People inhabited Las Vegas Valley as early as 11,000 B.C., at the cold and wet tail end of the last ice age. These Paleo-Indians lived in shoreline caves and hunted the large Pleistocene mammals -- wooly mammoth, bison, mastodon, and caribou -- that disappeared from the area in the next few thousand years.
Then, between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago, it's believed that the area that's now southern Nevada was too hot and arid for settlement. Roughly 4,500 years ago, the climate cooled slightly and became a little moister, enough to support a newly arrived and evolving native society.
Known as the Archaic or Desert People, these hunter-foragers adapted to the use of high-quality but limited resources such as the desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, screwbean mesquite, canyon grape, and cholla fruit. The Archaics built rock shelters, circular stone campsites, and roasting pits, and they used tools such as mortars and pestles, flaked knives, and hammerstones.
Around 300 A.D., a new culture either emerged from or evicted the Archaics. The Basketmakers were also hunter-gatherers, but they were a bit more sophisticated than their predecessors. They lived in pit houses excavated in the desert, with mud floors and walls, brush roofs supported by strong poles, and a central fire pit.
By about 500, Pueblo pioneers settled the fertile river valleys in southern Nevada. They cultivated maize, beans, squash, and cotton; they wove intricate baskets, fashioned handsome black-and-white pottery, and hunted with bows and arrows.
By the year 1000, the Pueblo period had ended and the Paiute era had begun. For the next 700 years, the nomadic Paiute occupied the area in small family units, establishing base camps of semipermanent wickiup shelters, cultivated squash and corn at the springs and creeks, and traveled seasonally to hunt and harvest wild foods.
The first contact between the Paiute and Europeans occurred, coincidentally enough, in 1776, but it was a brief encounter between the southern Nevada tribes and Franciscan friars who were establishing a trade route, which came to be known as the Old Spanish Trail, from New Mexico to California.
Before Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1822, the Spanish government had enforced strict laws against trespassing. After independence, the first wave of Eastern traders, trappers, and mountain men penetrated the previously unknown American Southwest. In 1826-27, the famed trader and explorer Jedediah Smith became the first American explorer to travel through southern and central Nevada and he made contact with the Paiute.
Three years later, Antonio Armijo, a Mexican trader, set out from Santa Fe on the Old Spanish Trail to California. An experienced scout in his party, Rafael Rivera, discovered a shortcut along the route by way of Las Vegas's Big Springs, thereby making him the first non-Indian to set foot on the land that would become Las Vegas.
In the 1830s, warring Utes from the northeast used the Las Vegas Cutoff of the Old Spanish Trail to raid the peaceful Paiute, kidnapping children and women for the slave markets of New Mexico and California. In addition, Mexican and American trading parties began camping at Las Vegas's Big Springs and creeks; their grazing stock destroyed the precious grasses and their guns killed the limited game. At first the Paiute carefully avoided the interlopers, but as natural resources were depleted, some resorted to sneak thievery, stealing horses and cattle to butcher for food. That was when the traders began shooting at the Paiute themselves.
By 1851, the portion of the Old Spanish Trail from central Utah to southern California had been so tamed and improved by Latter-day Saint-guided wagon trains that it became known as the Mormon Trail. In 1855 Brigham Young sent a missionary party to colonize Las Vegas Valley and civilize the Indians. The colony failed and disbanded a few years later. In 1865, the Gass family started homesteading the valley, using the Mormon Fort as its initial dwelling place.
Scattered incidents of harassment, theft, and violence plagued Paiute-settler relations for the next five years or so. In the early 1870s, the Southeast Nevada Indian Agency had been established and nearly 1,000 acres near the Moapa and Virgin rivers, not far from Las Vegas, were set aside for a Southern Paiute reservation. However, it proved difficult to confine even a small portion of Nevada’s early inhabitants; as nomads, the Paiute were unaccustomed to living in a restrictive society governed by a central authority.
Even so, the Las Vegas Paiute fared slightly better than some of their neighbors. They found work at mines and on ranches and when Helen Stewart, known as the First Lady of Las Vegas, took over the Gass Ranch in 1884, she began to champion the Paiute cause. She established a 10-acre colony for the tribe, where many descendants still live today; there’s a little strip mall and discount cigarette store there. The Paiute also own 4,000 acres in the desert north of the city, where the Snow Mountain golf resort is in its initial phase.
