Shoshone

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Related to Shoshonis: Shoshonean

Shoshone

Shoshone or Shoshoni (shəshōˈnē), Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Shoshonean group of the Uto-Aztecan branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). In the early 19th cent. the Shoshone occupied SE California, NW Utah, SW Montana, W Wyoming, S Idaho, and NE Nevada. The Shoshone were traditionally divided into four groups: the Comanche of W Texas, a historically recent subdivision of the Wind River Shoshone of Wyoming; the Northern Shoshone of Idaho and Utah, who had horses and ranged across the Great Plains in search of buffalo; the Western Shoshone, who did not use horses and subsisted mainly on nuts and other wild vegetation; and the Wind River Shoshone of Wyoming. Today the Shoshone live on reservations in California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. In 1990 there were some 9,500 Shoshone in the United States.

Bibliography

See V. C. Trenholm and M. Carley, The Shoshonis, Sentinels of the Rockies (1964); E. Dorn, The Shoshoneans (1966); J. G. Jorgensen, The Sun Dance Religion (1972).

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Shoshone

a mountain range in the Great Basin region of the USA, in the state of Nevada. The Shoshone Mountains stretch from north to south along the Reese River, which is situated in the closed basin of the Humboldt River. They measure approximately 250 km in length and rise to a maximum elevation of 3,143 m at North Shoshone Peak. The range is composed primarily of metamorphic rocks. Vegetation includes sparse mountain forests of pine and juniper, as well as shrubs.

References in periodicals archive ?

(41) From this point on until his untimely death, the Mormon settlement leaders viewed Snag as the primary leader of the Salmon River Valley Shoshoni and Bannock.

Nine Mormon men attempted to take Shoshoni wives only to be rebuffed by the women's families.

During the winter an Indian girl fell ill; Shoshoni leaders took her to the missionaries and requested that they heal her.

Although Snag refused to embroil the Shoshoni in the conflict, he felt the Mormon actions demanded a response.

(50) As the Mormons left, Thomas Smith gave one thousand bushels of wheat to Chief Snag, "who, along with his followers, wept at the departure of the Mormons." (51) All of the Salmon River Valley Shoshoni and Bannock were excommunicated from the church because they remained Lamanites, or "Unbelievers." (52)

Their cultural fusion and geographical consolidation brought federal, state, and local recognition of the "Lemhi Shoshoni" as distinct and apart from other Shoshoni tribal nations.

After the closing of Limhi Mission, a number of events transpired to solidify further Lemhi Shoshoni identity as a sovereign tribal nation.

As Lemhi lands became the focus for mineral extraction and Euro-American settlement, further south, Mormon settlers continually moved northward encroaching on Northern Shoshoni lands in the Bear River Valley.

The force found and attacked an entrenched encampment of several hundred Shoshoni. (57) Although the Lemhi Shoshoni did not openly participate in the hostilities, the Bear River Massacre served a valuable political lesson for neighboring indigenous societies.

In response, the Lemhi, other Northern Shoshoni, and Bannock bands stole goods or begged at mining camps and boomtowns.

For the Lemhi Shoshoni, the murder of Snag left a political void.

To quell the growing conflict between other Northern Shoshoni and Bannock bands, the U.S.