Out of the mass of detailed data presented in the preceding chapters,
certain constant features in the life of the buffalo-hunting Shoshone
and Bannock may be discerned. First, there is no doubt of the
importance of buffalo in the economy of these people. During an early
period, when the Shoshone were among the first tribes of the Northern
Plains to adopt the horse, they occupied large areas of the Missouri
drainage and extensive buffalo herds were also to be found west of the
Continental Divide. Even after tribal pressures from the north forced
the Shoshone into residence west of the Rockies part of the time,
advantage was still taken of the buffalo in that region. And regular
sorties were made over the mountains in search of the more abundant
herds there. But no sector of the mounted Shoshone population, at
least after 1800, was completely dependent upon the buffalo nor were
their principal social connections with the east. Rather, their
firmest social ties were with their colinguists to the west, and their
economy also was strongly oriented in that direction.
This fact has been a major source of difficulty in our attempt to
isolate social groupings among the Bannock and Shoshone. The Bannock,
usually accompanied by many Idaho Shoshone, ranged east to central
Montana, or into the Big Horn Basin, with the Eastern Shoshone. Part
of the year, however, saw them in western Idaho and in Oregon, where
they visited and intermarried with the Northern Paiute. Although we
have no information on persons shifting membership from the Bannock to
the Northern Paiute, such relocations no doubt took place, even if
only temporarily. There are ample data, however, to document the
reverse process, for Northern Paiute were continually joining the
Bannock in order to take part in buffalo hunting.
The same fluidity of movement of individuals and families may be noted
among the mounted Shoshone of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Those buffalo
hunters whom we have somewhat arbitrarily assigned to Idaho
customarily wintered on the Portneuf and upper Snake rivers. But they
could be found in different seasons and during various years in
northern Utah, on the waters of the Bear River and east of Great Salt
Lake, and in western Wyoming. Families occasionally went to the Goose
Creek Mountains in the fall for pine nuts, and almost all went down
the Snake River in spring and early summer to take part in salmon
fishing. In all these places they interacted with and could trace
kinship bilaterally to the unmounted, more permanent inhabitants.
This is true also for the so-called Eastern Shoshone. We have shown
that these mounted people wintered on the Bear and Green rivers until
their final establishment on the Wind River Reservation; in fact, the
first Eastern Shoshone Agency was at Fort Bridger. Annual trips were
made to Salt Lake City, after its settlement by the Mormons, and
visits into Idaho were frequent. Moreover, Shoshone not generally
associated with Washakie's leadership who possessed horses joined the
latter for buffalo hunting. Evidence for this is most clear in the
case of Pocatello's followers. This particular band, found at various
times buffalo hunting in central Wyoming, wintering in northern Utah
or southeastern Idaho, and fishing or raiding on the Snake River, is
an excellent example of the social continuity between Plains and
Basin-Plateau. That there was such social continuity, merging, and
interpenetration indicates a common set of social understandings, of
great similarity in social structure. It may be further argued that
this continuity and exchange of population served in some degree to
preserve a more amorphous Basin-type society among the buffalo
hunters.
It is clear that larger political units existed among the mounted
Shoshone and Bannock than among their fellows to the east. We believe,
however, that it would be erroneous to attribute great stability or
cohesiveness to these aggregates, for the seasonal amalgamation and
splitting of other Plains populations is even more pronounced among
the Shoshone. The reason for this is partly the fact that the Shoshone
spent long periods of the year west of the Rockies and within the
range itself. Buffalo hunting did unite most of the mounted people
every fall and to a lesser extent in the spring. There is considerable
variation of evidence on whether the people crossing the Divide from
Wyoming and Idaho formed two large parties or several smaller ones. It
may be surmised that the large parties were common in earlier times
owing to the threat of enemies, but the smaller ones seem to have been
more common later in the nineteenth century, especially after the
establishment of the Wind River Reservation. The time spent in the
buffalo hunt was closely correlated with the distance to the herds.
Our fragmentary accounts suggest that in the upper Green and Snake
rivers before 1840, smaller groups hunted for shorter periods. The Big
Horn Basin, however, is more than 200 miles from the Green River area,
and the bands were forced to travel longer distances and to kill their
winter meat supply in one prolonged hunt. Although the Wyoming
Shoshone usually were able to return for the winter to the Green and
Bear rivers, this was not true of those Idaho Shoshone and Bannock who
sought buffalo in Montana. The distance from Camas Prairie in Idaho to
the buffalo country of Montana was almost 500 miles, making a winter
return to Idaho most difficult and aggravating the problem of packing
meat. Many of the Idaho people chose not to make this long and
difficult journey and found adequate fall hunting in the local
mountains. A buffalo party could thus be on the move for a few days or
a week, for two months or seven months, depending on the itinerary
followed. Cohesion was closest during actual traveling and hunting.
Winter camps were not tightly nucleated settlements of an entire
buffalo party, for hunting during the winter required some dispersal.
This point deserves some elaboration. Shimkin has stressed the
inadequacy of buffalo hunting for a complete winter subsistence
(Shimkin, 1947_a_, p. 266) and this is borne out by the testimony of
our informants also. Buffalo meat no doubt supplied the margin of
survival, but considerable dependence was placed on elk, deer, moose,
rabbits, and other animals during the winter. A very large and compact
winter camp would soon exhaust the game in its immediate vicinity.
Moreover, the winter location had to be in places where these animals
could be found. Camps were thus generally located in river
valleys, where wood, water, and protection from storms could be found,
but in the vicinity of the high mountains inhabited by the game.
Large population concentrations broke down completely during the
summer. Buffalo hunting was restricted to strays and to the small
timber buffalo. But the principal game was taken in the mountain
country west of the Continental Divide. Large camp groups could not be
adapted to the scattered resources used during this period, and people
gathered mainly for reasons of defense. Summer groupings of a minimum
size seem to have been positively preferred by the Shoshone, as our
data from the post-reservation period indicate.
This ecological adaptation and mode of social interaction with other
groups had a profound effect on the structure of Shoshone society.
Shimkin analyzes the fluctuations in economy and local grouping among
the Wind River Shoshone and states (1947_a_, p. 280):
It also strengthened the cross-currents of individualism and
collective discipline: individual prestige in war honors and
hunting versus united military societies and collective bison
hunts.
But the basic structure of Shoshone society remained diffuse and
atomistic. Institutions productive of centralization were weak. Lowie,
for example, reports on police, or soldier, societies among the
Eastern Shoshone (Lowie, 1915, pp. 813-814). There were two such
groups, called the Yellow Noses and the Logs. The former used inverted
speech and were expected to be more courageous. They accordingly were
responsible for leading the band when on the march, while the Logs
formed the rear guard. Each of these groups had a headman, but Lowie
states that the tribal chief was a member of neither. Membership was
attained through the candidate's own initiative or by invitation;
purchase and age-grading were not criteria, and societies using such
means of recruitment were evidently absent among the Eastern Shoshone.
Although Lowie did not report the functions of the police societies in
detail, he says that the Yellow Nose society, in addition to its
responsibility of protecting the traveling bands and maintaining order
among them, also policed the hunt. Lowie further writes that the horse
of a deviant hunter would be beaten and that any buffalo hides taken
by him would be destroyed.
Lowie's information on the Idaho is more fragmentary. We learn only
that among the Lemhi Shoshone: "At a dance of hunt, he [the chief] was
assisted by di'rak[=o][`n]e policemen, armed with quirts" (Lowie,
1909, p. 208). Regarding the Lemhi, one of Steward's informants told
him that the police institution had been recently introduced (Steward,
1938, p. 194). Steward's data on the police in Idaho is more complete
(ibid., p. 211):
The institution of police, which was obviously borrowed from
Wyoming, is of unknown antiquity. It was largely civil and
consisted of four or five middle-aged men, Bannock or Shoshoni,
who had a civic spirit. They were selected and instructed by
the council.
Actual soldier societies were not present in Idaho. The policemen were
primarily responsible for keeping the traveling band together and were
secondarily concerned with the buffalo hunt.
We specifically queried our Shoshone and Bannock informants on the
presence of police societies or of any techniques for control of
impulsive buffalo hunters. The responses were all negative, nor is
there any historical reference to police societies. The Shoshone and
Bannock, we learned from contemporary Indians, needed no coercion to
keep them from premature and individual preying upon a buffalo herd.
Such action would not be to any individual's self-interest, it was
said, and the censure of the community imposed sufficient control over
individual behavior. But we cannot deny the existence of the two
societies or of the dances associated with them. Rather, we would
surmise that the police societies were not important elements in
social control nor were they ever a key element in Shoshone social
structure; the fact that they have been only imperfectly preserved in
traditional knowledge is, itself, of some significance. We
hypothesize, then, that the symbolic content of soldier societies had
reached the Shoshone without major effects on the ordering of personal
and group relations. These conclusions are much akin to Wallace and
Hoebel's for the Comanche, who were, it seems, able to hunt buffalo
quite effectively without institutionalized coercive restraints
(Wallace and Hoebel, 1952, pp. 56-57).
Chieftaincy was more highly developed in the eastern sectors of the
Shoshone occupancy than among the people farther west. But even among
the mounted bands, the authority of the chiefs was limited. Lewis and
Clark commented on the essentially egalitarian nature of Shoshone
society, and later travelers present evidence leading to the same
conclusion. The wealth differentiation characteristic of the later
history of other Plains tribes never became a significant factor among
the Shoshone. This is no doubt owing in part to their weak military
position and the consequent heavy losses of horses to enemy tribes.
Moreover, the Shoshone were only marginally involved in the
buffalo-hide trade, and large horse herds and extensive polygyny did
not have the utility that they did among, for example, the Blackfoot,
who employed women as an essential part of the labor force (cf. Lewis,
1942).
The absence of strong tendencies to stratification and the type of
ecological adaptation present acted to inhibit the development of
strong authority patterns. Leadership over a large population, such as
that exerted by Chief Washakie, was necessarily temporary in nature
and was largely restricted to periods when people united for the
common enterprises of war and buffalo hunting. During the summer and
most of winter and spring a host of minor chiefs of varying influence
and prestige were responsible for directing the activities of clusters
of followers. Even war and the spring and fall hunts did not
necessarily entail the participation of an entire tribe. The buffalo
hunters frequently split into smaller hunting parties when out on the
plains. And warfare, if offensive, usually was carried on by small
raiding parties. Even in defensive warfare attacks were swift and
without warning, and large numbers of people could not be gathered to
repel the invaders.
"Tribal" chiefs did exist in Idaho and Wyoming, but they exercised
discontinuous influence on a group of followers, who might only
infrequently all gather as a unit. And since it is impossible to
isolate Shoshone or Bannock tribes as stable membership units, the
great chiefs may be more profitably viewed as the men of highest
prestige within a certain area. The positions of these leaders became
more clearly defined in later times, when first traders and then
government agents sought them out as representatives of their people.
That the white man's image of the chieftaincy was erroneous may be
seen in the examples cited of disaffection and the subsequent efforts
of the agents to shore up the authority of their delegated chiefs.
Chiefs acted in consultation with councils of distinguished men and
lesser chiefs, and the familiar Plains role of camp announcer is also
present among the Shoshone. The chief in any area achieved his status
through general consensus and recognition of his high prestige.
Generosity, wisdom, bravery, and skill in hunting were key criteria
for the selection of headmen. The position was neither hereditary nor
for life. Although it is not possible to speak of a chief being
"deposed," many a chief was replaced by a man whose star was in the
ascendancy. And it was also possible for two or three men to have
almost equivalent claim to the role within the same district. Despite
the nonhereditary nature of the office, we sometimes find it shared by
brothers, or sometimes one brother succeeded another. Such cases may
be explained as the result of general family prestige or of common
upbringing and ideals of conduct.
One important limiting factor on the power of chiefs was the mobility
of the population. Individuals could and did move to other areas or
join other leaders, and the chief who wished to maintain his influence
over his followers could not carry out policy greatly opposed to their
wishes. The mobility of the population is a function of several
important facts. First, the bands were not corporate units in the
sense of groups holding rights over strategic resources. As we have
seen, there were no such limits within the general range of
Shoshone-speaking people. Band territoriality would have been directly
contradictory to the enormous distances traversed by the mounted
people. The region, as a whole, presented the possibility of a
balanced diet and annual subsistence cycle, but smaller subdivisions
of it could not do so, though they provided overabundance of a limited
number of foods in certain seasons. Even the area of Shoshone
occupation, as compared with other peoples' territory, was vague and
ill defined. Territory, as such, was not a matter of great concern in
the relations of the Shoshone with hostile tribes. Rather, they
vigorously defended their horses and their own lives during enemy
invasions. The buffalo country east of the mountains was roamed over
by several groups, as were the mountain areas of western Wyoming and
Montana. And peaceful groups of the Basin-Plateau merged and
intermingled with the Shoshone in the areas in which they had contact.
The individual, the family, or the group of families that elected to
change leaders within an area or to shift from one area to another did
not give up vested rights and prerogatives. And, given the loose
nature of Shoshone social structure and the diffuse and widespread
network of social relationships, the person or group seeking a change
could usually count upon acceptance elsewhere. The reservation system
tended to tighten political organization and to define groupings more
closely, since reservation membership did constitute a vested interest
and government legitimation and stabilization of a central chieftaincy
restricted the choices open to the individual.
The principal item in the productive apparatus of the mounted Shoshone
was the horse. Without sufficient horses to pursue the buffalo hunt,
the Indian was relegated to "digger" status and had to remain within
the Great Basin. But horses were individual, private property, and a
man could locate under any leadership as long as he was mounted. His
primary economic dependency was thus shifted from the larger social
group to his own herd. Each man was to a large extent his own master
and acted accordingly.
The loose bilaterality of the Shoshone was ideally adapted to their
mode of existence. Our data show some tendency toward matrilocality,
but Steward states that, in Idaho, this is true primarily of the early
years of marriage, after which the couple could exercise a bilocal
option (Steward, 1938, p. 214). The direction of the choice depended
on such situational factors as the prestige of either mate's parents
or their wealth in horses. In any event, there was no marked
preferential weighting of either line. Our informants reported that
the married couple often shifted back and forth for varying periods of
time. Ultimately, the mounted Shoshone may be just as profitably
looked on as neolocal, as were the western Shoshone, for the couple
did not necessarily live with or adjacent to either mate's parents.
People were quite free to join other relatives or to associate closely
with unrelated persons. This, and the periodic splitting up and
reamalgamation of larger groups, inhibited any development of large,
solidary nuclei of bilateral kinsmen. Relationships were traced
bilaterally and widely, but ties were amorphous and weak. Lacking
bounded and corporate kin groups, persons were highly individuated and
possessed maximum geographical mobility.
We may well conclude that, from the point of view of social structure,
the mounted Shoshone were typologically much like the Great Basin
people with whom they had close relations. Easily diffused items of
culture, such as their material inventory, many religious beliefs, and
their mode of warfare, establish their intimate historical connection
with the Plains. But the higher levels of social integration found
among the Shoshone are of a situational nature and are not well
integrated with the fundamental facts of family life and more stable
modes of grouping. It would be erroneous to conclude from this,
however, that this amorphous, Basinlike social structure was
nonadaptive to the Plains. That it is not at all atypical of the area
is indicated by Eggan's statement (1955, pp. 518-519):
Plains Indian society, despite its lack of lineage and clan,
still has a social structure. This structure is "horizontal" or
generational in character and has little depth. The extended
family groupings in terms of matrilocal residence or centered
around a sibling group are amorphous but flexible. The
bilateral or composite band organization, centered around a
chief and his close relatives, may change its composition
according to various circumstances--economic or political. The
camp-circle encompasses the tribe, provides a disciplined
organization for the communal hunt, and a center for the Sun
Dance and other tribal ceremonies which symbolized the renewed
unity of the tribe and the renewal of nature. The seasonal
alternation between band and tribal camp-circle is related to
ecological changes in the environment, and particularly to the
behavior of the buffalo ...
The working hypothesis proposed earlier ... that "tribes coming
into the Plains with different backgrounds and social systems,"
can be tentatively extended to Plains social structure as a
whole, despite the variations noted. That this is in large
measure an internal adjustment to the uncertain and changing
conditions of Plains environment--ecological and social--rather
than a result of borrowing and diffusion, is still highly
probable.
The loose bilaterality seen by Eggan as a characteristic of Plains
society was part of the earlier Shoshone social background. But more
centralized political units and predominantly "horizontal"
organizations, such as age-grade and soldier societies, were more
weakly developed than among many other tribes of the northern Plains.
This fact, as well as the acquisition of firearms by the northern
tribes, may have been responsible for the manifest military weakness
of the Shoshone and their westward retreat beyond the Rocky
Mountains.