Finally, it should be remembered that the Indians of our six regions frequently wandered far from the areas designated. The areas, then, were centers of gravity in a migratory life. They were areas where subsistence was commonly obtained by the populations in question and, more important, where winter, the most sedentary season of the year, was passed.
THE BOISE AND WEISER RIVERS
The region of the Boise, Payette, and Weiser rivers and the near-by shores of the Snake River are of considerable importance because of the contiguity of Shoshone and Northern Paiute populations in this area. We will present the historical data pertinent to an understanding of the mode and extent of Shoshone ecology there and will then give the material gathered through recent ethnographic investigation.
Our earliest information on this region comes from the Stuart diary of the Astoria party. Stuart wrote of the Boise River (1935, p. 83):
... the most renowned Fishing place in this Country. It is consequently the resort of the majority of the Snakes, where immense numbers of Salmon are taken.
The Hunt party arrived at the Boise River on November 21, 1811, and met well-clad and mounted Indians there (ibid., p. 295). One week later, the party came to Mann's Creek, a tributary of the Weiser River, and there found "some huts of Chochonis" (p. 296):
They had just killed two young horses to eat. It is their only food except for the seed of a plant which resembles hemp and which they pound very fine.
In the mountains between Mann's Creek and the Snake River some dozen huts of "Chochonies" were encountered (p. 299); the journals use Snake and "Chochoni" or "Shoshonie" interchangeably.
The 1818-19 journals of Alexander Ross gave considerable attention to hostilities between the "Snakes" and the Sahaptin ("Shaw-ha-ap-tens")-speaking peoples (Ross, 1924, pp. 171, 210, 214). Part of this action took place in southwestern Idaho. Ross attempted to arrange peace between the hostile populations and wrote of a council held there under the chiefs "Pee-eye-em" and "Ama-qui-em" and participated in by the "Shirry-dikas," "War-are-ree-kas," and "Ban-at-tees" (p. 243). The two chiefs, said by Ross to be brothers, were previously mentioned as the "principal chiefs" of "the great Snake nation" (p. 238). They belonged to the people called "Shirry-dika," a buffalo-hunting population, for Ross spoke of the acquiescence of "Ama-ketsa," a chief of the "War-are-ree-kas" (fish-eaters, according to Ross), in the maintenance of peace and the cowing of the "Ban-at-tees" by the two leaders (p. 246). Ross represents the Shoshone as having a very large population; those at the peace conference were said to have stretched their camps along both sides of a stream for a distance of seven miles. The "Shirry-dikas" are depicted as the most powerful, and the "War-are-ree-kas," though numerous, are said to lack power and unity. The "Ban-at-tees, or Mountain Snakes" are described as a fragmented population, living in the mountain fastnesses and preying upon the trappers. This seems to characterize the Northern Paiute of Oregon more accurately than the mounted buffalo-hunting Bannock of southeastern Idaho.
The journal of John Work in June, 1832, mentioned (Work, 1923, pp. 165-167) "Snake" Indians on the Payette River, immediately below the mouth of Big Willow Creek; on Little Willow Creek; on the Weiser River; and on the east bank of the Snake River, between the mouths of the Payette and the Weiser. Work used the term Snake in a broad sense and we cannot identify this population as Shoshone with certainty. The Indians had horses, and may thus have been a buffalo-hunting group that had traveled west for salmon. Nathaniel Wyeth entered one of the western Idaho valleys in October of the same year and observed "extensive camps of Indians about one month old. Here they find salmon in a creek running through it and dig the Kamas root but not an Indian was here at this time" (Wyeth, 1899, p. 172). Wyeth was on the Boise River in August, 1834, and encountered "a small village of Snakes." His party proceeded on to the Snake River where they found "a few lodges of very impudent Pawnacks" (p. 229). "Bannock" Indians were also encountered on the Boise River in 1833 by Bonneville's party (Irving, 1837, 2:38) and in the following year his journals noted that "formidable bands of the Banneck Indians were lying on the Boisée and Payette Rivers" (p. 194). The Bannock, or the Indians so termed by our sources, evidently lived near the confluence of these streams with the Snake River, for John Townsend, a young naturalist who joined Wyeth's party, reported several groups of about twenty Indians fishing in the Boise River each of which identified itself as Shoshone (Townsend, 1905, pp. 206-207). Farther down the Boise River the party "came to a village consisting of thirty willow lodges of the Pawnees (Bannocks)" (p. 210). The Shoshone and the Mono-Bannock speakers did not maintain complete separateness, however, for Townsend wrote (1905, p. 266) that the party met some ten lodges of "Snakes and Bannecks" on the west side of the Snake River, near Burnt River.