Long before Nevada existed as a concept, four distinct peoples called the Great Basin home. The Numa followed the seasons across what we now call Western Nevada into Oregon and Idaho. The Washoe gathered each year at Lake Tahoe before dispersing for hundreds of miles. The Newe ranged through Eastern Nevada and into Utah. Each group had their own language, their own territory, their own name for themselves that translated simply to 'The People.' Archaeological evidence places their ancestors here more than ten thousand years ago. The Spirit Cave mummy, unearthed near Fallon in 1940 and carbon-dated in 1994, lived in this landscape over 9,400 years ago. These were not wanderers but sophisticated communities who knew exactly when the trout would run in the Walker River and when the tule reeds would be ready for harvest in the Stillwater Marshes.

The 1848 California gold rush changed everything. Within five years, a quarter million people crossed Nevada, exhausting food supplies that had sustained indigenous communities for millennia. The cultural clash ran deeper than competition for resources. Settlers believed in owning land permanently. The People used land seasonally, moving with nature's rhythms. As game disappeared and traditional gathering sites were fenced off, many Numa and Washoe drifted toward the growing town of Reno, seeking wage work on ranches and in homes. They built traditional structures with whatever materials they could find, often camping near the Truckee River. The government classified them as 'scattered or homeless,' a bureaucratic label for people whose home had simply been taken from them.

That twenty-acre purchase in 1917 became the seed of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. The Bureau of Indian Affairs dug irrigation ditches for drinking water, but most residents had to walk a quarter mile to a spring. The Numa settled on the north side. The Washoe took the south. In 1926, another 8.38 acres were added for four thousand dollars, enough to build a day school so children would not have to travel forty miles to a boarding school. When the Indian Reorganization Act passed in 1934, the Colony seized the opportunity. On February 9, three Paiute leaders and three Washoe leaders formed the first elected council. Harry Sampson became chairman. By December 1935, the Colony had its own constitution, approved 51 to 1.

The early leaders faced skepticism at every turn. When the Colony tried to adopt a charter in 1936, a BIA superintendent named Alida Bowler delayed the paperwork, doubting that signatures from members who could not write were authentic. She did not believe the Colony could secure credit because it had no agricultural resources. But the charter, finally approved in January 1939, revealed the community's vision: a cooperative laundry, a store, a meat market, a gas station, poultry operations, a harness repair shop. These were not dreams of returning to some imagined past. They were plans for building a future. The Colony weathered the Termination Era of 1945-1968, when 109 tribal governments nationwide were dissolved. No Nevada tribe was terminated.

Today the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony encompasses just over two thousand acres, including 1,920 acres in Hungry Valley added in 1984. The tribe employs more than 350 people, over half of them tribal members. Where skeptics once said there were no resources to develop, the Colony now manages four business development sites and leases land to Mercedes-Benz, Acura, Infiniti, and Walmart. The twenty-million-dollar Reno Sparks Tribal Health Center serves both members and Washoe County's urban Indian population. The tribe maintains its own court system, police force, and full suite of government services. The Colony even funded a new traffic signal system for surrounding streets and contributed to floodwall construction along the Truckee River. From land that could not be farmed, 1,134 members of three Great Basin peoples built something that endures.