Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and SocietyMurphy, Robert F. (Robert Francis)
History
Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society
Murphy, Robert F. (Robert Francis)
Bannock Indians; Shoshoni Indians
Finally, Washakie's career gives additional evidence that there were
no hard and fast lines between the so-called "Eastern Shoshone" and
other Shoshone groups. Washakie's wanderings, according to Wilson,
took him into Utah, Idaho, and Montana (E. N. Wilson, 1926, pp.
68-73). This was consistent with the general Shoshone pattern of
visiting between areas for short or extended periods. The unique
character of Washakie's leadership can best be explained in terms of
contact with the whites and the Shoshones' need to expand into the
buffalo grounds east of the Rocky Mountains. First, Washakie united
and represented all those Shoshone who did not choose to join their
fellows in northern Utah and southern Idaho in hostilities against the
whites. Second, Washakie was an able and vigorous war leader under
whom the embattled Shoshone could rally. Although at no time a
separate, territorially distinct and exclusive group, the Eastern
Shoshone evidently became somewhat differentiated from their people to
the west by the latter's long distance from the shrinking buffalo
grounds and by their distaste for the warlike activities of their Utah
and Idaho fellows. The Eastern Shoshone, however, did not attempt to
maintain the area over which they roamed to the exclusion of other
Shoshone and of the Bannock. Their neighbors and colinguists to the
west, if they were properly mounted, could and did join with them in
buffalo hunting.
III. THE SHOSHONE AND BANNOCK OF IDAHO
The Shoshone of western Wyoming were a mobile population whose primary
subsistence was provided by buffalo herds. The Shoshone of Idaho
showed no such unity of ecological adaptation, for the region was
inhabited by mounted buffalo hunters and by less prosperous Shoshone
who fished and gathered wild vegetables for a livelihood. While the
buffalo hunters tended to be located in the southeastern part of Idaho
and the fishing and gathering peoples in the southwestern, the mounted
hunters traveled throughout the southern part of the state and, at
certain times of the year, mingled with the poorer, footgoing Indians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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