Copied from pg 12 of Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone Land Use in Northern Nevada: A Class I Ethnographic/Ethnohistoric Overview, by Ginny Bengston, 2003.

Western Shoshones

Steward (1937) divided the Shoshones into three groups (Western Shoshones, Northern Shoshones and Bannocks, and Eastern Shoshones). It should be noted that this distinction is primarily based on location. Of these groups, the Western Shoshones, including the Goshutes, inhabited and utilized what is now northern Nevada. Prior to the arrival of Euroamericans into their aboriginal lands, the Western Shoshone occupied a large territory that included much of present day Nevada (Figure 2.2). Thomas, Pendleton, and Cappannari (1986:262) stated:

Western Shoshone country extended from the arid reaches of Death Valley inhabited by the Panamint Shoshone, through themountainous highlands of central Nevada into northwestern Utah, where it encompassed the area of the Gosiute of Tooele and Skull valleys and Deep Creek and the ‘Weber Ute.’ The northern boundary is rather arbitrarily taken as roughly the divide separating the Humboldt River drainage from the Snake and Salmon River area, where the Northern Shoshone lived; the people of the Duck Valley Reservation are also included.