Paiute War

Paiute War
Part of the American Indian Wars
Numaga, War chief of the Paiute
Date 1860 Location Pyramid Lake, Nevada Result US Army victory
Belligerents
United States	Paiute Shoshone Bannock
Commanders and leaders
William Ormsby† John C. Hays Joseph Stewart	Numaga
Strength
207 cavalry 649 militia	~500 warriors
Casualties and losses
~80 killed ~35 wounded	Unknown killed Unknown wounded

The Paiute War, also known as the Pyramid Lake War, Washoe Indian War and the Pah Ute War, was an armed conflict between Northern Paiutes allied with the Shoshone and the Bannock against intruding settlers from the United States, supported by military forces. It took place in May 1860 in the vicinity of Pyramid Lake in the Utah Territory, now in the northwest corner of present US state of Nevada. The war was preceded by a series of increasingly violent incidents, culminating in two pitched battles in which approximately eighty settlers were killed. The number of Paiutes killed in action is unrecorded. Smaller raids and skirmishes continued until a cease-fire was agreed to in August 1860; there was no treaty.

Early settlement of what is now northwestern Nevada had a tremendously disruptive effect on the Northern Paiute people. Shoshone and Paiute had subsisted on the sparse resources of the desert by hunting deer and rabbit, eating grasshoppers, rodents, seeds, nuts, berries, and roots. The fragility of the Great Basin ecosystem magnified this disruption despite the relatively low density of the settlers. The miners felled single-leaf pinyon groves, a major food source for the Paiute, and because of the Nevada deserts settled near water sources. The settlers' trampled or ate the sparse vegetation. In addition, settlers and Paiutes competed for grazing lands, where the settlers tried to run cattle. Indians partly adapted to the change by trading their finely woven baskets and deer and rabbit skins for food and goods. Other times settlers gave them food or blankets while some took jobs farming for the settlers or served as stock tenders on the Pony Express stations. Nonetheless they resented the encroachment into their territory. Chief Numaga traveled to Virginia City and aired the grievances of the Paiutes. Herders had driven cattle all over the Paiute grazing land, letting their livestock eat grass for Paiute ponies. Worst he claimed, these cattlemen threatened violence if Chief Numaga did not return cattle they claimed as missing from their herds. However cattle men instead told Weatherlow that Numaga and the Indians were extorting two cattle a week from them.

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