Shoshone Indians span widely dispersed geographical and cultural areas. Eastern Shoshones live on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, Shoshone-Bannock tribes are at Fort Hall in Idaho, and Western Shoshones reside on reservations in Nevada. While the Shoshones' linguistic roots may have originated in the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, archaeological evidence suggests a Shoshonean presence eight thousand years ago in the Bitterroot, Yellowstone, Absoroka, Wind River, and Bighorn Mountains.
Shoshones began migrating onto the Plains beginning around A.D. 1500, although the mountain Shoshones (Sheepeaters) did not venture to the Plains. They acquired horses in the late 1600s and then split into Comanche and Eastern Shoshone divisions in the early 1700s. As Plains horse-and-buffalo cultures, they celebrated the Sun Dance and leadership that valued military prowess. Shoshones of eastern and northern Idaho occasionally hunted buffalo and other large game, but staples were fish and camas roots. Western Shoshones did not use horses, but hunted small game and harvested wild vegetables and piñon nuts.
Shoshones in Idaho and Wyoming rapidly integrated into the European-American fur trade during the years from 1825 to 1845. The Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868 created the Wind River and Fort Hall Reservations. There are approximately 5,700 enrolled Eastern Shoshones at Wind River (with about 4,300 in residence) and about 4,500 Shoshone-Bannock people at Fort Hall. Most Shoshones are employed in ranching and farming.
Bibliography
Crum, Steven J. The Road on Which We Came: A History of the Western Shoshones. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994.
Madsen, Brigham D. The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985.
Stamm, Henry E., IV. People of the Wind River: The Eastern Shoshones, 1825–1900. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
