We combine Indigenous and Western scientific ontologies to explore the deep history of pinyon pine in the Holocene Great Basin. We address 61 Theft of Pine Nuts (TPN) oral histories transcribed over the last 152 years. Contemporary Paiute, Shoshone, and Wá∙šiw storytellers still tell these narratives, which five Indigenous coauthors heard growing up. Considered judiciously and in concert with independent corroboration, these traditional oral histories (often dismissed as “myths”) potentially convey significant historical landmarks. Four themes emerge: (1) pine nuts have been a driving force in Indigenous Great Basin lifeways for millennia, (2) TPN oral histories pinpoint homelands beyond which pinyon trees grow today, (3) TPN narratives encode shifting animal biodiversity, and (4) massive ice barriers (likely dating to the Late Pleistocene) thwarted pine-nut thieves. We seek out elements encoded in oral histories that reflect pinyon-pine ecology and pinyon as a long-term vehicle of survivance among Indigenous Great Basin communities. Our findings reflect Roger Echo-Hawk’s (2000:90) wise counsel that “written words and spoken words need not compete for authority in academia, nor should the archaeological record be viewed as the antithesis of oral records. Peaceful coexistence and mutual interdependence offer more useful paradigms for these ‘ways of knowing.’”

In Red Canyon, in the foothills of the Wyoming Rocky Mountains, lie three archaeological sites: a stagecoach station, a tipi ring campsite and a series of faded petroglyphs. Collectively, these three sites offer the opportunity to bridge the divide between the prehistoric and the historic, and to explore multiple forms of cultural entanglement in the American West. This article challenges the scholarly homogenisation of cultural diversity in this region by combining the narratives of these three archaeological sites to reconsider dichotomies between Native and Euro-American, immigrant and resident, and acculturation and tradition.