FALLON PAIUTE-SHOSHONE TRIBE

The Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe, also known as the Toi Ticutta (cattail eaters) is located in the Lahontan Basin, in the shadow of the sacred Fox Peak Mountain.

At the foot of the Fox Peak was the terminus of the Carson River. For centuries this watershed flowed into the area now called the Carson sink. Prior to the contact period, the Paiute People enjoyed the wealth of a huge marshland with an abundance of waterfowl, fish and marsh plants. The surrounding desert and mountains also provided wild game and edible plant food. Also very important to the Paiute people were the medicinal plants in the valley and nearby mountains. To generalize the territory that the Toi Ticutta inhabited surrounds the area of present day Fallon. The Tribe ranged to the east approximately 60 miles to the west, 50 miles along the Carson River to the South approximately 30 miles and to the North approximately 40 miles.

In the early 1890’s the government moved the Fallon area Indian people onto a reservation which was divided into 160-acre allotments. As other settlers began moving into the Basin they realized that the area that the Paiute people lived was suitable for agriculture. Once again the settlers asked the government to take away more of the lands from the Paiute people and as a result from the increasing requests to take these lands, the Federal government approached the Paiute people with another proposition beginning in 1902.

The new proposition asked the Paiute people to relinquish their 160 acre allotments for a 10 acre allotment with a paid up water right. Although many of the actual written records do not elaborate on the Paiute peoples rejection to accept this new proposition, the oral history express that the allottees were pressured to relinquish and if they did not agree to relinquish they would not receive any water from the new dam. (The new dam is now the Lahontan Dam). As a result of this threat a majority of the people agreed to the relinquishment in 1906. The few that did not agree have never seen any water to their allotments.

Our present day Reservation is composed of over 8200 acres. In 1990 Congress awarded the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe a $43 million settlement. A written proposal detailing the use of the funds was required for the release of the money. The Tribe developed and submitted a plan to allocate the funds in six different programs: economic development, tribe government, per capita payments to tribal members, rehabilitation of irrigation, on-reservation water rights and land acquisitions and off-reservation land and water right acquisitions.