Lowie's information on the Idaho is more fragmentary. We learn only that among the Lemhi Shoshone: "At a dance of hunt, he [the chief] was assisted by di'rakōńe policemen, armed with quirts" (Lowie, 1909, p. 208). Regarding the Lemhi, one of Steward's informants told him that the police institution had been recently introduced (Steward, 1938, p. 194). Steward's data on the police in Idaho is more complete (ibid., p. 211):
The institution of police, which was obviously borrowed from Wyoming, is of unknown antiquity. It was largely civil and consisted of four or five middle-aged men, Bannock or Shoshoni, who had a civic spirit. They were selected and instructed by the council.
Actual soldier societies were not present in Idaho. The policemen were primarily responsible for keeping the traveling band together and were secondarily concerned with the buffalo hunt.
We specifically queried our Shoshone and Bannock informants on the presence of police societies or of any techniques for control of impulsive buffalo hunters. The responses were all negative, nor is there any historical reference to police societies. The Shoshone and Bannock, we learned from contemporary Indians, needed no coercion to keep them from premature and individual preying upon a buffalo herd. Such action would not be to any individual's self-interest, it was said, and the censure of the community imposed sufficient control over individual behavior. But we cannot deny the existence of the two societies or of the dances associated with them. Rather, we would surmise that the police societies were not important elements in social control nor were they ever a key element in Shoshone social structure; the fact that they have been only imperfectly preserved in traditional knowledge is, itself, of some significance. We hypothesize, then, that the symbolic content of soldier societies had reached the Shoshone without major effects on the ordering of personal and group relations. These conclusions are much akin to Wallace and Hoebel's for the Comanche, who were, it seems, able to hunt buffalo quite effectively without institutionalized coercive restraints (Wallace and Hoebel, 1952, pp. 56-57).
Chieftaincy was more highly developed in the eastern sectors of the Shoshone occupancy than among the people farther west. But even among the mounted bands, the authority of the chiefs was limited. Lewis and Clark commented on the essentially egalitarian nature of Shoshone society, and later travelers present evidence leading to the same conclusion. The wealth differentiation characteristic of the later history of other Plains tribes never became a significant factor among the Shoshone. This is no doubt owing in part to their weak military position and the consequent heavy losses of horses to enemy tribes. Moreover, the Shoshone were only marginally involved in the buffalo-hide trade, and large horse herds and extensive polygyny did not have the utility that they did among, for example, the Blackfoot, who employed women as an essential part of the labor force (cf. Lewis, 1942).
The absence of strong tendencies to stratification and the type of ecological adaptation present acted to inhibit the development of strong authority patterns. Leadership over a large population, such as that exerted by Chief Washakie, was necessarily temporary in nature and was largely restricted to periods when people united for the common enterprises of war and buffalo hunting. During the summer and most of winter and spring a host of minor chiefs of varying influence and prestige were responsible for directing the activities of clusters of followers. Even war and the spring and fall hunts did not necessarily entail the participation of an entire tribe. The buffalo hunters frequently split into smaller hunting parties when out on the plains. And warfare, if offensive, usually was carried on by small raiding parties. Even in defensive warfare attacks were swift and without warning, and large numbers of people could not be gathered to repel the invaders.
"Tribal" chiefs did exist in Idaho and Wyoming, but they exercised discontinuous influence on a group of followers, who might only infrequently all gather as a unit. And since it is impossible to isolate Shoshone or Bannock tribes as stable membership units, the great chiefs may be more profitably viewed as the men of highest prestige within a certain area. The positions of these leaders became more clearly defined in later times, when first traders and then government agents sought them out as representatives of their people. That the white man's image of the chieftaincy was erroneous may be seen in the examples cited of disaffection and the subsequent efforts of the agents to shore up the authority of their delegated chiefs.
Chiefs acted in consultation with councils of distinguished men and lesser chiefs, and the familiar Plains role of camp announcer is also present among the Shoshone. The chief in any area achieved his status through general consensus and recognition of his high prestige. Generosity, wisdom, bravery, and skill in hunting were key criteria for the selection of headmen. The position was neither hereditary nor for life. Although it is not possible to speak of a chief being "deposed," many a chief was replaced by a man whose star was in the ascendancy. And it was also possible for two or three men to have almost equivalent claim to the role within the same district. Despite the nonhereditary nature of the office, we sometimes find it shared by brothers, or sometimes one brother succeeded another. Such cases may be explained as the result of general family prestige or of common upbringing and ideals of conduct.
One important limiting factor on the power of chiefs was the mobility of the population. Individuals could and did move to other areas or join other leaders, and the chief who wished to maintain his influence over his followers could not carry out policy greatly opposed to their wishes. The mobility of the population is a function of several important facts. First, the bands were not corporate units in the sense of groups holding rights over strategic resources. As we have seen, there were no such limits within the general range of Shoshone-speaking people. Band territoriality would have been directly contradictory to the enormous distances traversed by the mounted people. The region, as a whole, presented the possibility of a balanced diet and annual subsistence cycle, but smaller subdivisions of it could not do so, though they provided overabundance of a limited number of foods in certain seasons. Even the area of Shoshone occupation, as compared with other peoples' territory, was vague and ill defined. Territory, as such, was not a matter of great concern in the relations of the Shoshone with hostile tribes. Rather, they vigorously defended their horses and their own lives during enemy invasions. The buffalo country east of the mountains was roamed over by several groups, as were the mountain areas of western Wyoming and Montana. And peaceful groups of the Basin-Plateau merged and intermingled with the Shoshone in the areas in which they had contact.
The individual, the family, or the group of families that elected to change leaders within an area or to shift from one area to another did not give up vested rights and prerogatives. And, given the loose nature of Shoshone social structure and the diffuse and widespread network of social relationships, the person or group seeking a change could usually count upon acceptance elsewhere. The reservation system tended to tighten political organization and to define groupings more closely, since reservation membership did constitute a vested interest and government legitimation and stabilization of a central chieftaincy restricted the choices open to the individual.