Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society

by Robert F. Murphy; Yolanda Murphy

The discreet Dukarika social units did not assert hunting rights to particular territories. Any group could hunt where it pleased, and they in no way resisted or resented the entry of the mounted Shoshone during the summer. Although they undoubtedly had contact with the latter, they did not join the spring or fall buffalo hunts, nor did they at any time during the pre-treaty period acknowledge the political leadership of the valley people. After the reservation was established, however, they left the mountains and settled in the Trout Creek section of the Wind River Reservation.

EASTERN SHOSHONE TERRITORY

Thus far, we have presented the pertinent historical data on Shoshone ecology in Wyoming and adjacent parts of northern Utah and we have described the annual cycle of economic activities during the early reservation period. The following summary of information on Eastern Shoshone territory will consider both kinds of data but will not attempt to delineate the social and political affiliations of the peoples using the lands. This subject, as the previously cited statement by Shimkin suggests (p. 300), is extremely complex and will be reserved for further discussion.

The most perplexing problem presented by the Eastern Shoshone is the extent of their penetration into the Missouri River waters. Although the Shoshone evidently undertook forays at least as far east as Fort Laramie, contemporary informants and historical sources agree that their main hunting grounds extended no farther east than the Sweetwater and other headwaters of the North Platte River. We have no certain information of Shoshone use of lands east of the upper Sweetwater River, and informants gave no data on this sector.

Wind River Shoshone informants relate the itineraries of buffalo-hunting parties northward into the Big Horn Basin. The fall and spring buffalo hunts were said to have taken place in the region of Thermopolis, Wyoming, and as far north as Cody and Greybull, Wyoming. The region east of the Big Horn Mountains was thought by informants to have been occasionally visited, but was acknowledged as the hunting grounds of hostile tribes. The presence of a "mixed party of Shoshone and Flatheads" in the Big Horn Mountains was noted by the westward-bound Astoria party in 1811 (Irving, 1890, p. 196) and indicates some early penetration of the area, although the presence of Flathead Indians suggests that the party had entered the area via Idaho and Montana and not from Green River. However, pre-reservation historical data show that before the 1840's the Eastern Shoshone largely restricted their buffalo hunting to the region west of the Continental Divide and sporadically penetrated the Wind River and Big Horn basins only after the buffalo disappeared from the country beyond the Rockies. Their entry into the eastern buffalo range became more frequent in the 1850's, but it by no means constituted an exclusive monopoly on lands there. They depended upon their numbers for protection and were forced to compete with other tribes for the right to hunt on the land. Their hunting excursions were in the nature of forays and were unsuccessful in some years. They enjoyed security and some assurance of success in the hunt only after they had been placed under the protection of Federal troops and the Crow had been placed on reservations. That the center of Shoshone occupancy lay west of the Continental Divide was affirmed by Chief Washakie. Agent Head wrote in 1867 (1868, p. 186):

Washakee said that the country east from the Wind river mountains, to the settled portions of eastern Nebraska and Kansas, had always been claimed by four principal Indian tribes—the Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and Crows.

Further evidence that the valleys of the Big Horn and Wind rivers were used only for buffalo hunting and not stably occupied in the pre-reservation period is indicated by the Shoshones' ignorance of the hunting grounds in the surrounding mountains. Captain Jones used Shoshone guides from Camp Brown on the new Wind River Reservation when he undertook his exploration of Yellowstone Park in 1873. The captain and his party penetrated the Owl Creek Range, north of the reservation and found at the head of Owl Creek a lovely park (Jones, 1875, p. 54):

This park bears many evidences of having been used as a hiding place. Our Indians knew nothing of it, and yet there are all through it numerous trails, old lodge poles, bleached bones of game, and old camps of Cheyennes and Arapahoes.

Shimkin (1947a, 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):