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Numu (Northern Paiute)
The Numu are also known as Northern Paiute or Paviotso. The name Paiute (pronounced "PY-yoot") is of European origin. Their traditional name for themselves is Numu or Numa, meaning "the people."
Aboriginal Lands:
Numu aboriginal lands include parts of California, Nevada, eastern Oregon, and southern Idaho. The landscape includes flat bottom-land, painted desert, canyon, plateau, and scenic mountain areas. These lands have enormous spiritual significance to the Numu people. Certain parts of the landscape are connected to Numu stories or spiritual beings. For example, the Stone Mother at Pyramid Lake is the ancestral mother to the Pyramid Lake Numu band. It was her tears that formed the lake (Pyramid Lake).
Language:
There are cultural and political differences between Numu groups that live in different areas, but they are unified by their language. The Numu language is in the Uto-Aztecan family. It is closely related to the language of the Mono people; together Numu and Mono make up the Western Numic subgroup of Numic languages (D'Azevedo and Sturtevant 1986). The number of people who speak Numu fluently has seriously declined since Euro-American settlement. A few of the reservations have created programs to revive the Numu language (University of California).
Traditional Culture:
The Numu have been forced to adopt aspects of the dominant American culture since Euro-American settlers took control of their lands and resources. Yet, they keep aspects of their traditional culture alive. Their clothing and homes are different from their ancestors, but they continue to maintain traditional values, create traditional art, and fish, hunt, and gather some of their traditional foods.
Clothing: The Numu traditionally wore a variety of clothing styles, but the most common styles will be discussed here. They made moccasins out of hide, buckskin, sagebrush bark, rush, or tule (The term tule refers to cattails, bulrushes, and similar plants). Women wore basket caps and a knee-length apron (nakwi) suspended by a belt. Some aprons only had a flap in the front, some also had a flap in the back. Men wore a breechlout (sasinubi) or loin cloth (topada) during the summer. In the northern regions men wore caps decorated with quail top-knots or other feathers (D'Azevedo and Sturtevant 1986).
During the winter men added buckskin shirts and fur capes. Both men and women added buckskin leggings (kusa) or leg wrappings (wisa wipa aga) in the winter. They made leg wrappings out of long strips of buckskin, badger skin, or twined sagebrush bark. For winter footwear they made overshoes of sagebrush bark and sometimes wore rabbitskin socks (D'Azevedo and Sturtevant 1986).
Men and women traditionally wore their hair lose and tattooed their face and body with simple designs. Women (and sometimes men) wore shell or stone pendants suspended from pierced ear. Men sometimes added fringes to their shirts and painted the seams red. Wealthy women wore calf-length dresses (kwasi) decorated with a fringe, bone and shell beads, or porcupine-quill wrapped strips (D'Azevedo and Sturtevant 1986).
Housing: Numu people living to the north (roughly from Surprise Valley, California into Oregon) built conical winter houses (kahni) by fastening tule or grass over a framework of willow poles. These houses had a smoke hole and a skin doorway. The Numu of present-day northern Nevada built dome-shaped, mat-covered houses (kani nobi). They build a tubular entryway that was often covered by a mat. During the summer they usually moved into cooler brush windbreaks or shades (D'Azevedo and Sturtevant 1986).
Art: Numu people traditionally used the tule plant to make gathering bags, matting, and hunting decoys. They also made boats out of tules secured with cattails (D'Azevedo and Sturtevant 1986). A few Numu artists continue to make baskets the traditional way, which requires an intimate connection with Numu plants, land, and language. Numu stories teach basket-makers how to weave only good thoughts into the baskets as they are making them (Briggs 1999).
Economy: Traditional food sources are important to Numu culture. Numu people supplement their diet by hunting elk, antelope, deer, quail, and groundhog and gathering roots, chokecherries, and other berries (Burns Paiute Tribe). Salmon, sturgeon, and lamprey eels were traditionally important food sources, but the Numu have had to change their fishing practices because dam projects have diverted water from their lakes and rivers (CCRH). The Numu of the Pyramid Lake and Duck Valley Reservations are working to bring back fish populations that have been diminished over the past century (Pyramid Lake, Duck Valley).
Different bands of Nuwuvi were named for the geographic region they occupied or for their staple food. For instance, the Pyramid Lake Paiute were traditionally known as Kuyuidokado (Cui-ui Eaters). The Cui-ui fish continue to be an essential part of Pyramid Lake's culture and economy. The Pyramid Lake Paiute are trying to bring back populations of Cui-ui, which were seriously diminished by upstream water diversions in the 1920s (Pyramid Lake 2005, Davis 1994).
Numu reservations are too small for the people to rely on traditional resources. Numu people depend on income from farming or ranching and most of the reservations have a high unemployment rate. All of the tribal governments are pursuing economic development, which is critical to allow people to continue living on the reservation (Tiller 1995).
History:
Euro-American settlers took most of the Numu aboriginal lands. In the 1860s cattlemen with huge herds of livestock began settling on Numu land and depleted the resources Numu people depended on. The Numu tried to defend themselves against the invasion by raiding Euro-American camps. In response, the U.S. Army set up a military outpost and eventually established Fort Harney. Violence cumulated in the Bannock War of 1878, in which the Numu allied with the Bannock. Numu warriors were sent to a prison camp in Yakima, Washington. Upon their release they were sent to the Yakima, Umatilla, and Warm Springs reservations. The Western Shoshone reservation was later expanded to include the Numu by Executive Order. By the beginning of the 20th century, less than 5% of Numu aboriginal lands remained in their control (Davis 1994).
When the reservations were established, many Numu refused to relocate. Instead, they established small settlements on the outskirts of Euro-American towns. Two small reservations were established when Fort Bidwell and Fort McDermitt were abandoned in the 1890s (Davis 1994).
Present Land Base:
Today the Numu live on reservations in Nevada, California, Oregon, and the southern part of Idaho. They also share reservations with Shoshone, Washoe, and Warm Springs tribes. Nearly half of their population live in urban areas off the reservation (Tiller 1995).
Additional Reading
Northern Paiute
Paiute Indians
Bannock tribe
Indian Tribes of Nevada
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