The Shoshones, or Snake Indians, are a brave and numerous people,
occupying a large and beautiful tract of country, 540 miles from east to
west, and nearly 300 miles from north to south. It lies betwixt 38
degrees and 43 degrees north latitude, and from longitude 116 degrees
west of Greenwich to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, which there extend
themselves to nearly the parallel of 125 degrees west longitude. The
land is rich and fertile, especially by the sides of numerous streams,
where the soil is sometimes of a deep red colour, and at others entirely
black. The aspect of this region is well diversified, and though the
greatest part of it must be classified under the denomination of rolling
prairies, yet woods are very abundant, principally near the rivers and
in the low flat bottoms; while the general landscape is agreeably
relieved from the monotony of too great uniformity by numerous mountains
of fantastical shapes and appearance, entirely unconnected with each
other, and all varying in the primitive matter of their conformation.
Masses of native copper are found at almost every step, and betwixt two
mountains which spread from east to west in the parallel of the rivers
Buona Ventura and Calumet, there are rich beds of galena, even at two or
three feet under ground; sulphur and magnesia appear plentiful in the
northern districts; while in the sand of the creeks to the south, gold
dust is occasionally collected by the Indians. The land is admirably
watered by three noble streams--the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and the
Nu eleje sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers of
inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until
they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine
courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick
foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently
undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of
mosquito-grass, blue grass, and clover, in which innumerable herds of
buffaloes, and mustangs, or wild horses, graze, except during the
hunting season, in undisturbed security.
The Shoshones [see note 1] are indubitably a very ancient people. It
would be impossible to say how long they may have been on this portion
of the continent. Their cast of features proves them to be of Asiatic
origin, and their phraseology, elegant and full of metaphors, assumes
all the graceful variety of the brightest pages of Saadi.
A proof of their antiquity and foreign extraction is, that few of their
records and traditions are local; they refer to countries on the other
side of the sea, countries where the summer is perpetual, the population
numberless, and the cities composed of great palaces, like the Hindoo
traditions, "built by the good genii, long before the creation of man."
There is no doubt, indeed it is admitted by the other tribes that the
Shoshone is the parent tribe of the Comanches, Arrapahoes, and Apaches--
the Bedouins of the Mexican deserts. They all speak the same beautiful
and harmonious language, have the same traditions; and indeed so recent
have been their subdivisions, that they point out the exact periods by
connecting them with the various events of Spanish inland conquest in
the northern portion of Sonora.
It is not my intention to dwell long upon speculative theory but I must
observe, that if any tradition is to be received with confidence it must
proceed from nations, or tribes, who have long been stationary. That
the northern continent of America was first peopled from Asia, there can
be little doubt, and if so it is but natural to suppose that those who
first came over would settle upon the nearest and most suitable
territory. The emigrants who, upon their landing, found themselves in
such a climate and such a country as California, were not very likely to
quit it in search of a better.
That such was the case with the Shoshones, and that they are descendants
from the earliest emigrants, and that they have never quitted the
settlement made by their ancestors, I have no doubt, for all their
traditions confirm it.
We must be cautious how we put faith in the remarks of missionaries and
travellers, upon a race of people little known. They seldom come into
contact with the better and higher classes, who have all the information
and knowledge; and it is only by becoming one of them, not one of their
tribes, but one of their chiefs, and received into their aristocracy,
that any correct intelligence can be gained.
Allow that a stranger was to arrive at Wapping, or elsewhere, in Great
Britain, and question those he met in such a locality as to the
religion, laws, and history of the English, how unsatisfactory would be
their replies; yet missionaries and travellers among these nations
seldom obtain farther access. It is therefore among the better classes
of the Indians that we must search for records, traditions, and laws.
As for their religion, no stranger will ever obtain possession of its
tenets, unless he is cast among them in early life and becomes one of
them.
Let missionaries say what they please in their reports to their
societies, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretended
ones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are outcasts from their
tribes.
The traditions of the Shoshones fully bear out my opinion, that they
were among the earliest of the Asiatic emigrants; they contain histories
of subsequent emigrations, in which they had to fight hard to retain
their lands; of the dispersion of the new emigrants to the north and
south; of the increase of numbers, and breaking up of portions of the
tribes, who travelled away to seek subsistence in the East.
We find, as might be expected, that the traditions of the Eastern
tribes, collected as they have occasionally been previous to their
extinction, are trifling and absurd; and why so? because, driven away to
the east, and finding other tribes of Indians, who had been driven there
before them, already settled there, they have immediately commenced a
life of continual hostility and change of domicile. When people have
thus been occupied for generations in continual warfare and change, it
is but natural to suppose that in such a life of constant action, they
have had no time to transmit their traditions, and that ultimately they
have been lost to the tribe.
We must then look for records in those quarters where the population has
remained stationary for ages. It must be in south-west of Oregon, and
in the northern parts of Upper California and Sonora, that the
philosopher must obtain the eventful history of vast warlike nations, of
their rise and of their fall. The western Apaches or the Shoshones,
with their antiquities and ruins of departed glory, will unfold to the
student's mind long pages of a thrilling interest, while in their
metaphors and rich phraseology, the linguist, learned in Asiatic lore,
will detect their ancient origin.
It is remarkable to observe, how generally traditions and records will
spread and be transmitted among nations destitute of the benefits of the
art of printing. In Europe, the mass were certainly better acquainted
with their ancient history before this great discovery than they are in
our days, as traditions were then handed down from family to family--it
was a duty, a sacred one, for a father to transmit them to his son,
unadulterated, such in fact, as he had received them from his ancestors.
It is same case with the Indians, who have remained stationary for a
long period. It is in the long evenings of February, during the hunting
season, that the elders of the tribe will reveal to young warriors all
the records of their history; and were a learned European to assist at
one of these "lectures upon antiquity," he would admit that, in harmony,
eloquence, strength of argument, and deduction, the red-coloured orator
could not be surpassed.
The Shoshones have a clear and lucid recollection of the far countries
whence they have emigrated. They do not allude to any particular
period, but they must have been among the first comers, for they relate
with great topographical accuracy all the bloody struggles they had to
sustain against newer emigrants. Often beaten, they were never
conquered, and have always occupied the ground which they had selected
from the beginning.
Unlike the great families of the Dahcotahs and Algonquins who yet retain
the predominant characteristics of the wandering nations of South-west
Asia, the Shoshones seem to have been in all ages a nation warlike,
though stationary. It is evident that they never were a wealthy people,
nor possessed any great knowledge of the arts and sciences. Their
records of a former country speak of rich mountainous districts, with
balmy breezes, and trees covered with sweet and beautiful fruits; but
when they mention large cities, palaces, temples, and gardens, it is
always in reference to other nations, with whom they were constantly at
war; and these traditions would induce us to believe that they are
descendants of the Mancheoux Tartars.
They have in their territory on both sides of the Buona Ventura river
many magnificent remains of devastated cities; but although connected
with a former period of their history, they were not erected by the
Shoshones.
The fountains, aqueducts, the heavy domes, and the long graceful
obelisks, rising at the feet of massive pyramids, show indubitably the
long presence of a highly civilised people; and the Shoshones' accounts
of these mysterious relics may serve to philosophers as a key to the
remarkable facts of thousands of similar ruins found everywhere upon the
continent of America. The following is a description of events at a
very remote period, which was related by an old Shoshone sage, in their
evening encampment in the prairies, during the hunting season:--
"It is a long, long while! when the wild horses were unknown in the
country, [Horses were unknown until the arrival of the Spaniards], and
when the buffalo alone ranged the vast prairies; then, huge and horrid
monsters existed. The approaches of the mountains and forests were
guarded by the evil spirits [see note 2], while the seashore, tenanted
by immense lizards [see note 3], was often the scene of awful conflicts
between man, the eldest son of light, and the mighty children of gloom
and darkness. Then, too, the land we now live in had another form;
brilliant stones were found in the streams; the mountains had not yet
vomited their burning bowels, and the great Master of Life was not angry
with his red children.
"One summer, and it was a dreadful one, the moon (i.e. the sun) remained
stationary for a long time; it was of a red blood colour, and gave
neither night nor days. Takwantona, the spirit of evil, had conquered
Nature, and the sages of the Shoshones foresaw many dire calamities.
The great _Medecines_ declared that the country would soon be drowned in
the blood of their nation. They prayed in vain, and offered, without
any success, two hundred of their fairest virgins in sacrifice on the
altars of Takwantona. The evil spirit laughed, and answered to them
with his destructive thunders. The earth was shaken and rent asunder;
the waters ceased to flow in the rivers, and large streams of fire and
burning sulphur rolled down from the mountains, bringing with them
terror and death. How long it lasted none is living to say; and who
could? There stood the bleeding moon; 'twas neither light nor
obscurity; how could man divide the time and the seasons? It may have
been only the life of a worm; it may have been the long age of a snake.
"The struggle was fearful, but at last the good Master of Life broke his
bonds. The sun shone again. It was too late! the Shoshones had been
crushed and their heart had become small; they were poor, and had no
dwellings; they were like the deer of the prairies, hunted by the hungry
panther.
"And a strange and numerous people landed on the shores of the sea; they
were rich and strong; they made the Shoshones their slaves, and built
large cities, where they passed all their time. Ages passed: the
Shoshones were squaws; they hunted for the mighty strangers; they were
beasts, for they dragged wood and water to their great wigwams; they
fished for them, and they themselves starved in the midst of plenty.
Ages again passed: the Shoshones could bear no more; they ran away to
the woods, to the mountains, and to the borders of the sea; and, lo! the
great Father of Life smiled again upon them; the evil genii were all
destroyed, and the monsters buried in the sands.
"They soon became strong, and great warriors; they attacked the
strangers, destroyed their cities, and drove them like buffaloes, far in
the south, where the sun is always burning, and from whence they did
never return.
"Since that time, the Shoshones have been a great people. Many, many
times strangers arrived again; but being poor and few, they were easily
compelled to go to the east and to the north, in the countries of the
Crows, Flatheads, Wallah Wallahs, and Jal Alla Pujees (the Calapooses)."
I have selected this tradition out of many, as, allowing for metaphor,
it appears to be a very correct epitome of the history of the Shoshones
in former times. The very circumstance of their acknowledging that they
were, for a certain period, slaves to that race of people who built the
cities, the ruins of which still attest their magnificence, is a strong
proof of the outline being correct. To the modern Shoshones, and their
manners and customs, I shall refer in a future portion of my narrative.
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Note 1. The American travellers (even Mr Catlin, who is generally
correct) have entirely mistaken the country inhabited by the Shoshones.
One of them represents this tribe as "the Indians who inhabit that part
of the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and Green River branches
of the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great Bear River, and the
hospitable shores of Great Salt Lakes." It is a great error. That the
Shoshones may have been seen in the above-mentioned places is likely
enough, as they are a great nation, and often send expeditions very far
from their homes; but their own country lies, as I have said, betwixt
the Pacific Ocean and the 116th degree of west longitude. As to the
"hospitable" shores of the Great Salt Lake, I don't know what it means,
unless it be a modern Yankee expression for a tract of horrid swamps
with deadly effluvia, tenanted by millions of snakes and other "such
hospitable reptiles." The lake is situated on the western country of
the Crows, and I doubt if it has ever been visited by any Shoshone.
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Note 2. Skeletons of the mammoth are often found whole at the foot of
the Grand Serpent, a long rugged mountain which runs for 360 miles under
the parallel of 40 degrees north latitude. It extends from the centre
of the Shoshone territory to the very country of the Crows, that is to
say, from the 119th to the 113th degree west longitude. It is possible
that this race may not have been yet quite extinct in the middle of the
17th century; for, indeed, in their family records, aged warriors will
often speak of awful encounters, in which their great-great-grandfathers
had fought against the monster. Some of them have still in their
possession, among other trophies of days gone by, teeth and bones highly
polished, which belong indubitably to this animal, of which so little is
known. Mr Ross Cox, in the relation of his travels across the Rocky
Mountains, says, "that the Upper Crees, a tribe who inhabit the country
in the vicinity of the Athabasca river, have a curious tradition with
respect to these animals. They allege, `that these animals were of
frightful magnitude, that they formerly lived in the plains, a great
distance in the south, where they had destroyed all the game, after
which they retired to the mountains. They killed every thing, and if
their agility had been equal to size and ferocity, they would have
destroyed all the Indians. One man asserted, that his great-grandfather
told him he saw one of those animals in a mountain-pass, where he was
hunting, and that on hearing its roar, which he compared to loud
thunder, the sight almost left his eyes, and his heart became as small
as that of a child's.'"
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Note 3. A few miles from the Pacific Ocean, and at the foot of a
mountain called by the Shoshones the Dwelling of the Monster, were found
the remains of an immense lizard belonging to an extinct family of the
saurian species. Within a few inches of the surface, and buried in a
bed of shells and petrified fish, our old missionary, Padre Antonio,
digged up fifty-one vertebrae quite whole and well preserved. They were
mostly from twelve to eighteen inches in length and from eight to
fourteen inches in diameter, measuring in all more than fifteen feet in
length. Of the tail and neck but few vertebrae were found but there
were many fragments of the ribs and of the leg bones. All the vertebrae
discovered were in a continuous line, nearly joined together. The head,
to correspond to other parts of the animal, must have been twelve or
fourteen feet long, which would have given to the monster the almost
incredible length of eighty feet.
The prince Seravalle, while digging in the fall of the year 1834, for an
ammunition store on the western banks of the Buona Ventura, picked up a
beautiful curved ivory tusk, three feet long, which, had it not been for
its jet black colour, would have been amazingly alike to that of a large
elephant.
Some pieces of it (for unhappily it was sawn into several parts) are now
in the possession of the governor of Monterey and Mr Lagrange, a
Canadian trader, who visited the territory in 1840.