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Jay Miller
Anthropos 78.1983
but productive environment. This concern has so dominated Basin research,
however, that the full sweep of its lifeways and intricate symbol systems has
been largely ignored. Heretofore, the theoretical focus of all this research
has been either descriptive ethnography or cultural ecology, with the focus
most decidedly on ecology rather than on culture.
Most recently, with the possible deployment of MX missle bases, min
ing operations, and utility expansions, Basin religious sites have been destroyed
or threatened, much as local food resources were destroyed over a hundred
years ago by Christians and their livestock (Andrus 1979; Hartigan 1980;
Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada 1976a-d).
The primary and—except for the Hokan-speaking Washo around Lake
Tahoe—the sole occupants of the Great Basin are members of the Numic
family of languages within the Uto-Aztecan stock. The Numic languages
fanned out from the vicinity of Death Valley and diversified into three
closely related branches. Southern Numic is represented by Kawaisu, Cheme-
huevi, a dozen Southern Paiute (Nuwuvi) groups, and Ute. Central Numic
includes Panamint, Western Shoshoni (Newe) and Gosiute, Northern Sho-
shoni, and Eastern (Wind River-Comanche) Shoshoni. Western Numic em
braces Mono and several Northern Paiute (Numa) bands noted for their
lake-based economy and expansion into the Oregon and Idaho salmon
fisheries. Today, most people live on reservations, often near or on their
traditional territories or, for reasons of steady employment, have settled
at colonies consisting of reserved plots of land near ranches, towns, settle
ments, and cities. Extensive visiting and movement between areas is still the
norm as it was in aboriginal times, but the money economy has all but
replaced a primary reliance on foraging [Facilitators 1980).
At present, no general overview of Basin religion exists in print, except
for the study of shamanism by Park (1938) and some treatments of the
Circle, Bear, and Cry ceremonies. These works on religious practices and
beliefs, however, do not constitute a systematic treatment of the basic
theology. Such an overview requires that we shift the focus of research from
society, the behavioral component of human life, to culture, the semantic-
conceptual dimension. Ignoring this distinction between society and culture,
Ralph Linton (in Harris 1940:117) made the absurd comment that “Aboriginal
White Knife culture was so simple and amorphous that there was little to be
destroyed by European contact.” As a canon of anthropology, cultural
relativism has been virtually ignored when Basin data are used in comparisons,
neglecting to realize that while the societies were rather elementary, the
mental elaboration of the cultures was on a par with any other culture.
Our concern, therefore, is less of what people do and more of what
they think, with the caveate that the two are of course closely related and
that the thoughts of some people are more important than those of others,
much as the advice of a recognized expert is more valuable than that of a
novice. In actual practice, these important thinkers were usually shamans,
but sometimes they can be people so physically incapacitated yet mentally