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Indians 101: A very short overview of the Gosiute Indians [1]
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Date: 2025-02-27
The traditional homeland of the Gosiute Indians was south and west of Great Salt Lake. They lived in the Tooele, Rush, and Skull valleys.
This is a part of the high desert area known as the Great Basin. This is an area which is characterized by low rainfall and extremes of temperature.
Gosiute is also spelled as Go-sha-Utes, Goshee Utes, Goshoots, Go-Shutes, and Gosh Yuta. Some scholars feel that the Gosiutes are a Shoshone band in terms of culture and language.
Subsistence
Prior to the European invasion, the scattered Indian nations of the Great Basin engaged in an intensive utilization of their desert environment. According to anthropologist Jesse D. Jennings, in his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11: Great Basin:
“Instead of being the uniformly uninviting desert so often visualized, the Great Basin consists of hundreds of special and often rich environments where a widely varying mix of desired plant and animal species was available for harvest.”
This included the gathering of many different plants, the hunting of small game and birds, and the consumption of insects. In his book Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Carl Waldman reports:
“Because of their foraging practices, the hunter-gatherers of this region are sometimes referred to collectively as Digger Indians.”
The designation “Digger Indians” has often been used as a derogatory term.
The Gosiutes hunted many small animals, of which the most important was the jackrabbit. Rabbits were often driven into tall nets where they could be easily clubbed. The nets were about two feet high and were made as long as possible. The communal rabbit drives, which often lasted five days, were organized under the direction of a rabbit boss who was an elder recognized as having skill in such matters. The rabbit net would be stretched across a valley. Part of the party would then go far up the valley and drive the rabbits into the net with a great deal of whooping and hollering. The rabbits which were snared in the net were then killed with clubs.
In his Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, anthropologist Julian Steward writes of the rabbit in Great Basin cultures:
“It not only afforded considerable meat when taken in communal hunts, but provided skins which were utilized for the all-important Shoshonean garment, the rabbit-skin blanket or robe.”
Rabbit skins were often woven into cloaks and other clothing.
Much of the subsistence of the Great Basin groups depended on the gathering of wild plants. Among the Gosiute, at least 81 different plants were used, including 47 plants which were used for their seeds, 12 for berries, 8 for roots, and 12 for greens.
Housing
Among the Gosiutes, winter campsites were selected for their accessibility to wood and water as well as stored seeds. In his chapter on the Gosiute Indians in A History of Utah’s American Indians, Dennis Defa reports:
“These conditions were most often fulfilled in the mouths of canyons or within the pinyon pine and juniper belt in the mountains, although sometimes broad valleys near fishing streams were chosen.”
Clothing
With regard to clothing, nudity was not uncommon, particularly during the warmer months. Men would sometimes wear a breechcloth, and women would sometimes wear a fringed woven apron. Woven sandals were used for footwear. In colder weather, people often wore a woven rabbit skin robe.
Family
Great Basin families were primarily nuclear families: that is, they were composed of a man and a woman and their children. At times, there might be other people who were also a part of the household, such as a younger brother, a grandfather, a widowed aunt. Beyond the nuclear family, Gosiutes were linked by blood relationships, marriage relationships, adoptions, and friendships. These various and extensive linkages gave the nuclear family access to many different resource areas, something that was very important during times of food resource shortage in the home area.
One of the characteristics of the Great Basin cultures is sexual egalitarianism. Both boys and girls were free to engage in sexual exploration that could lead to a trial marriage. Young people were taught about abortion methods as well as contraception. Divorce was simply a matter of either partner returning to their parental camp.
Sex was not restricted to marriage, nor did marriage necessarily grant exclusive sexual privileges. Sexual relations outside of marriage were not seen as threatening to the marriage.
While marriage was an important economic union, it tended to be informal and was not accompanied by any ceremony. Marriage was a personal arrangement between individuals. In other words, the couple simply started living together.
Government
With the harsh nature of the environment, Indian bands tended to be small – rarely larger than 30 people in the desert areas and up to 100 in other areas – and they usually used places near water sources for their residential sites. Band names tended to reflect geography, that is, bands were often named for the area which they inhabited.
Band membership tended to be fluid. While many of the band members were related to each other by blood or by marriage, people were free to leave one band and join another. Band leadership was not autocratic, and members were free to pursue an independent course when they so desired. In an article in American Antiquity, Angus Quinlan and Alanah Woody write:
“One limiting factor of chiefly authority was the freedom of band members to switch allegiance to other bands or family clusters.”
Spirituality
The worldview of the people in the Great Basin area perceives all physical features and elements of the world as being spiritually alive. These spiritual beings have a power—puhá—which controls the world and thus impacted the fate of human beings.
Spirituality among the people in the Great Basin area was based in large part on the acquisition of power through visions and dreams.
Healing was often done ceremonially, and Gosiute healing ceremonies often involved a sweat bath. Dennis Defa reports:
“The Goshute sweat bath was done without water; hot rocks and coals were covered with earth and the patient would lie on top.”
More tribal profiles
At the present time, this series has profiled 45 tribes.
Indians 101: A Brief Overview of the Assiniboine Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of California's Cahuilla Indians
Indians 101: A Brief Overview of the Creek Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Hualapai Indians
Indians 201: A very short overview of the Kalispel Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Menominee Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Timucua Indians
Indians 201: A very short overview of the Wichita Indians
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