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Table of Contents
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Introduction
The Great Basin is a dry desert located in the southwestern United States. The Great Basin Indians were a diverse group of peoples all brought together by a commonality in their language and geographic setting. When mapping tribal distributions, early anthropologists such as Julian Steward often used linguistics to determine the regions and territories of each tribe. Due to a common Shoshone language, these tribes are sometimes grouped together and called the Great Basin Shoshoneans. There are three divisions of the Shoshonean linguistic family: Mono-Paviotso (Northern Paiute), Shoshone-Comanche (Shoshone), and Ute-Chemehuevi (Southern Paiute). There are four regions of the Great Basin, in which bans are usually subdivided:
These tribes, although linked by a common dialect, differed in political organization, territoriality, and social organization. The Northern Paiute, Southern Paiute, and some parts of the Shoshone were organized into villages, where all occupants of a village cooperated with each other. It is thought that other groups may have had this organization prior to the introduction of the horse by Europeans. These villages were often related, whether it be by economic factors or social factors, to neighboring villages and often they would come together to hunt or gather.
In other parts of the Great Basin within the Shoshone and the Ute, the main organization was the band. This organization was seen in less populated areas, and people owned and defended their territory. The horse may have changed the ecology of some of these peoples and lent to their organization into bands as opposed to villages. These tribes, while similar in some ways, were also unique as a part of the Great Basin distribution (Park et al., 1938).
Distribution map of the four primary groups of the Great Basin.
Contemporary Great Basin Indians
The tribes of the Great Basin area today no longer live as hunter-gather groups. However, there is important research that is ongoing among these groups. This research helps to shed light on the acculturation process that these groups have faced through their interaction with outside groups. The research presented here is not exhaustive, but meant to highlight the work being done currently among contemporary Shoshone, Paiute, and Ute.
Contemporary Great Basin Native Americans
One problem facing these groups is a loss of their traditional environment and plant species that are culturally important. An example of this pressure is the Yucca Mountain project. In order to evaluate the impact this project would have on the Great Basin Native Americans a study was conducted in which the cultural significance of various plant species was assessed. The importance of this work is that Native Americans take a holistic approach and say all species are equally important. This then allows anthropologists and Native Americans themselves to advocate for protection of these environments more effectively (Stoffle, 1990).
Contemporary Southern Paiute
Another topic of importance is the role of women in these societies. This is one of the most important aspects of acculturation. A study done among the Southern Paiute shows that women play a vital role in the economic life of the tribe. They also are taking active roles in political spheres as well. However, their influence is mainly in education and other traditional female roles. This shows that while division of labor outside the home is reflecting more western values, inside the household the role of women is more traditional (Knack, 1989).
Contemporary Ute
Today, the Ute reservation lies within a three-county area called the Uintah Basin. It is the second largest Indian Reservation in the United States, encompassing over 4.5 million acres. Ute society has a tribal membership of approximately 3,157 and over half of its members live on the reservation itself. The Ute manage their own tribal government and administer approximately 1.3 million acres of trust land. Currently, in the Northern Ute Indian tribes there are efforts to introduce a written form of the ancestral language to decrease the resistance of oral language and fluency in Northern Ute reservations. Literacy in the Northern Ute language is not incorporated in traditional ancestral language and therefore is not readily accepted. This push towards literacy is seen to be beneficial because tribal members believe it will help strengthen educational opportunities and may prevent children from dropping out of school. However, written language violates features of the Ute language such hierarchical access to knowledge and status within tribes (Leap, 1991). See a contemporary Ute dance here.
Contemporary Shoshone
The Timbisha Shoshone won a long-standing dispute with the Federal government over land rights in 1998. This dispute began in 1933 when President Herbert Hoover confiscated the Timbisha’s tribal lands and created the Death Valley National Monument. President Clinton repatriated 10,000 acres of land to the tribe in November of 2000. Today, the Timbisha Shoshone number approximately 300 members.
In the Wind River Shoshone, who today live on a reservation in Wyoming, there are different orientations on life between the generations. In many older generation Native Americans, their view is more closely like that of their ancestors, "Indian Oriented" whereas the second or third generations are more likely to be "white oriented." This is based on family structure and child rearing, however it illustrates that in today's world some Native Americans are struggling to maintain their own identity (Tefft, 1968).
References Cited
Knack, Martha C.
1989 Contemporary Southern Paiute Women and the Measurement of Women's Economic and Political Status. Ethnology 28(3): 233-248
Leap, William L.
1991 Pathways and Barriers to Indian Language Literacy. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 22:21-41.
Park, Willard Z., Edgar E. Siskin, Anne M. Cooke, William T. Mulloy, Marvin K. Opler, and Isabel T. Kelly.
1938 Tribal Distribution in the Great Basin. American Anthropologist 40, (4): 622-638.
Stoffle, Richard W, et al.
1990 Calculating the Cultural Significance of the American Indian Plants: Paiute and Shoshone Ethnobotany at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. American Anthropologist, New Series 92(2): 416-432
Tefft, Stanton K.
1968. Intergenerational Value Differentials and Family Structure among the Wind River Shoshone. American Anthropologist 70(2):330-333
External Links
The Timbisha Shoshone website …
