Shoshoni People of the Great Basin
Between 1931 and 1936, Julian H. Steward made numerous trips throughout Nevada, Southern Idaho Western Utah and the Owens Valley area of California, interviewing native people and recording the kinds of foods used historically within the Great Basin. Keep in mind, nearly all of the people he interviewed were in their 70's or 80's at the time - which would indicate that most were born the 1860's and 1870's and who had gained a good deal of their information from their parents and grandparents.
The significance of Julian H. Steward's work is that, in the hundreds of interviews he completed, Sage Grouse are only mentioned once and the only Elk mentioned were taken in the Yellowstone area.
Summation of Animal Foods Used by Shoshoni People of the Great Basin
There has been a good deal of controversy surrounding questions of actual numbers of wildlife that inhabited the western United States prior to white settlement. Fortunately, there is a good deal of historical information available concerning this issue. One of the best works produced, which can shed light in this regard, was that of Julian H. Steward. Between 1931 and 1936, Julian H. Steward made numerous trips throughout Nevada, southern Idaho, western Utah and the Owens Valley area of California, interviewing native people. In addition, Mr. Steward added to his text, comments made by early trappers and explorers which made their way into these areas durring the 1800s. The following information was taken from Mr. Steward's book, Basin-Plateua Abrogiginal Sociopolitcal Groups, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnolgy. The information is confined to those comments made concerning the animals which were hunted by the native people during that period.
Even though much of the testimony herein gives the impression that there were many deer, antelope and mountain sheep throughout the region at that time, there was not. Because there is testimony of areas where hunts were held does not mean that these hunts were held at regular intervals, or that they were always successful. The testimony does however indicate that these animals were present even though in very small numbers. That there were very few large wildlife is indicated by the fact that these people had very few lodges for shelter, that moccasins were rare, and that no cradle boards were mentioned. What skins were acquired were most often used for food storage. Even successful rabbit hunts had to have been the exception rather than the norm, for testimony indicates that there were never enough rabbit skin robes for more than a few persons.
Small game was of relatively great importance, reptiles, rodents and insects all supplied food. Rodents and other small mammals had several advantages over large game. They remained in restricted localities and did not require a long chase. Insects were sometimes of great importance. In some years grasshoppers and "Mormon Crickets" were extremely abundant and could be taken in quantities that would last for months. Overall, plant foods were of the greatest importance; unfortunately, even they were inadequate.
Pine Nuts, or the fruit of Pinus monophlla torr, was the most important food for most of the tribes that inhabited the Great Basin area of the Western United States. The Indians called the nut "tuba". Even though it was the most important single food species, harvests were unpredictable. According to information gathered by Steward:
Each tree yields but once in three or four years. In some years there is a good crop throughout the area, in some years virtually none. In other years, some localities yield nuts but others do not. When a good crop occurs, it is far more abundant than the local population can harvest. The cones begin to open in early fall, the nuts first being knocked from the cones with a pole or the cones knocked to the ground then opened by pounding or roasting. Within a few days nuts begin to drop from the cones. The period during which they can be harvested is consequently two to three weeks, rarely longer; Ruby Valley, it was only ten days. Had crops been reliable each year, and permitted a longer harvesting period, the harvest would have supported many times the population. Actually, a family sometimes procured enough for one year, rarely for two, and frequently passed two or three winters without pine nuts, living on scanty supplies of other seeds. Cooked nuts might keep two years, but usually spoiled after a year. When burned from the cones, nuts were thereby cooked. Those picked up from the ground were stored green, according to OD, because coyotes would eat cooked nuts.
The daily harvest per person varied considerably with the annual yield. Dutcher said ten or twelve Shoshoni women gathering in the Panamint Mountains got one or two bushels a day. This would be about 100 to 150 pounds. Ruby Valley informants said a person could pick 200 pounds in ten days. BG, S-Elko, thought a person could pick not over fifty pounds of pine nuts a day. (From the writer's experience this figure is substantially correct.) Four persons, including BG, once picked 300 pounds in a week, a rate of about twelve and one-half pounds per person per day. At this rate, a family which included four pickers could gather not over 1200 pounds in the probable maximum of four weeks during which they could be harvested. Even this figure is probably excessive. The quantity consumed during the winter depended upon use of other foods. If pine nuts were virtually the only food, a person could easily eat two pound a day, or about ten pounds for a family of five. In this case 1200 pound would last but four months. And 1200 pounds is probably the maximum crop possible. Consequently, it is not difficult to see why starvation by early spring was very common.
A summary of the animals hunted, for each locality, is as follows:
Deep Creek and Skull Valley Gosiute
Between the Deep Creek area and the Sevier Desert to the south and between the House Mountains and the Utah-Nevada boundary lie vast deserts with little water. They probably had a sparse population living at isolated springs. M and JP thought they were Gosiute who had mixed somewhat with the Ute of the Sevier Lake and the Sevier River regions. The greater number of Gosiute villages named by M lay in Skull Valley and Sink Valley. The people living around Trout Creek on the eastern slope of the Deep Creek Mountains were also called Gosiute.
All Gosiute probably held shamanistic antelope drives. Howard Egan told of his participation in a hunt that took place in Antelope Valley, which is north and east of Deep Creek:
"For a few days before I came the squaws and bucks were busy repairing and extending the flanking arms of the old corral, or trap pen, which was located near the north end of Antelope Valley and about twenty miles northwest of Deep Creek. It was pretty cold weather, but no snow on the ground. The Indians thought it a good time and expected a good catch.
"After they had all come in from their work a great deal of talking and planning was on and each knew just what part and place he or she was to take. By daylight all were ready for the start and in fact, a number of the young men had left early in the evening before to go to the extreme south end of the ground to be covered and about twenty miles from the pen. They were to spread apart across the valley, travel in open order back to the north, being careful that not one of the antelope jumped would run, except in a northerly direction.
An antelope, when started up, will always run directly for one of these (knolls), that lay opposite from where he gets his scare from, and they run from hill to hill. They see no one ahead of them but the party behind being constantly increased, and if they undertake to pass around the drivers a buck or squaw is sure to raise to his feet, and that sends them off to the center again.
Thus it goes till they come to the line between the outer ends of the arms, which, there are about four miles apart, but gradually closing in as they get nearer the pen. The arms or leads are started at the extreme ends by simply prying or pulling up a large sagebrush and standing it roots up on the top of another brush, thus making a tall, black object visible for miles. The standing of these brush were at first some ten to twenty feet apart, but were placed more and more near together the nearer towards the pen, and when the two lines came to about one-hundred yards apart, they were built so the butts of the brush were as close as the tops would allow them to be joined and by this time both wings had swung to the east side of the valley, where there were many ravines to cross and plenty of cedar and pine to use for fencing.
There were many turns to the lane thus formed, but (it) was getting narrower and stronger till finally, around a sharp turn through a large, thick bunch of cedars, the game were in the corral, which was about two-hundred feet in diameter and built strong enough and high enough to withstand a herd of buffalo. The pine and cedar trees had not been removed from the inside of the pen and not many from the runway, for a mile back. The drivers… were all on a fast run, yelling like a pack of coyotes. The drive came to an end with a rush and everyone working desperately closing up the entrance.
Then began the killing of as many as were wanted that day, the killing was done with arrow and seldom missed piercing the heart. The catch was about twenty-five, mostly all bucks or does… There were five or six bucks killed that day… to give the squaws time to cut up in thin strips the flesh and dry it on a rack built over a small fire, thus curing it so it would keep for a long time if kept dry… Three or four young men (had been left) to guard the place. By the next morning the antelope had run themselves down and were huddled in the center of the enclosure… The Indians picked out five or six of the largest, which were killed…
The Indians told me that the last drive, before this one at this place was nearly twelve years ago and the old men never expected to see another at this place, for it would take many years for the animals to increase in sufficient numbers to make it pay to drive. These drives are mostly in the desert valley, where the poor horseless natives live."
In addition to having drives in Antelope Valley, drives were also conducted west of the Cedar Mountains or just south of Delle. Rabbit drives were held in the fall. In Deep Creek Valley drives were held along the flats at any time during the winter.
The importance of rodents was considerable in this region. Haward Egan described them being taken with deadfall traps. He met an Indian whose "plan was to go up one side of the canyon, setting the traps wherever he saw the sign of rats, and the same down the other side. The next day, taking the same route, gathering the catch and resetting the traps. The rats… were six to eight inches long…" The extent of operations is indicated by the fact that though this man had set most of his traps, he had over one-hundred triggers he had not used.
Egan also saw eight or ten women at Creek Hollow diverting water by means of little ditches into gopher holes. In part of a day some of them acquired up to half a bushel, with several days of work ahead. Beckwith remarked (1855, p. 22) that a small "ground-rat or gopher and a black beetle like cricket" furnished a large portion of Gosiute food.
Snake River
The Shoshoni of western Idaho differed from those at Fort Hall. Some were impoverished and pursued a restricted annual subsistence routine on foot, while others, possessing a few horses, ranged over a wider territory which afforded more varied resources.
Hunting of large animals was rarely undertaken and involved no communal effort. Neither Mountain Sheep nor Elk could be had within convenient distance, Deer were generally procured about twenty miles south of the Snake River where hunters ambushed them on game trails. There were no communal drives or corrals.
Having generally wintered near the Snake River, living on dried Salmon, insects, and roots and frequently starving, spring found most families awaiting the first run of salmon. The first "Salmon" came about March or April. The best fishing was near Hagerman, that is, at Upper and Lower Salmon Falls, at the bottom of which the fish were taken in nets. They were also caught with hooks, and especially with dams and weirs. The second run of salmon came in May or June. In July most people who had fished in the Snake River usually traveled to Camas Prairie to gather Yampah, Camas and other roots.
While at Camas Prairie, gray ground squirrels afforded the main meat. People sometimes went up small streams, e.g., the Owyhee River, for the purpose of procuring roots and berries as well as of taking these salmon. Also, mugadu, described as a sucker, a bony fish with wide mouth and yellow stomach, were sometimes taken in the Owyhee River. It was probably infrequent that Snake River Shoshoni went south for pine-nuts, because the trip was too long to make on foot. Pine nuts could be had no nearer than Grouse Creek, Utah, or Beowawe, Nevada. CT thought that people perhaps went for pine-nuts if salmon failed, but does not remember any famine or any cannibalism which was common elsewhere.
On the Snake River, probably in the section between Shoshone Falls and Salmon Falls, the Astoria party saw a number of dwellings which, in October 1811, "Were very comfortable; each had its pile of wormwood at the door for fuel, and within was abundance of salmon, some fresh, but the greater part cured. About their dwellings were immense quantities of the heads and skins of salmon, the best part of which had been cured, and hidden in the ground." Along this part of the river, the shores were "lined with dead salmon." "There were signs of buffalo having been there, but a long time before." Along the northern side of the Snake River in the vicinity of Salmon Falls they saw evidence of a great many horses, though the Indians "were never willing to part with their horses, having none to spare." Indians on the opposite side of the river were more impoverished (Irving, 1897, Vol. 2, pp. 38-40). On August 25th they saw about one-hundredlodges of Shoshoni fishing at Salmon Falls. On the northern side of the river below Salmon Falls they "passed several camps of Shoshones, from some of whom they procured salmon, but in general they were too wretchedly poor to furnish anything" (op. cit., pp. 169 171).
In 1843 Farnham (p. 312), about twenty miles above Shoshoni Falls on the western bank of the river, found a family of "Root Digger Indians, the man half clad, children naked, all filthy."
In 1842 John C. Fremont mentioned no camps above Salmon Falls, but saw several at the falls and below it. "We now very frequently saw Indians, who were strung along the river at every little rapid where fish are to be caught." He described the Shoshoni at Salmon Falls as "poor" and "but slightly provided with winter clothing; there is but little game to furnish skins for the purpose; and of a little animal which seemed to be most numerous, it required twenty skins to make a covering to his knees… (the Indians) grow fat and become poor with the salmon…" and lived in "semicircular huts made of willow, thatched over with straw and open to the sunny south." These were unusually gay savages, fond of loud laughter" (1887, vol. 1, pp. 249-252).
In August 1845 Palmer saw eighteen or twenty Indian huts at Salmon Falls (p. 93). Wyeth (Schoolcraft, 1851, p. 216) says "These Indians nearly starve to death annually, and in winter and spring are emaciated to the last degree; the trappers used to think they all eventually died from starvation as they became old and feeble. In Salmon time they get fat."
Grouse Creek
These people occupied a comparatively isolated territory centering on Grouse Creek northwest of the Great Salt Lake. Communal antelope hunts were held near Terrace and in Grouse Creek Valley, near Lucin. Rabbit drives were held after snow had fallen in Grouse Creek Valley, near Lucin and at a place north of Matlin. The few trout in Grouse Creek were a minor factor in the economy. Kumbiidagwani, a small, brown ground squirrel was hunted communally.
Promontory Point
Communal antelope hunts, with and without corrals, were held along the Bear River flats. Communal rabbit drives were relatively unimportant. Promontory Point is near the northern limit of the black-tail jack rabbit. Communal duck drives were held in the marshes around Bear River Bay. Deer were sometimes driven over cliffs. Fish, taken in the Bear River were suckers and trout.
In August 1842 John C. Fremont came upon several families of Root Diggers, who were catching fish, They had… matted hair, and were almost entirely naked; looking very poor and miserable.
Northern Shoshoni Bands - Lemhi and Central Idaho
Shoshoni and possibly some Bannock had established comparatively large villages on the Lemhi River and several small villages in isolated places in the mountains. Some were even located east of the Continental divide - in the Bitter Root Mountains - in western Montana.
Lander said of these people (1860, p. 137): Subsistence; salmon and trout, elk, deer and antelope; range, on Salmon River and the mountains north of it; horses, a small number. A small band of the Sheep-eaters are very fierce and wild, rarely visiting whites.
The Lemhi had frequent contact with their various neighbors. They were often visited by the Nez Perce, Flathead and Southern Idaho Shoshoni, who found the Lemhi Valley a refuge from the raiding Blackfeet. Sometimes, they joined these tribes on trips for buffalo, or met them at Camas Prairie in western Idaho.
Subsistence was principally on seeds, roots, mountain sheep, deer and salmon. Antelope were scarce; there were no buffalo. The fertile and lower Lemhi Valley had some antelope. The Lemhi Shoshoni did have horses with which to make expeditions to the south and east for buffalo.
Gass (p. 123) described the Lemhi as the,Poorest and most miserable nation I ever beheld; having scarcely anything to subsist on except berries and a few fish.
There were few deer. Antelope were surrounded on horseback and shot with bow and arrows. Rabbits were too scarce for communal hunts. Young water fowl were sometimes taken in drives. Fish were taken by means of hooks, harpoons, baskets, and dams by individual fishermen.
During the summer some families went east to hunt buffalo while others went west to Camas Prairie to trade buffalo hides to the Nez Perce for horses. As buffalo were extinct in Idaho by 1840, the hunting families crossed the Bitter Root Mountains to Crow territory in the vicinity of Yellowstone, gathering seeds, roots and berries on the way. For protection against marauding parties of Blackfeet they often joined forces with Fort Hall Shoshoni and Bannock, Wyoming Shoshoni, Flatheads and sometimes even Crows. All summer they followed the herds. In October they returned to the Lemhi Valley with their hides and dried meat.
Trips to Camas Prairie were made by small, independent groups. These families generally remained in the same place until October, eating sage hens, grouse, ground hogs, woodchucks, trout from the small streams flowing into the Malad River and deer and antelope from the mountains. Some Shoshoni from Fort Hall and Nez Perce as well as from the Snake River itself, also spent the summer in this prairie. Families returned to the Lemhi River in the fall and remained there all winter. Famine was not uncommon.
Fort Hall Bannock and Shoshoni
Shoshoni and the Northern Paiute speaking Bannock, occupied the Fort Hall region. The Shoshoni at Fort Hall are distinguished from those in western Idaho by having had some horses and a comparatively high degree of political solidarity at an earlier period. The Fort Hall Bannock actually were located in eastern Oregon in early historical times.
Ross (1855, Vol. I, pp. 249-252), who visited the area about 1820, apparently lumped the scattered Shoshoni families of southern Oregon as "Ban-at-tees," (the Shoshoni name for the Bannock) or "Mountain Snake," saying that they lived in small groups in caves and rocks, dressed in skins of rabbits, wolves and other animals in winter, went naked in summer, and had only bows and arrows. This does not at all describe the Fort Hall Bannock.
The environment of the Fort Hall Shoshoni and Bannock is not unlike that to the west and south. It consists largely of arid, sage covered desert plains which were largely destitute of game. Wyeth (Schoolcraft, 1851, p.206), who lived at Fort Hall from 1834 to 1936, said it had very few deer and elk except in the mountains, only a small number of mountain sheep, antelope, and bear and only two kinds of rabbits. The main asset was salmon, which ran up the Snake River only to Shoshone Falls and therefore required a long trip downstream. Buffalo occurred in the eastern part of the area, and there had been many near Fort Hall in 1834 (Wyeth in Schoolcraft, 1851, p. 217). In fact, Ogden (Vol. 11, p. 207) saw many buffalo skulls though no living animals at Silver River near Malheur Lake, Oregon, and Informants claimed that several generations ago buffalo had occurred in small numbers even in northeastern Nevada. But buffalo were extinct in northern Utah by 1832 and in Idaho by about 1840 (Fremont, 1887, Vol. 2, p. 218).
Thompson recounts a fight between Blackfeet and Shoshoni in 1730, when the latter (probably Wyoming groups) had horses but the former had none (pp. 328-344), but Wissler (1914) believes that both Blackfeet and Shoshoni had horses in about 1750. The horses revolutionized Shoshoni economy by making it possible to use new methods of hunting which yielded greater wealth in foods and hides and enabled people to live in large and comparatively permanent groups. Families which previously had to live near their cached foods could now transport the foods to a central location. After 1840, and perhaps to some extent earlier, Shoshoni and Bannock, alone or in company with and sometimes with Flathead, Lemhi, and Wyoming Shoshoni made long excursions across the Rocky Mountains to the Buffalo country of the high plains. Lander (1860, pp. 121-122) says "Pannacks" and even "Salt Lake diggers" joined in trips to the Headwaters of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, the latter making trips of 1,300 miles. Those who had horses naturally fared best.
In 1811, Hunt's party saw Shoshoni, who were probably from Idaho hunting buffalo somewhere near the headwaters of the Green River (Irving, 1897, Vol. 1, pp. 385-387). Fear of Blackfeet as well as the greater efficiency of communal hunting compelled the main body of Fort Hall Shoshoni and Bannock to travel as a unit. On their way east they usually procured chokecherries and various seeds, roots and berries in the mountains. In the vicinity of Yellowstone they sometimes stopped briefly to gather nuts of the "White Pine," wongoduba, which they either ground and carried to the plains in buckskin sacks or cached to provide food for their return trip.
Buffalo hunting was accomplished merely by running down the animals with fleet horses. A few families sometimes wintered on the plains, especially if they had few or no horses. But most people returned to Fort Hall late in the fall, transporting the dried buffalo meat and hides on their horses. Meanwhile some families remained during the summer in the vicinity of Fort Hall or went to the region of Bear Lake for roots, berries, Mountain Sheep and other game. In the fall some families went south to the Grouse Creek region for pinion nuts.
Bannock Creek Shoshoni
Shoshoni occupying the area from Bannock Creek on the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho to the northern shore of Great Salt Lake in the vicinity of Kelton came to form a single band under Chief Pocatello. OD called these people Kamuduca (jack-rabbit eaters). The Kamuduka did not remain together as a single band during the summer, but scattered in small groups of families to gather foods, some going to Bear Lake, some to the Malad River in Utah, and some down the Snake River beyond Twin Falls, perhaps to Camas Prairie. Many of these people were killed in the Bear River Massacre of 1863 and only fifty descendants are said to remain today.
Cache Valley
This fertile Valley was long the center of trapping operations by the white man and, as early as 1826, was the site of an annual rendezvous of Indians and trappers.
Doty (1864, p. 175) states that all but seven of Bear Hunter's band were killed in the Battle of Bear River. Gottfredson (1919, pp. 111-115) says that Bear Hunter, Sagwitch, Lehi, Pocatello, and Sanpitch were involved in this battle.
The Cache Valley Shoshoni ranged along the Bear River under the leadership of Bear Hunter and Lehi, according to OD. Having horses, they sometimes traveled to Bear Valley, and no doubt took Buffalo and Mountain Sheep. Wyeth says mountain sheep were very numerous in Cache Valley in 1836. (Schooleraft, 1851, pp. 220-221) They were sometimes on Bear River, near Corinne, for fish.
In August 1842 John C. Fremont (1887, vol. 1, p. 206) saw a large village of horse Shoshoni near the head of Bear River. They had come to hunt antelope and to gather Service Berries and "kooyah," bitterroot of tobacco root (Valeriana edulis). These were not necessarily from Cache Valley, however, as Idaho Shoshoni also ranged in this territory. In Cache Valley he visited a village of poor and hungry Shoshoni (p. 217), and observed that thy ate principally "Yampah" (Anethwn graveolens), tobacco root and a large root of a species of thistle (Circium virginianum) (p. 221).
De Smet's account of the "Sampeetches" (1843, pp. 165-167) may be intended for the Cache Valley Shoshoni. Hew says:
Salt Lake Valley
Escalante observed in 1776 that the people near Great Salt Lake, which he did not visit, were called Puaguampes or "sorcerers" (the Shoshoni word for shaman is puhagunt) and that they spoke Comanche (which is identical with Shoshoni). They were, he said, eating herbs and living in houses of dry grass and earth. They were not enemies of the Ute and Utah Lake people, though there had been some restraint between the two tribes since the former had killed a Ute man.
Further quotations from early observers found on pages 9 and 10 of Julian Steward's book provide additional insight into the conditions that existed at that time.
Fremont, (1887, Vol. 1, pp. 391-392) said that the Great Basin is "peopled… but miserably and sparsely. From all that I heard and saw, I should say that humanity here appeared in its lowest form and in its most elementary state. Dispersed in single families; without firearms; eating seeds and insects; digging roots (and hence their name) –such is the condition of the great part. Other are of a higher degree, and live in communities upon some lake or river that supplies fish and from which they repulse the miserable Digger. The rabbit is the largest animal known in this desert; its flesh affords a little meat; and their bag like covering is made of its skins. The wild sage is their only wood, and… serves for fuel, for building material, for shelter to the rabbit, and for some sort of covering for the feet and legs in cold weather," and (p.438) "In the Great Basin, where nearly naked he traveled on foot and lived in the sagebrush, I found him in the most elementary form; the men living alone, the women living alone, but all after food. Sometimes one man cooking by his solitary fire in the sagebrush which was his home, his bow and arrows and bunch of squirrels by his side; sometimes on the shore of a lake or river where food was more abundant a little band of men might be found occupied in fishing; miles away a few women would be met gathering seeds and insects, or huddled up in a shelter of sagebrush to keep off the snow."
Leonard, 1831-36 (1904, p. 127), said the "Diggers or Root eaters" Shoshoni or Snake "keep in the most retired recesses of the mountains and streams, subsisting on the most unwholesome food, and living the most like animals of any race of beings."
Parker, 1835 (1842 p. 83): "These are probably the most destitute of the necessities of life of any Indians west of the mountains… They are often called Snakes and Root Diggers, from being driven to these resorts to sustain life; and parts of the year they suffer greatly from hunger and cold. The are more squalid than any Indians I have seen…"
Farnham, (1843, pp. 248-249), speaking of "Paiute" and "Land Pitches" whom he erroneously placed on the Sevier River, said, "They wear no clothing of any description– build no shelters. They eat roots, lizards, and snails… They provide nothing for future wants. And when the lizard and snail and wild roots are buried in the snows of winter, they are said to retire to the vicinity of timber, dig holes in the form of ovens in the steep sides of the sand hills, and having heated them to a certain degree, deposit themselves in them and sleep and fast till the weather permits them to go abroad again for food. Persons who have visited their haunts after a severe winter have found the ground around these family ovens strewn with the unburied bodies of the dead, and others crawling among them, who have various degrees of strength, from bare sufficiency to grasp in death, to those that crawl upon their hands and feet, eating grass like cattle. It is said that they have no weapons of defense except the club, and that in the use of that they are very unskilled. These poor creatures are hunted in the spring of the year, when weak and helpless… and when taken, are fattened, carried to Santa Fe and sold as slaves…" The last reference is to slave trade, carried on by the Ute of western Utah.
Ogden, the first visitor to write of the northern portion of this country, traveled the Humboldt River in 1827-1828 and wrote that the Indians were numerous, wretched, and wild (Vol. 11, p. 383). Near Malheur Lake, Oregon, he met Indians (probably Northern Paiute) who were leading a wandering life, and were wild and starving (Vol. 11, p. 208), and on the plains somewhere between the Raft River and Owyhee River he met Indians moving on foot, loaded with baggage (Vol. 11, p. 362).
Campbell, (1866, p. 120) says of Nevada Shoshoni and other desert tribes that, "Suffering and scarcity at times forms a part of their history from time immemorial."
Domenech, said "The Indians who inhabit (the Great Basin) live solitarily, either in families or in little societies. According to the season, they emigrate from one place to another to seek miserable roots, which form their only nourishment; even animals are seldom to be found there" (1860, Vol. 1, p. 242). The "Digger" Shoshoni are "compelled to spend two-thirds of the year among the mountains, with no other resource than a little fish and roots. When both these provisions fail, or become scarce, it is impossible to picture the wretched state of these pariahs of the wilderness… The Snakes are less unhappy than the Shoshonees, properly so called. They are rather cleanly in their persons and never eat horse or dog flesh. They have good horses, and are admirable riders and skillful hunters… The Shoshonees who possess horses sometimes join the Flatheads in making incursions into their ancient territory…," i.e., east of the Rocky Mountains, for buffalo (Vol. 2, p. 61). "The Indians of Utah are the most miserable, if not the most degraded, beings of all the vast American wilderness. They belong to the Shoshonees, properly so called, to the Snakes and Utahs, or Pan-Utahs, called payuches by the Spaniards. They live almost always on roots, seeds of indigenous plants, lizards, and field crickets; at certain seasons they have fish in abundance; this period of plenty once past, they remain in dreadful destitution" (Vol. 2, p. 64).
Additional information not included in Julian H. Stewards book, which illustrates the poverty that existed for the native people throughout much of the west during the early 1800s, can be found in the journals of Lewis and Clark.
In 1805, after crossing the Lemhi pass, it was the plan of Mariwether Lewis to make contact with the Shoshone people on the west side of the continental divide; where he thought, they could trade for food and horses and layover a few days before crossing the Lolo Pass. However, according to Lewis; "The Cheif informed us that they had nothing but berries to eat and gave us some cakes of serviceberries and chokecherries which had been dried in the sun; of these I made a hardy meal…"
The following day, Meriwether Lewis; "Sent Drewyer and Shields before this morning in order to kill some meat as neither the Indians nor ourselves had any thing to eat… after the hunters had been gone about an hour we set out. We had just passed through the narrows when we saw one of the spies (one of the Indians who was following and watching the white hunters) coming up… he had come to inform us that one of the white men had killed a deer. "In an instant they all gave their horses the whip… as I was without stirrups and an Indian behind me the jostling was disagreeable I therefore reigned up my horse and forbid the Indian to whip him who had given him the lash every jump for a mile fearing he should loose a part of the feast. The fellow was so uneasy that he left me the horse dismounted and ran on foot at full speed I am confident a mile."
"…when they arrived where the deer was which was in view of me they dismounted and ran in tumbling over each other like a parcel of famished dogs, each seizing and tearing away a part of the intestines which had been previously thrown out by Drewyer who killed it; the scene was such when I arrived that had I not have had a pretty keen appetite myself I am confident I should not have tasted any part of the venison shortly. Each one had a peace of some description and all eating most ravenously. Some were eating the kidneys the melt (spleen )and liver and the blood running from the corners of their mouths, others were in a similar situation with the paunch and guts but the exuding substance in this case from their lips was of a different description. One of the last who attracted my attention on particularly had been fortunate in his allotment or rather active in the devision, he had provided himself with about nine feet of the small guts one end of which he was chewing on while with his hands, he was squeezing the contents out at the other. I really did not until now think that human nature ever presented itself in a shape so nearly allayed to the brute creation".
Also see: The Distribution of the Horse and Bison with map from 1500 to 1850.