Numu

The Numu, better known as the Northern Paiute, are the Great Basin people whose autonym means 'the people'. Bands of the Humboldt River country in western Nevada included the Sawawaktödö or Sagebrush Eaters near Winnemucca and the Küpadökadö or Ground Squirrel Eaters on Lake Humboldt. Each band took its name from its characteristic food and centred on a lake or wetland supplying fish and waterfowl.

Families gathered pine nuts in the autumn mountains and joined communal drives for rabbits and pronghorn. After horses reached the region by 1730, some eastern bands adopted a mounted, bison-hunting life and in the mid-eighteenth century split off to become the Bannock of the Snake River plains.