All about the ancient tribes
The Shoshone Bannock tribes like to eat deer, elk, buffalo, moose, sheep, and antelope. They also like to eat salmon, trout, sturgeon, and perch. They gather berries, nuts, and seeds, they also gather roots such as bitterroot, and camas.
The Northern Shoshone occasionally hunted buffalo, but relied more on salmon fishing, deer, and small game, as well as roots gathered by the women. The Western Shoshone had a more plant-based diet, particularly pine nuts, roots, and seeds, and also hunted antelopes and rabbits.
In the early autumn, the Northwestern Shoshones moved into the region near what is now Salmon, Idaho, to fish. After fishing was over, they moved into western Wyoming to hunt buffalo, elk, deer, moose, and antelope. They sun-dried the meat for winter and used the hides as clothing and shelter.
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 Shoshone religion is based on belief in supernatural power (boha) that is acquired primarily through vision quests and dreams.
Cooking involved roasting of game on an open fire, drying of meat for winter and boiling of vegetables in water-tight baskets. Simple tools such as stone knives, scrapers, grinding stones and baskets could be easily carried or left behind when necessary.
The Eastern Shoshone are known for their Plains horse culture. They acquired the horse in 1700 and it completely changed their lifestyles. They became proficient hunters thus they became fierce warriors.
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 Navajo were farmers who grew the three main crops that many Native Americans grew: corn, beans, and squash. After the Spanish arrived in the 1600s, the Navajo began to farm sheep and goats as well, with sheep becoming a major source of meat. They also hunted animals for food like deer and rabbits.
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.
Shoshone, also spelled Shoshoni; also called Snake, North American Indian group that occupied the territory from what is now southeastern California across central and eastern Nevada and northwestern Utah into southern Idaho and western Wyoming.
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).
The Shoshone Indians were sometimes called “Digger Indians.” To other people they were also known as the Snake Nation. They had a population of 9,125. They lived on both the east and the west sides of the Rocky Mountains.
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. The Fort Hall Reservation of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes is located in southeastern Idaho.
The Northwestern Shoshone Indians were traditionally nomadic hunters, gatherers, and fishermen. The Shoshones at first were friendly to white settlers along the Oregon and California trails in the 1840s.