The main activities requiring skill, patience, and the expenditure of a vast amount of real labor were the building of canoes and houses. With nothing beyond a few bone and stone tools they built large, fairly comfortable carpentered houses of planks and hewed large seaworthy canoes from massive logs.

Lacking nails, bolts, and screws, and having little to use for adhesives, the Paiute Indians tied their world together. They tied their wood and willows in bundles to carry them into camp; they tied small game onto their waist bands; they tied the tules to make boats, and cattails to make houses; they tied babies in baskets, and arrowheads to shafts. They used cords in place of buttons and safety pins, to make traps, to catch fish and hang them to dry. In addition to the tough rope of cattails and sagebrush bark, they made strong string of sinew and human hair.