Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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Once they adopted horse culture, Northern Paiutes developed mounted “bands” that, in conjunction with their Northern Shoshone cousins, traveled beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Plains in search of buffalo. But even in the early nineteenth century most Paiute groups were seemingly without horses if the testimony of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark or Hudson’s Bay trapper Peter Skene Ogden can be trusted. Throughout the 1830s historical documents seem to indicate that most Northern Paiutes were carrying on a traditional subsistence culture without the aid of horses or firearms.²⁸

The period of expansion of the use of the horse and the rise of raiding parties in the 1850s coincided with the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Fort and the establishment of the California Trail that channeled emigrants through the heartland of Nevada’s Paiute population. This mass migration impacted the subsistence patterns of the natives, with seed plants, fuel sources, water holes, and large game being virtually eliminated on both sides of the trail.²⁹