Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society

by Robert F. Murphy; Yolanda Murphy

THE SHOSHONE OF THE SAWTOOTH MOUNTAINS

All informants agreed that the Sawtooth Mountains west of the Lemhi River and south of the Salmon River were inhabited by a Shoshone population designated as Tukurika (Dukarika and other variants). No Tukurika, or "Sheepeater," informants were interviewed on the Fort Hall Reservation, and we obtained only fragmentary information from Lemhi Shoshone and other Idaho Shoshone and Bannock.

Historical information on the Sheepeaters is scanty and mostly concerned with later periods. The earliest reference available comes from Ferris' journals. The Ferris party was in the Sawtooth Mountains, probably in or near Stanley Basin, in July, 1831. Ferris wrote (1940, p. 99):

Here we found a party of "Root Diggers," or Snake Indians without horses. They subsist upon the flesh of elk, deer and bighorns, and upon salmon which ascend to the fountain sources of this river, and are here taken in great numbers.... We found them extremely anxious to exchange salmon for buffalo meat, of which they are very fond, and which they never procure in this country, unless by purchase from their friends who occasionally come from the plains to trade with them.

The Stanley Basin region, it will be remembered, was a fall hunting range of the Shoshone of Boise River and was probably entered by others from Snake River. But as this was salmon season on both the Boise and Snake rivers, it is probable that Indians mentioned by Ferris were part of the more permanent population of the Sawtooths, i.e., Sheepeaters. The southern Sawtooths were no doubt utilized, like so many of our other areas, by people who customarily wintered in diverse places.

In June, 1832, John Work met "a party of Snakes consisting of three men and three women" near Meadow Creek on the Salmon River waters (Work, 1923, p. 160). Later references to the Sheepeaters indicate that they impinged upon the Shoshone of the Boise River on the west and the Lemhi on the east. Indian Agent Hough reported from the Boise River in 1868: "The Sheep Eaters have also behaved quite well; they are more isolated from the settlement, occupy a more sterile country, and are exceedingly poor" (Hough, 1869, p. 660). The Sheepeaters seem to have had their closest affiliations with the Shoshone of the Lemhi River, however, and they eventually moved to the agency founded there (Viall, 1872, p. 831; Shanks et al., 1874, p. 2).

The Tukurika were not a single group, but consisted of scattered little hunting groups having no over-all political unity or internal band organization. They had few horses and hunted mountain sheep and deer on foot. Salmon were taken in the waters of the Salmon River. The Tukurika had their closest contacts with the Lemhi Shoshone, although some occasionally visited the valleys of the Boise and Weiser rivers. I have no evidence of Tukurika trips to Camas Prairie for roots, although such visits are indicated by Steward's map (Steward, 1938, p. 136).

Steward lists five winter villages in the Sawtooth Mountains (ibid., pp. 188-189). These are:

1. Pasasigwana: This is the largest of the winter villages. It consisted of thirty families under the leadership of a headman who acted as director of salmon-fishing activities on the Salmon River. In the summer, the thirty families split into small groups and hunted on the Salmon River and its East Fork and in the Lost River and Salmon ranges. Steward reports that they obtained horses during a trip to Camas Prairie and thereafter joined the buffalo hunt. The village was situated north of Clayton.

2. Sohodai: Steward places this small village of six families on the upper reaches of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.

3. Bohodai: This, the second largest Tukurika village, was on the Middle Fork of the Salmon near its confluence with the Salmon.

4. Another winter village was on the upper Salmon River and was merely an alternate camp for people who ordinarily wintered in Sohodai.

5. Pasimadai: This village, consisting of only two families, was on the upper Salmon River. It is the only one of the five listed that had no headman, although in another context Steward says (p. 193) that formal village chiefs were lacking before the consolidation with the Lemhi people.

The distribution of the Shoshone of the Sawtooth Mountains demarcates the northern limits of the Shoshone range. Steward's map of villages and subsistence areas in Idaho places the Shoshone on the Salmon River and the Middle Fork of the Salmon, while the lower parts of the Salmon River, below its junction with the South Fork, are assigned to the Nez Percé (p. 136). In his general map of the Basin-Plateau area (ibid., fig. 1, facing p. ix), Steward extends the Shoshone zone to the east side of Lost Trail Pass in Montana.

The data above represent substantial agreement with our own findings. Moving from west to east, the Snake River north of its junction with the Powder River (Oregon) is in precipitous canyon country and was no doubt little used. Mixed Shoshone and Mono-Bannock-speaking groups occupied the lower part of the Weiser River, but, as has been here stated, traded with the Nez Percé in the upper part of the valley. Some of the action of the Sheepeaters' War of 1878 took place in the mountains between the middle and south forks of the Salmon River, and there is no evidence of Shoshone use of the country north of the Salmon River. However, other groups apparently reached the Salmon River and its southern tributaries. Ferris met a village of Nez Percé on the Lemhi River in October, 1831 (Ferris, 1940, p. 120), and Wyeth reported a Nez Percé camp on the Salmon River in May 1833 (Wyeth, 1899, p. 194). The Nez Percé were also reported camped on Salmon River waters only one day from Fort Hall in August, 1839 (Farnham, 1906, p. 29). In the northeast corner of the area in question, Lewis and Clark first met the Flathead on the far side of Lost Trail Pass near present-day Sula, Montana, in August, 1805 (Lewis and Clark, 1904-06, 3:52). Shoshone no doubt crossed the pass occasionally and hunted there also, but this encounter and those reported in the preceding references indicate that the northern region of Shoshone nomadic activities was an area frequently entered and used by other peoples. Again, there is no strict boundary, but a zone of interpenetration.