located along the Truckee River between Wadsworth and Nixon. The reservation land was first set aside for the Northern Paiute by request of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1859. The reservation was not surveyed until 1865. The status of the reservation was very uncertain until President Ulysses S. Grant affirmed its existence by executive order on March 23, 1874. At that time the creation of reservations by the executive branch was novel; most previous reservations were created by treaty or congressional legislation. Subsequent court decisions have affirmed the validity of reservations created by the executive branch, and have set the establishment date for the Pyramid Lake Reservation at 1859, not 1874. This earlier date is important both with regards to the priority date of tribal water rights, and the status of non-tribal claims to land within the reservation. The tribe has fought a long series of legal battles on both these issues. The Northern Paiute were awarded a settlement in their lands claim case in 1968. In October 2016 the Nevada Native Nations Land Act (PL No: 114-232) authorized the federal government to put certain public lands of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service in the state into trust for six of the nine federally recognized tribes in the state. These transfers will expand their reservations and make their bases more sustainable. The government is putting acres of BLM land into trust for the Pyramid Lake Reservation. Gaming is prohibited on these new lands. Ancestry As of 1970, one source claimed that residents of the reservation included descendants of Chief Winnemucca, an early 19th-century Paiute leader. Environmental factors The Lahontan cutthroat trout fishery at Pyramid Lake attracts many anglers from the Reno area and beyond. Sale of fishing licenses and boating permits is a large source of revenue for the tribe. Prior to the construction of Derby Dam and the diversion of water from the Truckee River for irrigation, the lake supported a commercial fishery. This was an even larger revenue source for the tribe. Historically water levels have been declining in Pyramid Lake; in addition, water quality has been adversely affected by upstream discharges including point and non–point sources. A number of studies have been conducted on Pyramid Lake including application of the DSSAM hydrological river model to examine nitrogen, reactive phosphorus, dissolved oxygen and other water quality parameters. Political activism Native Americans in Nevada