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American Indian groups living in Utah included the Ute, Paiute, Navajo, Goshute, and Shoshone. They all had different ways of living in Utah.

The Ute, Paiute, Goshute, and Shoshone speak different but related languages from a family known as the Numic Language Family. The Navajo speak a language that is in the Athapaskan Language Family.

The Ute, Goshute, Paiute, and Shoshone lived similar lives. They hunted, fished, and gathered wild plant foods. The pinyon nut was especially important to all of them. These groups now live on reservations in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho although prior to non-Indian settlement, they ranged all across the Great Basin and Intermountain West. Navajos herded sheep, goats, and cattle.

The state of Utah is named after the Ute tribe. The Ute once lived over much of Utah and all of western Colorado. They ranged well onto the Great Plains of eastern Colorado into Nebraska and south into New Mexico. In historic times, there were at least 11 different bands of the Ute tribe. Each band claimed their own territory but membership in a band was fluid. The Ute lived by hunting, fishing, gathering, and trading with other American Indian groups in the area. The lived in brush structures and cone-shaped tipis made from animal skins. During the late 1800s, the Ute lost most of their lands and were restricted to reservations in southern Colorado and northeastern Utah.

Paiute wickiups

The Paiute are divided into two groups: the Northern Paiute and the Southern Paiute. The Northern Paiute lived in what is now Oregon, California, and Nevada. The Southern Paiute lived in southern Utah, southern Nevada, and northern Arizona. Hunting and gathering with some fishing was the main source of food. A Southern Paiute house might be made of brush and poles stacked in a cone-shape, called wickiups. Baskets and pottery were made by the Southern Paiute. There are Paiute reservations in southern Utah and in Nevada.

The western deserts of Utah is the home of the Goshute.

Shoshone Indians

They are related to
the western Shoshone groups and, through intermarriage, to the Ute. The Goshute lived in the Great Basin as hunters and gatherers in cone-shaped wickiups and similar structures. Two reservations in western Utah are now the home of the Goshute.

Idaho, eastern Oregon, and northern Utah was the home of the Northern Shoshone. The Eastern Shoshone lived across western Wyoming, northeastern Utah, and northwestern Colorado. The Shoshone hunted, gathered, and fished. Bison hunting was especially important.

Herding sheep and goats was, and still is, the mainstay of many Navajo families. Southern Utah, northern Arizona, and northern New Mexico is the land of the Navajo; the largest American Indian tribe in the United States. Some people believe the Navajo migrated south into their current homeland sometime after AD 1300 where they lived as hunters and gatherers. The Navajos, however, believe that they always have lived in the Four Corners region.

At some point, the Navajo acquired sheep from the Spanish, and they learned to weave from the Hopi. The hogan is the traditional Navajo house.

Ute Indians

Activity: How would your life be different if you were a Ute instead of a Navajo?

Navajo woman and child