Nuuchi Nuwu

The Nuuchi Nuwu group spans the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau and includes the Nuuchi, or Utes, the Nuwuvi, or Southern Paiute, and the Kawaiisu of the Tehachapi Mountains in California, all Southern Numic peoples. The Utes and Southern Paiute spoke Colorado River Numic, a Uto-Aztecan language, and the two were mutually intelligible.

The Utes lived in nearly a dozen nomadic bands across Utah and Colorado, traded with Pueblo peoples, and had horses by the late seventeenth century. The Southern Paiute farmed corn and squash by irrigation along the Colorado River; the first Europeans to meet them were Domínguez and Escalante in 1776.