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Although
the eastern Snake River Plain was not considered a place of
abode except along major waterways, it was flanked by people
who made good use of its resources. The Lemhi and Tukaduka (mountain sheep eater) Shoshone
lived in and around the Lemhi Valley, and the Fort Hall
Shoshone and Bannock1 , though more nomadic than the
Lemhi groups, wintered along the Fort Hall bottoms on the Snake
River. In spring
and summer, both groups are said to have broken into small,
socially fluid groups composed of a few to several related
families (smaller groups could more easily feed themselves
while moving from resource to resource). Every year, a group’s composition might change, and
families often alternated between various yearly subsistence
activities: one
summer might be spent collecting roots and trading with
the Nez Perce, Flathead, and other Shoshone on the Camas
Prairie of the western Snake River Plain; the next summer might
be spent to the east, collecting berries, nuts and roots on the
way to and from bison hunts in Yellowstone or on the northern
plains.
Salmon could be obtained to the west on the Snake River below
Shoshone Falls. Berries
and game were plentiful to the south around Bear River (subsistence
resources of the Snake River Plain).
Steward recounted:
Whether
they went east for buffalo, south...for berries and for
hunting, or west for salmon, camass [sic], and trading depended
upon individual circumstances. Also, whether they joined other groups depended upon
where and when they traveled and whether they had horses (Steward
1938:203).
Very
little is known about the culture and subsistence of pre-horse
aboriginal groups in this area. Steward (1938) and others have surmised that the
Northern Shoshone culture of the pre-horse era (most of their
history) would have been similar to, though more nomadic than,
that of the Western Shoshone of the western Snake River Plain
and eastern Oregon in the historic era, for these people
remained unmounted even after their eastern relatives chose the
equestrian lifestyle. Bannock
and Northern Shoshone groups (including both Lemhi and Fort
Hall Shoshone) had horses by the early 1700’s (Murphy and
Murphy 1960). It
is not clear whether acquisition of the horse radically changed
subsistence activities, but it seems that it significantly
altered social structures especially among those groups that
traveled east for bison. Whereas
the family and small group were the most efficient economic
units throughout the Great Basin, larger group solidarity and
cooperation were necessary features of a successful bison hunt,
and were in turn made possible by the increased wealth
(measured chiefly in horses and bison robes) and the ensuing
need to protect that wealth from enemy groups.
Shoshone
cultural distinctiveness at the east and west ends of the Snake
River Plain, especially in terms of subsistence strategies, was
the result of environmental differences. The Snake River Plain becomes less and less arid as one
travels west to east.
Prior to 1840, bison were found chiefly in the northeastern
portion of the Plain and hardly at all toward the west, owing
primarily to a lack of feed (Steward 1938). Likewise, horses that were acquired by those living on
the western Plain tended to eat “the very plants upon which
people depended” and so were usually eaten themselves rather
than used in further quests for food (Steward 1938).
In contrast, the horse must have fit easily into the already
nomadic lifestyle of the Northern Shoshone, whose access to
bison was only limited by speed and the element of surprise.
Here, the horse provided a mode by which human beings
could better adapt themselves to their environment, thus
increasing their ability to exploit its myriad resources.
In the Lemhi Valley, on the northeastern Snake River
Plain, on the Fort Hall bottoms, and all along the upper Snake
River, there was plenty of grass to support an expanding
equestrian lifestyle. On
the eastern Plain, human and horse ecologies were compatible,
whereas on the western Plain, they were not (Steward
1938:230-237).
1The
Shoshone and Bannock of the Fort Hall area, historically and to
some extent prehistorically, wintered together in the vicinity
of Fort Hall.
They often joined forces with each other and with other
Shoshone in hunting, gathering, trading, and defending
themselves against the Blackfoot and Crow.
Although they were socio-politically similar, they were
and are linguistically distinct groups: the Shoshone language is more closely related to Ute and
Gosiute; Bannock stems from Northern Paiute. However, both are Numic languages, whose stock was
originally found in southern California and subsequently spread
east and north in a much debated phenomenon known among
anthropologists as the “Numic Expansion.”
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