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At the time of major white migration
into the Great Basin and Snake River areas in the 1840s, there were
seven distinct Shoshone groups. The Eastern Shoshone, numbering
about 2,000 under their famous Chief Washakie, occupied the region
from the Wind River Mountains to Fort Bridger and astride the Oregon
Trail; their descendants today live on the Wind River Reservation.
Two other divisions having similar cultures were the Goshute Shoshone
and the Western Shoshone. The former, about 900 in number, lived
in the valleys and mountains west and southwest of Great Salt Lake,
with the remnants of their bands located in and around the small
settlement of Ibapah, Utah, today. A much more numerous people,
perhaps 8,000 strong, the Western Shoshone occupied what is today
northern and western Nevada. There were as many as eleven major
bands distributed from the present Utah-Nevada border to Winnemucca
on the west. Their descendants today live on the Duck Valley Reservation
or scattered around the towns of northern Nevada from Wells to Winnemucca.
The four remaining groups of Shoshone are usually listed under the
general name of the "Northern Shoshone." One of these
groups, the Fort Hall Shoshone of about 1,000 people, lived together
with a band of about 800 Northern Paiute known in history as the
Bannock. A second division of Shoshone, the Lemhi, numbering some
1,800 people, ranged from the Beaverhead country in southwestern
Montana westward to the Salmon River area. In western Idaho, along
the Boise and Bruneau rivers, a third section of about 600 Shoshone
followed a life centered on salmon as their basic food. Finally,
the fourth and final division of 1,500 people, the Northwestern
Shoshone, resided in the valleys of northern Utah--especially Weber
Valley and Cache Valley--and along the eastern and northern shores
of Great Salt Lake, and southern Idaho. |
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