Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

The aboriginal native leadership pattern, then, was headmanship, rather than chieftainship. In the central and western portions of the Great Basin, political issues less often involved matters of how to retain and protect strategic resources, than how to find them. Great Basin headmen who retained the position developed reputations for being knowledgeable and successful; competence was more critical than inheritance in determining leadership. This was so even in the band societies that existed in some regions, in which chiefs did exercise authority over some decisions, rather than guiding merely through suasion. Yet, in the bands the authority of chiefs and their counsels was noncoercive and was restricted to the periods during which the bands were convened. Families usually were free to leave bands or camps, moving on and attaching to a new camp following a collective fishing venture, a successful antelope drive, or "a pleasant round dance" (Jorgensen 1980:220; cf. Bunte and Franklin 1987:11). The southern and eastern Ute and eastern Shoshone groups had band-level political organization with single leaders, sometimes assisted by councils. Among the Northern Paiute, Southern Paiute, and Western Shoshone groups, leadership under a single headman developed only where resources permitted long-term residence over several generations and favored some collective ownership of resources (Jorgensen 1980:316- 317, 488-489; Eggan 1980; Stewart 1980).