Recorded and Edited by Willard Rhodes
The Indian tribes that inhabited this vast geographic area have been described by Dr. Ruth Underhill in her book Red Man's America as "those who had little to lose." The Great Basin is an intermountain desert country, bound on the east by the Rockies and on the west by the Sierras and Cascades. The ecology of the desert provided a hard and meager living, and the small seminomadic family groups were kept moving in their ceaseless quest for food.
Women dug for edible roots and gathered seeds and nuts. Grasshoppers were driven into trenches, roasted alive, then ground into flour. Men hunted for rats, lizards, and small game, and with nets made of hemp, they snared rabbits and birds. The wikiup, a dome-shaped arbor of poles and reeds, was their shelter from the heat of the day and the cold of the night. It was a hard life, and one wonders how the people were able to survive in this hostile environment.
Great Basin Indian culture was determined to a large extent by the land. Living in small family groups, they had no need for a formal social organization, and the physical demands of keeping alive left little time for the development of religion and the arts. Their lack of contact with other tribes and the stimulus that results from such contacts may be regarded as impeding the technological development of these people to whom the derogatory name "Diggers" was applied by some whites who regarded them as living no better than animals.
THE SHOSHONE
The Shoshone was the northernmost division of the Shoshonean family. They were horse and buffalo Indians and ranged far and wide over territory now incorporated in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Nevada. The life of the people was dependent on the land and varied accordingly. None of the southern bands were agriculturists and were dependent for food on fish, which they supplemented with rabbits, roots, nuts, and seeds. In the sagebrush country they lived in brush shelters, but in the north and east they used the tipi.
The Washakie Shoshone were closely associated with the Bannock, and the two tribes were settled on the Fort Hall Reservation after 1868. Chief Washakie had his people aid immigrants across fords and help find their strayed cattle. He is reported to have received a testimonial to his kindness signed by nine thousand immigrants.
The Shoshone developed a mild version of the Plains Sun Dance.