.
Figure 2.3 The Winnemucca Family: Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmetony), Old Chief Winnemucca, Sarah’s brother, Natches (Natchez or “boy”), Captain Jim (Pyramid Lake Chieftain), and unidentified boy. The youngster was identified by Joe Ely, Historian of the Intertribal Council of Nevada as Ed Winnemucca, adopted by Sarah. She found him abandoned in a barn during an Indian war. Photo likely taken in Washington, D.C. in 1880. Information by Catherine Magee, Director, Nevada Historical Society.
Like the Apache and Navajo, an important ritual for the Paiute was the menarche or puberty rite. After her first menstrual period, the young girl would be isolated for four days in a special hut built by the girl’s mother. During this time she would take cold baths, undergo steaming in a pit, and avoid all the taboos against drinking cold drinks, touching her hair or face, and eating animal food and eggs. Again, like the Apache Sunrise Ceremony, she could only scratch her head with a stick and not with her fingers. She would run in the direction of the sunrise in the morning and sunset in the evening. On the morning of the fifth day the ceremony would close with a cold water bath. At subsequent menses she would use the head scratcher, avoid men, and wash her entire body. Akin to puberty rites elsewhere, the ceremonies and rituals were as important for the community as for the individual.19
The Paiutes had several creation stories that told about the beginning of the earth, the formation of Paiutes and mankind in general, the origin of death, and resurrection after defeat and death. The hero Wolf (known as Tap or U’nűpi in Owens Valley, or “Isha” for the Pyramid Lake peoples) was lonely, so he made Coyote (“Itsa” for Pyramid Lake Paiutes) and they paddled around the entire flooded world. Since they had no earth to run back and forth on, Wolf took some dirt and placed it in the water, where it continued to spread and grow larger until the earth became as it is today.20
The origin of Paiutes and mankind occurred after Korawini, the beautiful woman who lived in Long Valley north of Owens