page_title: Washoe people
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Washoe people / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Washoe woman. Русский: Женщина из племени уошо. Фотограф Эдвард Кёртис.
context_page_description: The Washoe or Wašišiw are a Great Basin tribe of Native Americans, living near Lake Tahoe at the border between California and Nevada. The name "Washoe" or "Washo" is derived from the autonym Waashiw in the Washo language or from Wašišiw, the plural form of wašiw.
context_section_description: Washoe people are the only Great Basin tribe whose language is not Numic, so they are believed to have inhabited the region prior to neighboring tribes. The Kings Beach Complex that emerged about 500 CE around Lake Tahoe and the northern Sierra Nevadas are regarded as early Washoe culture. The Martis complex may have overlapped with the Kings Beach culture, and Martis pit houses gave way to conical bark slab houses of historic Washoe culture.
  The Washoe people and the neighboring Northern Paiute people were culturally and linguistically very different, and these two tribes were sometimes in conflict.
  Washoe people may have made contact with Spanish explorers in the early 19th century, but the Washoe did not sustain contact with people of European culture until the 1848 California Gold Rush. Washoe resistance to incursions on their lands proved futile, and the last armed conflict with the Washoes and non-Indians was the Potato War of 1857, when starving Washoes were killed for gathering potatoes from a European-American farm near Honey Lake in California.
  Loss of the valley hunting grounds to farms and the piñon pine groves to feed Virginia City's demand for lumber and charcoal drove most Washoe to dependency on jobs on white ranches and farms and in cities. The areas where they settled became known as Indian colonies.
caption: Washoe woman
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