The Salt Lake Diggers intermarry with the Eastern Snakes and are on good terms with them.
Among these Indians [the "Salt Lake Diggers">[ are some of the worst in the mountains. Washakie will not permit a horse thief or vagabond to remain in his band, but many of the Mormon Indians go about the country with minor chiefs calling themselves Eastern Snakes.
Old Snag, a chief sometimes seen on Green River, who proclaims himself an Eastern Snake, and friend of the Americans, is of this class....
Southern Indians pass, on their way "to buffalo," (a technical term,) through the lands of the Eastern Snakes and Bannocks, and the latter are often made to bear the blame of their horse-stealing proclivities.
Doty reported depredations on the road between Fort Laramie and Salt Lake City in 1862 (Doty, 1863, pp. 342, 355), and in the following year the Army attacked a large number of the hostiles on Bear River and inflicted very severe losses on them (War of the Rebellion, 1902, pp. 185-187). Doty reported from Box Elder, Utah, on July 30 of the same year (ibid., p. 219):
A treaty of peace was this day concluded at this place by Gen. Connor [who led the Bear River attack] and myself with the bands of the Shoshones, of which Pocatello, San Pitch and Sagwich are the principal chiefs.
Earlier, on July 2, 1863, a treaty was entered into at Fort Bridger between Doty and the bands of "Waushakee," "Shauwuno," "Tibagan," "Peoastoagah," "Totimee," "Ashingodimah," "Sagowitz," "Oretzimawik," "Bazil," and "Sanpitz" (Doty, 1865, p. 319). Doty noted at this time that the Shoshone "claim their ... eastern boundary on the crest of the Rocky mountains; but it is certain that they, as well as the Bannacks, hunt buffalo below the Three Forks of the Missouri, and on the headwaters of the Yellowstone" (p. 318). Doty continued (pp. 318-319):
As none of the Indians of this country have permanent places of abode, in their hunting excursions they wander over an immense region, extending from the fisheries at and below Salmon Falls, on the Shoshone [Snake] river, near the Oregon line, to the sources of that stream and to the Buffalo country beyond....
The Shoshonees and Bannocks are the only nations which, to my knowledge hunt together over the same ground.
The Shoshone continued to hunt beyond the mountains after the Fort Bridger treaty. Superintendent Irish reported in September, 1864, that the "Shoshonees" were at Bear Lake awaiting their payment and were impatient to "go to their winter hunting grounds on Wind River" (Irish, 1865, p. 314). Three hundred Cheyenne lodges were reported in Wind River Valley in May, 1865, but the group subsequently withdrew to the "Sweetwater mountains and thence to Powder River" (Coutant, 1899, 1:440). In September, 1865, Irish reported that the Shoshone frequented the Wind River country and the headwaters of the North Platte and Missouri rivers (Irish, 1866, p. 311). The Superintendent described the pattern of movement that had become established (ibid.):
Their principal subsistence is the buffalo, which they hunt during the fall, winter, and spring, on which they subsist during that time, and return in the summer to Fort Bridger and Great Salt Lake City.
Agent Luther Mann of Fort Bridger added (1865, p. 327):
They spend about eight months of the year among the Wind River mountains and in the valley of the Wind River, Big Horn and Yellowstone....
The Shoshonees are friendly with the Bannacks, their neighbor on the north ... but are hostile toward the tribes on their eastern boundaries, viz: Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and Crows.
Mann observed that the Eastern Shoshone numbered some 150 lodges. However, he also noted that Washakie claimed to be too weak to fight his enemies. In his next year's report, Mann wrote that on September 20, 1865, the Shoshone set out from Fort Bridger for the Wind River and Popo Agie valleys where they hunted buffalo, deer, elk, and mountain sheep and passed the winter. Only five to ten lodges remained on Green River for the winter (ibid., p. 126).