What did the Paiutes trade with the tribes of California’s Central Valley during their annual trade expeditions eastward over the Sierra Nevada?

by CaprioPeter

It seems odd to me that people from a place as harsh and scant as the deserts of the Southwest would be so sought after as traders when coming into contact with people from an incredibly resource rich area like the San Joaquin Valley

retarredroof

As I note in this post, there is evidence of trade of obsidian moving west from the Plateau and the Great Basin throughout the west at least 8,000 years ago and continuing into the historic period. The primary materials moving east during this same timeframe from California, western Oregon and western Washington are shell beads. Specific to the southern Great basin and the Paiute, additional inorganic trade materials in prehistoric times include pottery, stone pipes, and other lithics. Prehistoric studies of trade are subject to preservation bias as the vast majority of material traded was organic and thus not preserved.

A look at the ethnographic material on the Southern Paiute suggests that among perishable export goods were pinion nuts, basketry, antelope and deer hides, root crops, bows, arrows, salt, slaves and probably most importantly, horses.

It is generally held that once the horse was introduced to the southern Great Basin (in the southeastern Great Basin by the late 1600s and the western Great Basin certainly by the late 1700s), trade routes expanded in dramatic fashion. Trade inventories expanded to include objects and raw materials of Euro-American origin and included materials from greater distances. Some interesting trade materials made possible because of expanded interaction zones include buffalo hides, turquoise, catlinite and mescal.

Hughes, Richard E. and James A. Bennyhoff 1986. Early Trade. In Handbook of North American Indians, Great Basin vol. 11; Warren L. D'Azevedo ed. Smithsonian

Edit : fixed my reference