Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe is today recognized by the federal government as a semi-sovereign society within the American polity. Its government, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Council, is acknowledged to be the governing body of the tribe and to have jurisdiction over the Pyramid Lake Reservation in northwestern Nevada, except where that jurisdiction has been eliminated or weakened by explicit action of the Congress of the United States (Cohen 1982). Before the 1930s, however, although the courts in theory recognized the semi-sovereign status of the tribe, in fact, the United States government and state and local governments did not acknowledge the existence of a genuine government within the tribe. Both the present government and recognition by Congress and the executive branch of the federal government date from the Indian New Deal. This paper examines the formation of this government in the light of what is known of previous governing structures and the perception of these structures by the surrounding society. Failure to acknowledge a government of the tribe, or to recognize it clearly, has been a significant element in the history of the tribe since the arrival of Euroamericans in the Pyramid Lake Paiute territory in the middle of the nineteenth century.