Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society Part 11

While the Lemhi Shoshone intermarried with other Shoshone and with Bannock, there was a clear-cut geographical separation between them and the above groups. Some Shoshone wintered in Montana on the other side of the Divide, but they were generally considered to be of the Lemhi band. To the west was the Sawtooth Range and the Tukurika.

Although the Tukurika had some contact with the Lemhi people, there were considerable cultural differences between them, owing to the proximity of Plains Indian tribes to the Agaidika and to the different subsistent cycles of the two groups. North of the Lemhi country was the land of the Flathead; to the south the arid Snake River plains intervened between them and the Fort Hall plains population. The Lemhi Shoshone were by no means isolated, but there was considerably less overlapping of activities than in southeastern Idaho.

Winter was usually spent in the valley of the Lemhi River in the area between the modern town of Salmon and the old Mormon post of Fort Lemhi. One informant said that the population was distributed in villages of about a dozen buffalo-hide tipis, each village having a leader. During the winter the population subsisted upon dried stores of berries, roots, and the meat of buffalo and other game. The Lemhi Valley was secure from enemy attack in the winter, for the Blackfoot concentrated their attention on the Bannock encampments on the Snake River.

Other Shoshone were said to have wintered occasionally on the Beaverhead River in Montana. Steward notes that "possibly a few families lived in the vicinity of Dillon, Montana" (1938, p. 188). He lists a large winter camp of some forty families named "Unauvump,"

which was situated along Red Rock Creek from Lima, Montana, to Red Rock Lake (ibid.). Steward notes that this name refers to the "locomotive" and thus to the Union Pacific Railroad, which follows the Beaverhead River. We obtained the same name, but our informant thought it was merely a place name and not a camp site. Also the site was a short distance up the Beaverhead River from Dillon, Montana. In any case, the reference to the locomotive established the recency of the name. In view of the Blackfoot incursions in that area it is doubtful whether the camp on Red Rock Creek much pre-dated the treaty. However, Bannock and Shoshone buffalo-hunting parties were frequently forced to spend the winter in Montana, although the exact location of these camps is not known.

When winter ended, the Lemhi population did not move far afield in search of subsistence, but hunted and awaited the spring salmon run in April. The Indians fished with harpoons, set basketry traps, and made fish weirs. Most fishing was done in the Lemhi River, but some families fished in the Pahsimeroi River, an affluent of the Salmon River which flowed west of and parallel to the Lemhi. Some fishing took place on the main stream of the Salmon River below its confluence with the Lemhi, but only harpooning was effective owing to the depth of the water.

The weirs were put in the water each spring and dismantled in the fall and stored. Certain men were considered especially proficient in the construction and operation of fish weirs and a.s.sumed supervision over the operation.

When the salmon runs had ended, many of the Lemhi people went to Camas Prairie. Some preferred to dig roots in the Lemhi country or to hunt deer in the ranges on either side of the valley. These hunting groups were quite small and usually numbered only two to four tipis. The sojourn on Camas Prairie lasted only about a month and the Lemhi people returned for the summer-fall salmon run. When this was over at the end of August, preparations were made for the trip to the buffalo country.

At least three horses were required for the buffalo hunt: one for the hunter, another for his wife, and a third for packing purposes. Even this number was inadequate, since children also needed mounts and one pack horse was not enough to transport a good take of meat and hides.

Also, the hunter should preferably have a specially trained buffalo horse, which he would ride only while the buffalo herd was being chased. While the Lemhi were richer in horses than were most Shoshone, some people were forced to stay at home. These hunted game in the mountains of the Lemhi region and adjoining areas on the Montana side of the Divide and depended to some extent on the largesse of the returning buffalo party.

The buffalo hunters crossed the Divide through Lemhi Pa.s.s to the Beaverhead River and went out to the hunting grounds along the previously described routes. Our informants had no recollection of alliances with other Shoshone or with other tribes on the buffalo hunt except for one who said that the Lemhi Shoshone hunted with Nez Perce parties after an earlier period of hostility. At this earlier time the Nez Perce and the Flathead were said to have been enemies of the Lemhi people. Lemhi informants claimed that the buffalo parties usually succeeded in reaching winter quarters on the Lemhi River before the snows closed the pa.s.ses. In view of Lewis and Clark's information and our data from Fort Hall, however, it might be supposed that they were often forced to remain in Montana for the winter.

IV. ECOLOGY AND SOCIAL SYSTEM

Out of the ma.s.s of detailed data presented in the preceding chapters, certain constant features in the life of the buffalo-hunting Shoshone and Bannock may be discerned. First, there is no doubt of the importance of buffalo in the economy of these people. During an early period, when the Shoshone were among the first tribes of the Northern Plains to adopt the horse, they occupied large areas of the Missouri drainage and extensive buffalo herds were also to be found west of the Continental Divide. Even after tribal pressures from the north forced the Shoshone into residence west of the Rockies part of the time, advantage was still taken of the buffalo in that region. And regular sorties were made over the mountains in search of the more abundant herds there. But no sector of the mounted Shoshone population, at least after 1800, was completely dependent upon the buffalo nor were their princ.i.p.al social connections with the east. Rather, their firmest social ties were with their colinguists to the west, and their economy also was strongly oriented in that direction.

This fact has been a major source of difficulty in our attempt to isolate social groupings among the Bannock and Shoshone. The Bannock, usually accompanied by many Idaho Shoshone, ranged east to central Montana, or into the Big Horn Basin, with the Eastern Shoshone. Part of the year, however, saw them in western Idaho and in Oregon, where they visited and intermarried with the Northern Paiute. Although we have no information on persons shifting membership from the Bannock to the Northern Paiute, such relocations no doubt took place, even if only temporarily. There are ample data, however, to doc.u.ment the reverse process, for Northern Paiute were continually joining the Bannock in order to take part in buffalo hunting.

The same fluidity of movement of individuals and families may be noted among the mounted Shoshone of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Those buffalo hunters whom we have somewhat arbitrarily a.s.signed to Idaho customarily wintered on the Portneuf and upper Snake rivers. But they could be found in different seasons and during various years in northern Utah, on the waters of the Bear River and east of Great Salt Lake, and in western Wyoming. Families occasionally went to the Goose Creek Mountains in the fall for pine nuts, and almost all went down the Snake River in spring and early summer to take part in salmon fishing. In all these places they interacted with and could trace kinship bilaterally to the unmounted, more permanent inhabitants.

This is true also for the so-called Eastern Shoshone. We have shown that these mounted people wintered on the Bear and Green rivers until their final establishment on the Wind River Reservation; in fact, the first Eastern Shoshone Agency was at Fort Bridger. Annual trips were made to Salt Lake City, after its settlement by the Mormons, and visits into Idaho were frequent. Moreover, Shoshone not generally a.s.sociated with Washakie's leadership who possessed horses joined the latter for buffalo hunting. Evidence for this is most clear in the case of Pocatello's followers. This particular band, found at various times buffalo hunting in central Wyoming, wintering in northern Utah or southeastern Idaho, and fishing or raiding on the Snake River, is an excellent example of the social continuity between Plains and Basin-Plateau. That there was such social continuity, merging, and interpenetration indicates a common set of social understandings, of great similarity in social structure. It may be further argued that this continuity and exchange of population served in some degree to preserve a more amorphous Basin-type society among the buffalo hunters.

It is clear that larger political units existed among the mounted Shoshone and Bannock than among their fellows to the east. We believe, however, that it would be erroneous to attribute great stability or cohesiveness to these aggregates, for the seasonal amalgamation and splitting of other Plains populations is even more p.r.o.nounced among the Shoshone. The reason for this is partly the fact that the Shoshone spent long periods of the year west of the Rockies and within the range itself. Buffalo hunting did unite most of the mounted people every fall and to a lesser extent in the spring. There is considerable variation of evidence on whether the people crossing the Divide from Wyoming and Idaho formed two large parties or several smaller ones. It may be surmised that the large parties were common in earlier times owing to the threat of enemies, but the smaller ones seem to have been more common later in the nineteenth century, especially after the establishment of the Wind River Reservation. The time spent in the buffalo hunt was closely correlated with the distance to the herds.

Our fragmentary accounts suggest that in the upper Green and Snake rivers before 1840, smaller groups hunted for shorter periods. The Big Horn Basin, however, is more than 200 miles from the Green River area, and the bands were forced to travel longer distances and to kill their winter meat supply in one prolonged hunt. Although the Wyoming Shoshone usually were able to return for the winter to the Green and Bear rivers, this was not true of those Idaho Shoshone and Bannock who sought buffalo in Montana. The distance from Camas Prairie in Idaho to the buffalo country of Montana was almost 500 miles, making a winter return to Idaho most difficult and aggravating the problem of packing meat. Many of the Idaho people chose not to make this long and difficult journey and found adequate fall hunting in the local mountains. A buffalo party could thus be on the move for a few days or a week, for two months or seven months, depending on the itinerary followed. Cohesion was closest during actual traveling and hunting.

Winter camps were not tightly nucleated settlements of an entire buffalo party, for hunting during the winter required some dispersal.

This point deserves some elaboration. Shimkin has stressed the inadequacy of buffalo hunting for a complete winter subsistence (Shimkin, 1947_a_, p. 266) and this is borne out by the testimony of our informants also. Buffalo meat no doubt supplied the margin of survival, but considerable dependence was placed on elk, deer, moose, rabbits, and other animals during the winter. A very large and compact winter camp would soon exhaust the game in its immediate vicinity.

Moreover, the winter location had to be in places where these animals could be found. Camps were thus generally located in river valleys, where wood, water, and protection from storms could be found, but in the vicinity of the high mountains inhabited by the game.

Large population concentrations broke down completely during the summer. Buffalo hunting was restricted to strays and to the small timber buffalo. But the princ.i.p.al game was taken in the mountain country west of the Continental Divide. Large camp groups could not be adapted to the scattered resources used during this period, and people gathered mainly for reasons of defense. Summer groupings of a minimum size seem to have been positively preferred by the Shoshone, as our data from the post-reservation period indicate.

This ecological adaptation and mode of social interaction with other groups had a profound effect on the structure of Shoshone society.

Shimkin a.n.a.lyzes the fluctuations in economy and local grouping among the Wind River Shoshone and states (1947_a_, p. 280):

It also strengthened the cross-currents of individualism and collective discipline: individual prestige in war honors and hunting versus united military societies and collective bison hunts.

But the basic structure of Shoshone society remained diffuse and atomistic. Inst.i.tutions productive of centralization were weak. Lowie, for example, reports on police, or soldier, societies among the Eastern Shoshone (Lowie, 1915, pp. 813-814). There were two such groups, called the Yellow Noses and the Logs. The former used inverted speech and were expected to be more courageous. They accordingly were responsible for leading the band when on the march, while the Logs formed the rear guard. Each of these groups had a headman, but Lowie states that the tribal chief was a member of neither. Membership was attained through the candidate's own initiative or by invitation; purchase and age-grading were not criteria, and societies using such means of recruitment were evidently absent among the Eastern Shoshone.

Although Lowie did not report the functions of the police societies in detail, he says that the Yellow Nose society, in addition to its responsibility of protecting the traveling bands and maintaining order among them, also policed the hunt. Lowie further writes that the horse of a deviant hunter would be beaten and that any buffalo hides taken by him would be destroyed.

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 a.s.sisted by di'rak[=o]['n]e policemen, armed with quirts" (Lowie, 1909, p. 208). Regarding the Lemhi, one of Steward's informants told him that the police inst.i.tution had been recently introduced (Steward, 1938, p. 194). Steward's data on the police in Idaho is more complete (ibid., p. 211):

The inst.i.tution 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 a.s.sociated 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 inst.i.tutionalized 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 cl.u.s.ters of followers. Even war and the spring and fall hunts did not necessarily entail the partic.i.p.ation 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 sh.o.r.e 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 const.i.tute a vested interest and government legitimation and stabilization of a central chieftaincy restricted the choices open to the individual.

The princ.i.p.al item in the productive apparatus of the mounted Shoshone was the horse. Without sufficient horses to pursue the buffalo hunt, the Indian was relegated to "digger" status and had to remain within the Great Basin. But horses were individual, private property, and a man could locate under any leadership as long as he was mounted. His primary economic dependency was thus shifted from the larger social group to his own herd. Each man was to a large extent his own master and acted accordingly.

The loose bilaterality of the Shoshone was ideally adapted to their mode of existence. Our data show some tendency toward matrilocality, but Steward states that, in Idaho, this is true primarily of the early years of marriage, after which the couple could exercise a bilocal option (Steward, 1938, p. 214). The direction of the choice depended on such situational factors as the prestige of either mate's parents or their wealth in horses. In any event, there was no marked preferential weighting of either line. Our informants reported that the married couple often shifted back and forth for varying periods of time. Ultimately, the mounted Shoshone may be just as profitably looked on as neolocal, as were the western Shoshone, for the couple did not necessarily live with or adjacent to either mate's parents.

People were quite free to join other relatives or to a.s.sociate closely with unrelated persons. This, and the periodic splitting up and reamalgamation of larger groups, inhibited any development of large, solidary nuclei of bilateral kinsmen. Relationships were traced bilaterally and widely, but ties were amorphous and weak. Lacking bounded and corporate kin groups, persons were highly individuated and possessed maximum geographical mobility.

We may well conclude that, from the point of view of social structure, the mounted Shoshone were typologically much like the Great Basin people with whom they had close relations. Easily diffused items of culture, such as their material inventory, many religious beliefs, and their mode of warfare, establish their intimate historical connection with the Plains. But the higher levels of social integration found among the Shoshone are of a situational nature and are not well integrated with the fundamental facts of family life and more stable modes of grouping. It would be erroneous to conclude from this, however, that this amorphous, Basinlike social structure was nonadaptive to the Plains. That it is not at all atypical of the area is indicated by Eggan's statement (1955, pp. 518-519):

Plains Indian society, despite its lack of lineage and clan, still has a social structure. This structure is "horizontal" or generational in character and has little depth. The extended family groupings in terms of matrilocal residence or centered around a sibling group are amorphous but flexible. The bilateral or composite band organization, centered around a chief and his close relatives, may change its composition according to various circ.u.mstances--economic or political. The camp-circle encompa.s.ses the tribe, provides a disciplined organization for the communal hunt, and a center for the Sun Dance and other tribal ceremonies which symbolized the renewed unity of the tribe and the renewal of nature. The seasonal alternation between band and tribal camp-circle is related to ecological changes in the environment, and particularly to the behavior of the buffalo ...

The working hypothesis proposed earlier ... that "tribes coming into the Plains with different backgrounds and social systems,"

can be tentatively extended to Plains social structure as a whole, despite the variations noted. That this is in large measure an internal adjustment to the uncertain and changing conditions of Plains environment--ecological and social--rather than a result of borrowing and diffusion, is still highly probable.

The loose bilaterality seen by Eggan as a characteristic of Plains society was part of the earlier Shoshone social background. But more centralized political units and predominantly "horizontal"

organizations, such as age-grade and soldier societies, were more weakly developed than among many other tribes of the northern Plains.

This fact, as well as the acquisition of firearms by the northern tribes, may have been responsible for the manifest military weakness of the Shoshone and their westward retreat beyond the Rocky Mountains.