Mountain Shoshone craftsThe Mountain Shoshone tailored clothing from sheepskin and other animal skins. Historian David Dominick reports that they were said to be expert tanners and furriers, trading their sought-after sheepskin robes for buffalo robes and other Plains Indian products.
There are three main traditions of the Shoshone Indians; the Vision Quest, the Power of the Shaman, and the Sun Dance. There is a great deal of focus put into the supernatural world. The Shoshone Indians believe that supernatural powers are acquired through vision quests and dreams.
Hunted animals and birds, fished, and gathered insects like grasshoppers and all kinds of plants, like cattails, to eat. Ate pinyon pine nuts as an important part of their diet. Wore clothes woven from plants, with rabbitskin robes in winter. Lived in wickiups (round shelters made from brush).
Shoshoni, also written as Shoshoni-Gosiute and Shoshone (/ʃoʊˈʃoʊni/; Shoshoni: Sosoni' ta̲i̲kwappe, newe ta̲i̲kwappe or neme ta̲i̲kwappeh) is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken in the Western United States by the Shoshone people.
The Shoshone, it seems, traded with everyone, including northwest and southwest tribes. Other Rocky Mountain and central Plains tribes also took goods to the Missouri River valley to trade for corn, pumpkin, squash and native-grown tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis, Pursh).
Today, the Shoshone's approximately 10,000 members primarily live on several reservations in Wyoming, Idaho, and Nevada, the largest of which is the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
All Apaches relied primarily on hunting of wild game and gathering of cactus fruits and other wild plant foods. Hunting was a part of daily life and provided food, clothing, shelter, and blankets. The Apache hunted deer, wild turkeys, jackrabbits, coyote, javelin, fox, beavers, buffalo, bears, and mountain lions.
The name "Shoshone" comes from Sosoni, a Shoshone word for high-growing grasses. Shoshones call themselves Newe, meaning "People." Meriwether Lewis recorded the tribe as the "Sosonees or snake Indians" in 1805.
In Shoshone's language, behne is a way to greet people and say hello in a friendly way. The Shoshoni language belongs to the group of Numic languages,
The Shoshone adapted well to their new surroundings. The Northern and Eastern groups, for example, adopted a nomadic lifestyle, hunting and gathering where resources were plentiful. Soon they began to hunt buffalo, a task made easier after they acquired horses late in the seventeenth century.
Several tribes on the Plains referred to the Shoshones as the "Grass House People," and this name probably refers to the conically shaped houses made of native grasses (sosoni') used by the Great Basin Indians.
Shoshone children often played a game in which they had a mock buffalo hunt. One child would be "It" and bellow like a bull, while the rest of the children tried to catch the "buffalo." Shoshones also held foot races. These were normally between young men and were over fairly long courses, half a mile or longer.
Sun Dance, most important religious ceremony of the Plains Indians of North America and, for nomadic peoples, an occasion when otherwise independent bands gathered to reaffirm their basic beliefs about the universe and the supernatural through rituals of personal and community sacrifice.
The Shoshone tribe of the Great BasinThe Great Basin with its very hot summers, cold winters and very low levels of rainfall resulted in desolate and difficult living conditions in which the people had to work hard to survive due to limited resources. The Western Shoshone lived in desolate environments.
When settlers began coming into the Shoshone territory, their traditional food sources became scarce. They learned from the settlers and began to farm and irrigate the land in order to grow their own food. They grew pumpkins, squash, corn, wheat, barley and other crops.
The Indians that lived east and up north of the Rocky Mountains lived in tepees and hunted buffalo. When the Shoshone were actually in the mountains they lived on roots, berries, and infrequently, fish and small game. The Shoshone usually lived in small groups of ten people or less.
The Western Shoshone say this territory includes tens of millions of acres making up most of Nevada and reaching into Idaho, Utah and Southern California. The money will go to roughly 5,000 people who proved to the BIA they were one-quarter or more Western Shoshone.
The Lemhi Shoshone took trout and other resident fish throughout the year, but the seasonal runs of salmon made the greatest contribution to their subsistence. Coastal weirs were built along the margins of estuaries and were designed to work with the tides to catch herring, salmon, smelt, flounder, and other fish.
The Ute call themselves Nuche meaning “mountain people.†They call their language Nuu-a-pagia. The word “Ute†is apparently a corruption of the Spanish word Yutas, which is possibly derived from the term Guaputu.
Industrial Arts. The Eastern Shoshone made a wide variety of leather goods. Tipis, clothing, and containers, as well as hides or furs primarily for trade, were the major manufactures.
Lewis & Clark National Historic TrailMost people would quickly answer “nope,†thinking that horses wouldn't appear in the Expedition story until the crossing of the Rocky Mountains. But it does appear, by carefully reading the journals, that two horses were a part of the Expedition from nearly the very beginning.
History. Founded in 1882 during the construction of the Oregon Short Line, Shoshone has long been considered the main railroad station in south central Idaho's Magic Valley region. For many years, Shoshone was the only Amtrak stop in south central Idaho.
Lewis and Clark Meet the Shoshone. Although the Shoshone welcomed Lewis, they were suspicious. They had recently been raided by another tribe. When Lewis asked them to travel to meet the rest of his expedition party, the Shoshone worried that Lewis might be leading them into a trap.
