Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin

The Indigenous Peoples of the Great Basin are Native Americans of the northern Great Basin, Snake River Plain, and upper Colorado River basin. The "Great Basin" is a cultural classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas and a cultural region located between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, in what is now Nevada, and parts of Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. There is very little precipitation in the Great Basin area which affects the lifestyles and cultures of the inhabitants.

Original inhabitants of the region may have arrived by 12,000 BCE. 9,000 BCE to 400 CE marks the Great Basin Desert Archaic Period, following by the time of the Fremont culture, who were hunter-gatherers, as well as agriculturalists. Numic language-speakers, ancestors of today's Western Shoshone and both Northern and Southern Paiute peoples entered the region around the 14th century CE.

The first Europeans to reach the area was the Spanish Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, who passed far from present day Delta, Utah in 1776. Great Basin settlement was relatively free of non-Native settlers until the first Mormon settlers arrived in 1847. Within ten years, the first Indian reservation was established, in order to assimilate the native population. The Goshute Reservation was created in 1863. The attempted acculturation process included sending children to Indian schools and limiting the landbases and resources of the reservations.

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