Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and SocietyMurphy, Robert F. (Robert Francis)
History
Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society
Murphy, Robert F. (Robert Francis)
Bannock Indians; Shoshoni Indians
Shimkin (1947_a_, p. 248) notes that this park was one of the "foci"
of Shoshone nomadic activity, a place to which Wind River people
repaired for summer hunting. Although this is true for later times, it
certainly was not so in the pre-reservation period when hunts on the
Missouri waters were conducted only for limited periods and in the
plains and valleys where buffalo were to be found.
Until the late 1860's the Wind River Valley and the Big Horn Basin and
Mountains were zones of penetration rather than occupation of the
Eastern Shoshone. Another such zone is in the Tetons and Yellowstone.
This is confirmed by the journal of Captain Jones, who commented upon
the unfamiliarity of his Shoshone guides with the country around
Yellowstone Lake (Jones, 1875, p. 23). He wrote (p. 34):
... the Indians have failed to find the trail back to
Yellowstone Lake.... The explanation of this is that they are
"Plains Indians," and are wholly unaccustomed to travel among
forests like these.
Later, the exploring party reached the upper Yellowstone River, above
the lake, where Jones commented (p. 39):
We have now reached a country from which one of our Indians
says he knows the way back to Camp Brown by the head of Wind
River. He belongs to a band of Shoshones called "Sheepeaters,"
who have been forced to live for a number of years in the
mountains away from the tribe.
The Yellowstone area was frequently entered by the Crow and was
evidently not a Shoshone hunting territory, except for the
Sheepeaters. Jackson Hole is more commonly mentioned by informants as
a place of summer hunting activity, but the above information from
Jones would suggest that parties entered it from the Green River
country rather than from Wind River. The Eastern Shoshone apparently
did not move west of the Tetons except when visiting the Shoshone and
Bannock of Idaho. It should be mentioned at this point that the
Shoshone and Bannock also hunted in the Jackson Hole and Yellowstone
country, probably to a greater extent than did the Eastern Shoshone,
and the frequent mention of parties of Blackfoot and other hostiles in
the country both east and west of the Teton Range indicates that the
weaker Shoshone experienced no little danger there.
The valley of the Salt River in western Wyoming was used by both Idaho
and Wyoming Shoshone. Idaho Shoshone and Bannock frequently entered
the valleys of the Green River and its tributaries to hunt antelope in
the fall. These people apparently mixed so frequently with the Eastern
Shoshone in this area that it is most expedient to differentiate the
respective populations according to where they wintered. On the west,
Wind River Shoshone informants now make little mention of any use of
the Bear River and Bear Lake country, despite the apparent
interchangeability of population in the pre-reservation period; again,
it must be assumed that informant data does not much antedate the
move to Wind River.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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