The Northern Paiute (Paviotso) culture was a part of the Great Basin Culture which included groups such as the Chemuhuevi, the Desert Cahuilla and the Koso or Panamint

The Northern Paiute live on the Fort Bidwell Reservation and the Cedarville Rancheria in Modoc County. The land is dry and vegetation sparse. People caught fish and hunted waterfowl. They gathered pinon pine seeds. They traded with their neighbors to the west. They gave basketry water bottles, sinew, arrowheads, red paint, buckskins, moccasins, and rabbit-skin blankets to the Achomawi and got sinew-backed bows, arrows, baskets, dried
fish, women's basketry caps, clam disc beads and dried salmon flour. They gave the Atsugewi horses, buckskins, red ochre, glass beads guns and Olivella beads and got bows, baskets and shell beads. They got papam bulbs from the Northeastern Maidu.(Davis: 1966)

The Mono give their name to Mono Lake. The Eastern Mono live in the Mono Lake area below the White Mountains. Their territory once included the Owens Valley, where Owens Lake provided a source of fish and freshwater mollusks, and was a stop on the flyway for migrating birds. This lake was, alas, drained to serve the Los Angeles area's need for water.

The Eastern Mono traded with the Central Miwok, exchanging pine nuts, pandora moth caterpillars, kutsavi (the larva of a fly that lives in Mono Lake), baskets, red paint, white paint, pumice stone and rabbit-skin blankets for arrows, baskets, clam disc beads, shell beads, glass beads, acorns, squaw berries (Rhus trilobata), elderberries, and manzanita berries.

They gave the Southern Miwok rabbit-skin blankets and basketry materials, and got clam disc beads. They gave the Tule-Kaweah Yokuts sinew-backed bows, pinon nuts, obsidian, moccasins, rock salt, jerked deer meat and hot rock lifters, and got deer, antelope and elk skins, steatite (soapstone), salt grass, salt, baskets, and shell beads.

They gave the Western Mono mineral paint, pitch-lined basketry water bottles, acorns, rock salt, pinon nuts, mountain sheep-skins, moccasins, buckskin jackets, fox-skin leggings, hot rock lifters, sinew-backed bows, obsidian and red paint, and got shell beads, acorn meal and fine Yokuts baskets. From the Washoe they got kutsavi. From the Tubataulabal they got salt, pine nuts, baskets, red and white paint, tanned deerskins, kutsavi and pandora moth caterpillars, and got shellbeads, acorns, manzanita berries, elderberries, baskets, and rabbit-skin blankets. They gave the Koso shell beads, and got salt.(Davis: 1966)

An excellent web page concerning the prehistory of the Owens Valley may be found at http://www.sscf.uscb.edu/

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