NEVADA has made important contribution to support the conclusion that what is now the southwestern part of the United States was inhabited by human beings as far back as eight to ten thousand >eais ago. The oldest evidence of such habitation in Nevada was found in Gypsum Cave, about twenty miles northeast of Las Vegas, during excavations carried on in 1930 and 1931. This cave had been discovered about the time white men first began to settle in Nevada but had attracted attention merely because of its gypsum deposits until someone be^an to dig down through the many layers of deposits on the floor of its five deep chambers. The upper layers revealed relics of fairlj recent Paiute occupation; farther down relics of earlier cultures were found—the Pueblo III and, lower, the Basketmaker, Eventually the excavators reached layers of excrement deposited by the long-extinct ground sloth. Theie among fossil remains of the ground sloth—bones, claws, and wisps of coarse, yellowish hair—weie found charred pieces of wood, worked flint dart points, and primitive ropes of twisted smew—sure evidence of man's presence in the cave during the lifetime of the prehistoric beast. Of especial interest was the discovery of short, painted wooden shafts, possibly primitive atlatls, or spear-throwers.

Also in the southeastern part of the State, in an area roughly coinciding with, though slightly more extensive than the creosote bush zone (see Plant and Animal Life), are several sites revealing occupation during the Basketmaker and up through the first three Pueblo cultures. The latest and most extensive of the settlements yet discovered was that of Pueblo Grande de Nevada—called Lost City. The site, now largely hidden beneath the waters of the northern arm of Lake Mead, probably flourished some time between 600 and 900 A. D. Excavations at this site, which was five or six miles long, brought to light skeletons, and thousands of pieces of pottery—some intact and some broken—as well as turquoise jewelry, bits of basketry, scraps of cotton textiles, stone and bone implements, and shell beads. Vestiges of irrigation ditches were traced and ruins were found that indicated houses, or storage rooms, built below ground, as well as flat-roofed houses erected above ground.

The full sequence of primitive habitation in the State has not vet been traced; it is not known whether the Basketmaker and Pueblo peoples had any relationship to the early Gypsum Cave users, but the periods of later occupation can be dated definitely and relationship between contemporary peoples of northern Arizona and of southern Nevada is clear. The time when the villages of northern Arizona were developed has been established by a study of tree rings. While theie is no written record or well-established tradition as to why these populous cities were deserted, there is good reason to believe that they weie abandoned during a period of great drought. Probably the arrival of other tribes from the north prevented a return of the Pueblos to this region.

Just when human habitation began in the nuitiiern part of Nevada is still unclear. There are a great many camp sites and other evidences of early occupation but too few have b*en studied to establish beyond question whether these were left by tribes that inhabited the region during the past two thousand years, or whether they are the vestiges of peoples who may have been drifting eastward during some more remote period. Some students contend that primitive peoples weie living on the shores of ancient Lake Lahontan when it covered a large part of western Nevada; but the date when the waters of the lake receded has not been detei mined—the final great recession probably began sometime between a thousand and five thousand years ago.

Work at Lovelock Cave, in the Humboldt Valley south of Lovelock, began in 1912. Cultures of three distinct periods were found; surface finds were easily identified as belonging to the latest Paiute period while the oldest artifacts showed Basketmaker influence, which roughly coincided with the beginning of the Christian era.

Well-preserved, desiccated human bodies, as well as skeletons of men, women and children wrre unearthed in Lovelock Cave. One mummy was that of a man si\ feet six inches in height; the female remains were of shorter stature. The hair of some of the mummies had a reddish tinge, which gave rise to stories of "red haired Indians"; the color, however, was the result of chemical change after death. Among the artifacts were grinding implements, cutting and scraping implements of obsidian and flint, fishhooks and other domestic implements of bone, also wearing apparel made from the skins and feathers of birds and the hides of animals, and articles of personal adornment made from sheik There were also weapons of war and the hunt, including adatl of the Basketmaker period, and bow and arrow fragments of later ti

In or near the Humboldt Valley are the sites of many other former habitations of aborigines, including Ocala Cave, thiee miles southeast of Ocala, in which seventy-seven early artifacts were found under a guano layer. At the northern end of Humboldt Sink patches of ground are strewn with fragments of rock used in making obsidian and flint implements. Other sites are near Troy and Granite Point and around Pyramid Lake.

An important find made in the vicinity of Walker Lake, farther south, was a spearhead among the bones of a mastodon.

Petroglyphs are found on flat rock surfaces in many sections of the State; these designs were made by gouging the rock surface with tools fashioned out of harder materials such as quartz. The modern Indians can give no clue to the meaning of the symbols, and their interpretation has baffled all scientific investigators; they are not unlike the petro- glyphs found in other parts of the world.

In the Valley of Fire near the Colorado River are many petroglyphs showing crude outlines of turtles, lizards, deer, mountain sheep, and men, as well as circles, or straight and wave lines. In the Forty Mile State Park in Ciater Valley, northeast of Beatly, are thousands of ancient symbols on boulders, on mesa rims, and the rims of some craters. Cut in the rocks ten miles south of Pioche are fifty figures resembling sheep. Near Kane Springs, eighty miles southwest, some of the most carefully executed and best preserved petroglyphs were found; these represent men on horseback pursuing animals and were certainly made after white men arrived in North America. Some petroglyphs in southern Nevada seem to have been the work of the Pueblos and their recent ancestors.

Four miles east of Sparks is the Court of Antiquity, on whose walls are animals (mostly reptiles), and the usual rows of concentric circles. North of Sparks on a ledge in a steep canyon on the side of Spanish Spring Mountain, where the Truckee River has cut off the point of a hill, designs have been found that suggest a square and compass and a woman holding a branch with outstretched arms.

Eight miles below old Fort Churchill, by the Carson River, on a big basaltic rock with a broad smooth top, shapes have been incised that may have had some magico-religious significance. The figures combine parts of the bodies of animals and birds, and among these wavy lines and figures are interspersed. At Reveille are many incised characters of various kinds. On the rocky walls flanking Walker River, ne?»r Walker Lake, are lings, plants, human ioiins, footprints, waving Lnes, and circles.

South of Fallen are two caverns with petroglyphs on their walls, and in Pershing County walls and clifis with ancient picture writings are numerous. The Indians living in the northern region when the Yankee trappers appeared were Plateau Shoshoneans, including some Bannock and more Paviotso or Northern Paiute, who also lived in northern California and eastern Oregon; Shoshone and Southern Paiute were scattered across Nevada from southern California to Utah. The Washoe, living around Lake Tahoe in Nevada and California, possessed a similar culture, though their language was not related to that of the Shoshone or of their neighbors. Some of the tribes were subdivided into smaller groups or bands. Among the Northern Paiute (Paviotso) the bands varied in size from five to ten families, numbering as many as one hundred persons; each needed fifty to one hundred square miles of land for subsistence. In winter the band would congregate in one or two fairly large semipermanent settlements, but in the spring small family groups scattered over the country in a continuous hunt for food. Private property rights were almost unknown, but some western Nevada families claimed rights over certain pine nut groves. For the most part, however, all families were free to wander over the lands controlled by their band.

The winter hut, or wickiup, was conical or domed, with a hole in the top for a smoke vent. The frame, of poles, was covered with bark, dried brush, or tule matting, depending on what was available. In the winter settlements a sweat house was generally erected—a small domed structure covered with grass or skins and placed near a spring or stream. Water poured on hot stones filled the house with steam. The sweat baths were taken for therapeutic purposes, but were frequently ceremonial as well. For summer shelter the Paviotso merely erected four poles to support flat roofs of grass or brush.

Explorers and trappers, as well as later travelers crossing Nevada, were appalled by the extreme poverty and cultural backwardness of lie Paiute. Fremont wrote in 1844 that the Indians he met represented "humanity ... in its lowest form and moat elementary state." The early visitors also reported that the Indians were too weak to force their way into lands where game and foodstufe were more abundant, and that they exhibited none of the boldness characteristic of the Plains Indians; the Indians would attack from ambush for th« most insignificant booty and would run great risks to get a single ox. This driving need for whatever they could manage to steal—a far different thing from the Plains Indian's game of pilfering—made the northern Paiute

far mote troublesome to travelers than their numbers warranted. The Bannock, near tie headwaters of the Humboldt, were friendlier.

Large game was scarce in most of the iegkm in early days, and the food supply consisted of plants, small game, and insects. Berries and the seeds of many kinds of grasses were beaten to a paste as were roots and bulbs, which were dug up with pointed sticks. In the western part of the Territory pine nuts were gathered on the wooded ranges in the late fall and stored for wiater use, and ia the south the pods of the mesquite were also relied on to furnish a food reserve for the winter. Lizards (chuckwallas) and tortoises were prized articles of diet and a swarm of grasshoppers was the occasion for a great least; a circle of beaters would drive die insects into a central pit where they were boiled or roasted. After the feast, if any grasshoppers were left, they were pounded into paste, formed into cakes, and dried for storage.

Gathering food stuffs, aside from meat, was the women's work, though the men did assist in the pine nut harvest, particularly by climbing trees and knocking the nuts down. Seeds, collected in tall conical baskets, were freed from their husks by beating, then winnowed on trays, and parched; hard seeds and nuts were crushed on a flat stone or in a mortar. Food for winter was usually stored ia grass-lined pits near the winter villages.

The Indians were particularly dependent on game in the winter, v/hen the number of men in the bands made communal hunts possible. Rabbits, gophers, and squirrels were equally prized. With infinite patience the Indians would make fiber nets about one hundred feet long and four feet high, which were set up in a semicircle or strung across a ca^-on. The rabbits driven into this trap were killed by clubbing or with arrows. Antelope were occasionally caught by the same method but a shaman directed the antelope hunts and decreed when his time would be propitious. As a rule the few mountain sheep were hunted by individuals. Sometimes the ducks, Baud hens, and geese on the lakes were hunted from rafts of tule, but more often the Indians would divide into parties and snare the birds with nets stretched between stakes in the water* They also made clever decoys to bring the birds within reach of their arrows. In addition to bows and arrows these Indians used various types of dubs as weapons.

The Paviotso and Washoe were particularly dependent on fish and had various ingenious devices for catching them with nets, spears, and weirs. They also daoim«d pooh and peiaoned them with a mash of leaves to VOi the

Because of the scarcity of skins and fiber plants, little clothing was worn in summer except the breech cloth of the men and the double apron or fiber skirt of the women. In winter, those who could manage it usually had a garment made of strips of rabbit fur; skins of thirty to fifty jack rabbits were needed for a single robe.

The most highly developed and elaborate craft of the Paviotso was basketry. Both twining and coiling were employed and a variety of forms was produced, including large conical burden baskets, water jars coated with pitch, winnowing trays, cooking baskets, and cradle baskets.

Marriage was usually accompanied by an exchange of gifts between the families concerned. The young man lived with his wife's family and his labor contributed to their household economy until the first child was born. A widow could be claimed by the younger brother of her deceased husband, and a widower could marry the younger sister of his late wife. Plurality of wives sometimes occurred, since a man had the privilege of marrying his wife's younger sisters also.

A puberty ceremony for girls, observed by all Nevada Indians, was primarily a purification rite with the addition of magical rites to insure the girl's industriousness. There was no corresponding rite for boys.

None of the highly-developed religious rituals of the Plains type or of the types common in the Southwest existed among the hard-pressed Nevada Indians. Supernatural power was claimed by some individuals through dreams, but never by fasting or self-torture. Persons who established recognition along such lines became shamans and used their powers as leaders of the hunts or in curing the sick. The treatment involved both exorcism by singing and a sucking out of the disease, as among many other North American tribes. Herbs were also employed.

When death came to a member of the Washoe, the corpse was burned with some of his property. At a mourning ceremony held a year later more property was destroyed by fire. On the other hand the Northern Paiute buried their dead in shallow graves or in niches among the rocks. Frequently the mourners cut their hair, and the name of the deceased was taboo for several years. The Southern Paiute of the Moapa region held a wailing ceremony, following cremation, that lasted from one to five nights.

Most ceremonies were linked with the social life of the tribe and took place during the winter. The Southern Paiute of today have acquired the Bear Dance from the Ute; it is largely a social affair, how- even The principal diversion of the Indian men was gambling, but they

had numerous elaborate games, in which the women only occasionally participated.

With the arrival of white men in numbers a rapid change took place in the life of the Nevada Indians. After several Indian attacks on whites along the travel routes military outposts were established. The Pyramid Lake affair (see Wilderness to Modern State) resulted in establishment of Fort Churchill and many Indians fled to the deserts. Others hung about the new mining camps and were occasionally emr ployed as manual laborers.

In 1874 the Government established the Pyramid Lake and Walker River reservations; the year before the small Moapa River Reservation had been set aside and three years later the Duck Valley was created. The 1939 census conducted by the Indian Bureau found 5,395 people in the State who were classified as Indians, more than half of them in non-reservation areas. The majority are Paiute and the second largest group is composed of Shoshone; about 10 per cent are Washoe; slightly more than a hundred belong to Pueblo and other tribes.

In 1892 the Washoe were given individual allotments, but many sections of the area were so barren that they could be used only for sheep raising. In 1916 Congress had to appropriate ten thousand dollars for the purchase of further land and water for these Indians, and five thousand for their support; of the five parcels of land bought, the largest contained only a little more than one hundred acres and only three families were living on them in 1924. Today the Washoes live for the most part around Reno and Carson City; many work on ranches and some go to Lake Tahoe in the summer to act as boatmen and guides. Their wives make baskets for the tourist trade. Before Datsolali, an old Washoe basketmaker, died in 1925, she had achieved a high reputation for artistry of her work, which has rarely been equaled in fineness and regularity of stitches, symmetry, and blending of colors. One of her baskets is in the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh.

There are now three reservation hospitals for the Indians of Nevada with approximately one hundred beds in all. Education is available to all Indians, and various rehabilitation projects are being developed.