Great Basin culture area
The Great Basin culture area encompasses a vast region primarily located in Nevada and Utah, extending into parts of several neighboring states. This high-altitude area, characterized by steppe and semi-desert environments, has been home to nomadic hunting and gathering peoples for over ten thousand years. The inhabitants historically relied on a diverse diet, where plants constituted 70 to 80 percent of their intake, supplemented by hunting animals such as deer, antelope, and various smaller game. The social structure of these groups was flexible and egalitarian, primarily organized around extended families or kin cliques, with leadership based on individual skills rather than formal hierarchy.
Linguistically, the Great Basin is notable for its Numic languages, part of the larger Uto-Aztecan family, with the Washoe people speaking a different language from the Hokan family. Cultural practices included a range of religious beliefs centered around individualistic spirituality and the role of shamans, who performed healing and rituals for communal well-being. Overall, the Great Basin culture reflects a deep connection to its environment and a resilient adaptability to the challenges posed by its diverse landscapes.
Great Basin culture area
Category: Culture area
Language groups: Hokan, Numic (Shoshonean)
Tribes: Bannock, Gosiute, Kawaiisu, Mono (Monache), Numaga (Northern Paiute), Panamint, Paviotso (Northern Paiute), Shoshone, Ute, Washoe
The Great Basin, an area relatively high in altitude, includes all of Nevada and Utah, most of western Colorado, and portions of Idaho, Wyoming, southern Oregon, southeastern California, northern Arizona, and New Mexico. It is a “basin” between two large mountain ranges. Much of the region is steppe or semidesert, but true desert exists in southern Nevada and western Utah. The Great Basin covers an area of some 400,000 square miles, with internal river and stream drainage created by north-south mountain ranges that vary in elevation from 6,000 to 12,000 feet. Nomadic hunting and gathering people successfully inhabited the Great Basin for at least ten thousand years, and their ways of life remained relatively unchanged until European American incursion.
Language
All native speakers within the Great Basin, except the Washoe are members of one of three Numic languages (western, central, or southern Numic), a division of the Uto-Aztecan language family of northern Mexico. The term “Shoshonean” is commonly used in referring to Numic-speaking groups of the Great Basin. The Washoe, meanwhile, are members of the of the Hokan language family.
Technology and Subsistence
Depending on elevation and time of the year, vegetation types in the Great Basin vary greatly, with many plants of economic significance (such as creosote, various sagebrush, rice grass, and wheatgrass) found at lower elevations. In the higher elevations, the major seed tree is the piñon, which provided a so-called iron ration—its nuts and seeds are nutritious and store well.
The main food-obtaining activities of these highly mobile desert culture groups were hunting, gathering, and gleaning, strategies that required a relatively simple but effective multipurpose technology. Their annual subsistence round (annual migration pattern for exploiting various food sources) was based on obtaining the plant and animal resources that occurred at various elevations in different locations at regular times of the year. The major source of calorie intake was plants, which made up 70 to 80 percent of the diet of Basin peoples. In early spring, lettuce, spinach, wild potatoes, onions, rhubarb, and numerous rhizomes and shoots were collected. In late summer, a variety of seeds, berries, and medicines were collected, often while deer hunting. Seeds from mustard, salt brush, rabbitbrush, sand grass, and other plants were stored for winter. After a killing frost, women gathered tules.
The men hunted deer, antelope, elk, mountain sheep, rabbits, hares, gophers, lizards, snakes, mice, sage hens, and rats. Even insects, such as crickets, locusts, ants, and grasshoppers (which are 74 percent protein), were collected in great amounts. In some areas, larvae would accumulate in large mounds on beaches, and these were dried and stored in baskets or grass-lined pits for winter consumption.
Hunting was often done by individuals (rather than groups) using sinew-backed bows; in these instances the ability to stalk was more important than marksmanship. Rabbits and insects, however, were hunted in large collective drives that forced game into bush barriers, where they were killed. On occasion, secondary harvesting became necessary, as when seeds were taken from stores by rats or squirrels. Seeds could be collected from human feces and then roasted and ground into food.
Some areas of the Great Basin had lakes that were fished in late May and early June for large sucker and trout, using various technologies including torch-fishing, wide-mouth baskets, harpoons, and drag and dip nets. After removing the roe from some species, the fish were split and air-dried for future use.
Social Systems
In the absence of complex technology, the maintenance of a highly mobile and flexible social structure was critical as a “tool” in effectively exploiting the environment. The principal sociopolitical group in the Great Basin was the mobile and flexible extended family, or kin clique, which was self-sufficient and remained fairly isolated throughout the year. Families were nonlineal and bilateral-based. Similar in some ways to the Plateau Indians, groups were essentially egalitarian, and decisions were based on consensus of opinion. Leadership was frequently temporary, based on one’s skill, though more sedentary groupings had a headman, a “talker,” who kept his group informed of the condition and occurrence of food resources. This person encouraged cooperation and group tranquillity by resolving interpersonal conflicts.
Polygyny was not common, and it was usually sororal polygyny. The levirate and sororate were recognized, usually to intensify kin unions. There was some cross-cousin marriage. A significant division of labor by gender and age increased the group’s adaptive efficiency and tended to reduce conflict.
Belief Systems
Great Basin religion, not as complex as those of most other culture areas, was basically individualistic, though at certain times of the year the people were concerned with collective rituals to ensure world renewal, availability and redistribution of resources, and sociopolitical tranquillity. The dominant religious practitioner was the shaman, either male or female, who had acquired a tutelary spirit and power for curing, hunting, gambling, and other concerns through dreaming or the vision quest. Curing shamans were concerned primarily with treating illness, which was considered the result of taboo violation, a ghost, or spirit or object intrusion by a sorcerer. Shamans were skilled in ventriloquism and legerdemain, possessed songs, and had an impressive array of sacred items. Usually people did not seek power, as power was feared; its possession was considered dangerous, since it could impose considerable strain on the individual and could bring on accusations of sorcery.
A primary individual religious concern was the avoidance and placation of ghosts and theriomorphic forms that inhabited an area if a person’s burial was hastened or improperly conducted, or if any other number of moral transgressions were committed by the living. The afterlife was considered an enjoyable place, one of bountiful resources, dancing, games, and gambling.
Bibliography
Arkush, Brooke S. “The Great Basin Culture Area.” In Native North Americans: An Ethnographic Approach, edited by Daniel L. Boxberger. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1990.
D’Azevedo, Warren L., ed. Great Basin. Vol. 11 in Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
Fowler, Catherine S. “Subsistence.” In Great Basin, edited by Warren L. D’Azevedo. Vol. 11 in Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smtihsonian Institution Press, 1986.
Steward, Julian H. Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 120. Reprint. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1970.
Stewart, Omer C. “The Basin.” In The Native Americans, edited by Robert F. Spencer, Jesse D. Jennings, et al. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Culture Element Distributions: XIV, Northern Paiute.” University of California Anthrolopolgical Records 4 no. 3 (1941): 361-446.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Culture Element Distributions: XVII, Ute-Southern Paiute.” University of California Anthrolopolgical Records 6, no. 4 (1942): 231-355.