Little information is available from the eastern side of the Wind River Mountains during the 1820's. We do know, however, that Ashley entrusted his horses to the Crow Indians on the Wind River before setting out for the mountains in the spring of 1824 (ibid., p. 89).
In 1831, an American Fur Company trapper, Warren Angus Ferris, noted that the two main Crow bands were located chiefly on the Yellowstone River and its tributaries, but their "war parties infest the countries of the Eutaws, Snakes, Arrapahoes, Blackfeet, Sious, and Chayennes" (Ferris, 1940, p. 305). He had this to say of the Eastern Shoshone (p. 310):
Of the Snakes on the plains there are probably about four hundred lodges, six hundred warriors, and eighteen hundred souls. They range in the plains of Green River as far as the Eut Mountains; southward from the source to the outlet of Bear River, of the Big Lake; thence to the mouth of Porto-nuf [Portneuf], on Snake River of the Columbia.... They are at war with the Eutaws, Crows, and Blackfeet, but rob and steal from all their neighbors.
Ferris saw few Indians in his travels through the Jackson Hole area in 1832 and 1833. However, in "Jackson's Little Hole," presumably at the south end of Hoback Canyon, he noted, in August, 1832, several large, abandoned camps, which he assumed were those of the "Grosventres of the prairies" (p. 158). The supposed Gros Ventre party was later seen on the Green River and was said to have consisted of 500 to 600 warriors (pp. 158-159). These may well have been Blackfoot, for Zenas Leonard reported a Blackfoot attack on the upper Snake River in western Wyoming in July, 1832 (Leonard, 1934, p. 51). The Indians most frequently sighted in the Green River region, however, were the Shoshone. In June, 1833, Ferris saw "several squaws scattered over the prairie engaged in digging roots" (Ferris, 1940, p. 205). These women apparently belonged to "some fifty or sixty lodges of Snakes, ... encamped about the fort [Bonneville's] who were daily exchanging their skins and robes, for munitions, knives, ornaments, etc., with the whites" (ibid., p. 206).
Further evidence of the virtual absence of the Shoshone from Missouri waters in the fur period comes from Zenas Leonard. When preparing to spend the winter of 1832-33 on the Green River, the trappers met a party of 70 to 80 Crow who said "they were going to war with the Snake Indians—whose country we were now in—and they said also they belonged to the Crow nation on the East side of the mountains" (Leonard, 1934, pp. 82-83). These Crow stole horses from the party, and the trappers pursued them to their village at the mouth of the Shoshone River, near modern Lovell, Wyoming. In the summer of 1834, Captain Bonneville's trappers, one of whom was Zenas Leonard, trapped on the waters of Wind River, but no mention is made of Shoshone (ibid., pp. 224-226). In October, however, they met the Crow in the Big Horn Basin, and they wintered on Wind River in their company (pp. 255-256). No Shoshone were reported in the area.
The Irving account of Captain Bonneville's adventures contains additional information on Eastern Shoshone settlement patterns. It is here also that we receive our first information on the Shoshone who later are known to us as the Dukarika and who inhabited the mountainous terrain of the Wind River Mountains and adjacent high country (Irving, 1850, p. 139). The journal also supplements Leonard's account of the trappers' sojurn in Wind River Valley, which, Irving wrote (1837, 2:17) was infested by Blackfoot and Crow Indians and was one of the favorite habitats of the latter (p. 22). One of the trapping party's members was taken captive by the Crow on the Popo Agie River, which flows past Lander, Wyoming, but was released unharmed (pp. 24-25). It is to be noted that the trappers were in the Wind River Valley at the end of September but saw no Shoshone, although this was approximately the time of the annual buffalo hunt. Upon leaving Wind River, Bonneville headed for the Sweetwater River, which, he stated, was beyond the limits of Crow country (p. 26). He then went to Hams Fork, a tributary of the Green River, and encountered a Shoshone encampment with the Fitzpatrick party (p. 27).
It is doubtful whether Shoshonean peoples hunted extensively east of the Continental Divide in the period following their eighteenth-century retreat from the northern Plains and before the disappearance of the buffalo west of the Rockies. Although the great herds of the Missouri drainage were not found in the lands inhabited by the Shoshone, it is quite possible that there were sufficient buffalo there to meet the needs of the population. Bonneville met a group of twenty-five mounted Bannock in the neighborhood of Soda Springs, Idaho, in November, 1833, and, at their invitation, joined them in a buffalo hunt there (p. 33). After taking sufficient meat, the Bannock returned to their winter quarters at the mouth of the Portneuf River (p. 35). The winter of 1834-35 again found Bonneville on the Bear River, this time on its upper reaches, where he made winter camp with "a small band of Shoshonies" (p. 210). Farther upstream was an encampment of "Eutaw" Indians, who were hostile to the Shoshone (p. 213). Bonneville, however, managed to prevent conflict between the two groups. One advantage of this winter camp, and a possible source of attraction for the Ute Indians, was the presence of antelope during the winter. Bonneville witnessed one successful "surround" by horsemen, aided in their efforts by supernatural charms reminiscent of Great Basin antelope drives (pp. 214-215).
Nathaniel Wyeth evidently saw few Shoshone in his travels through Wyoming, and his journals do not add greatly to our understanding of the area. He traveled from the Snake to the Green River in June and July, 1832, via the Teton country and mentioned no Shoshone except for a small encampment near Bonneville's post on the upper Green River (Wyeth, 1899, pp. 203-205). However, he reports that a white trapper was attacked in July, 1833, on the lower Wind River by a party of fifteen Shoshone who had left Green River shortly before (p. 207), and, in 1834, he found himself among "too many Indians ... for comfort or safety" while near Hams Fork, Wyoming (p. 225).
The journals of Osborne Russell provide documentation of population movements in Wyoming during the years 1834-1840. Despite the decline of the fur trade during this period, the area was still turbulent. In November, 1834, a party of trappers was reported as having arrived at Fort Hall, Nathaniel Wyeth's new post, after having been routed by the Blackfoot on Hams Fork (Russell, 1955, p. 8). The spring of 1835 took Russell to the west side of Bear Lake, where he found "about 300 lodges of Snake Indians" (p. 11) and in July of that year he encountered a small party of Shoshone hunting mountain sheep in Jackson Hole (p. 23). The lure of trade still attracted many other Indian groups into the Green River country during and preceding the time of the summer rendezvous. Russell reported an encampment of 400 lodges of Shoshone and Bannock and 100 of Flathead and Nez Percé on the Bear River above the mouth of Smith's Fork on May 9, 1836. The congregation was so large that it was forced to fragment in order to seek subsistence; all planned to return on July 1, when supplies were expected (p. 41). Russell spent the winter of 1840-41 with some 20 lodges of Shoshone in Cache Valley, Utah, and near Great Salt Lake (p. 112).
The general territorial situation had changed little by the end of the fur period. Wislizenus, who visited Wyoming in 1839, commented (1912, p. 76): "In the vicinity [of the Big Horn Mountains] live the Crows.... They often rove through the country between the Platte and the Sweet Waters, which are considered by the Indians as a common war ground." Tribes friendly to the Shoshone visited the week-long rendezvous on the Green River. Wislizenus notes that "of the Indians there had come chiefly Snakes, Flatheads, and Nez Percés, peaceful tribes, living beyond the Rocky Mountains" (p. 86).