state of Nevada, "Snake" and "Shoshone" or variations thereof were the names commonly applied to all the Indians. Frequently, "Snake" meant specifically Paiute and Bannock, or any mounted Indians, as distinguished from the footgoing "Diggers." From the fact that these terms were applied to Indians in widely separated regions and having different languages, it can only be concluded that the nomenclature designated no particular group having political, cultural, or linguistic unity.

"Snake" was but infrequently applied to the Indians south of Oregon and Idaho, where the term "Shoshone" was more widely used. The unmounted Shoshonean-speaking peoples of Utah and Nevada were also commonly referred to as "Diggers" or "Root Diggers," a name frequently given to the unmounted Shoshone of Idaho. Washington Irving referred to those Indians seen on the Humboldt River by Walker's party in 1833 as "Shoshokoes" (Irving, 1873, p. 384). Zenas Leonard, who was a member of Walker's expedition, referred to the Indians of the Humboldt River region as "Bawnack, or Shoshonies" (Leonard, 1934, p. 78), but Father De Smet spoke of all the unmounted people of the Great Basin as "Soshocos" and described their abject poverty (De Smet, 1905, 3:1032). In 1846, Edwin Bryant entered the Great Basin en route to California. Of the Shoshone he said: "The Shoshonees or Snakes occupy the country immediately west of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains" (Bryant, 1885, p. 137). He differentiated this powerful, mounted people from the "miserable Digger Indians, calling themselves Soshonees," whom he met west of Great Salt Lake (p. 168). As he continued down the Humboldt River in Nevada, he noted: "All the Digger Indians of this valley claim to be Shoshonees" (p. 195), but despite this affirmation, he continued to refer to them as "Diggers." Similarly, two Indians met by Bryant's party near Humboldt Sink in Northern Paiute territory were called "Digger Indians" (p. 211). Howard Stansbury, who explored the Great Salt Lake region in 1849, referred, however, to the Indians west of the lake as "Shoshonees or Snake Indians" (Stansbury, 1852, p. 97).

The Western Shoshone were generally called "Diggers" by the emigrants who took part in the gold rush to California. One of them, Franklin Langworthy of Illinois, stated: "All the Indians along the Humboldt call themselves Shoshonees, but the whites call them Diggers, from the fact that they burrow under ground in the winter" (Langworthy, 1932, p. 119). Reuben Shaw, another "Forty-niner," referred to the Indians on the California road along the Humboldt as "Diggers" (Shaw, 1948, p. 123), "Root Diggers" (p. 119), and "Humboldt Indians" (p. 130). In 1854 Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith explored the route of the forty-first parallel in search of a possible railroad route and encountered Gosiute, Western Shoshone, and Northern Paiute Indians. He referred to all of them as "Diggers," and he apparently used this term generically for all the impoverished, horseless Indians between Salt Lake City and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. At Deep Creek, in Utah, he "found a band of twenty Shoshonee Indians encamped, besides women and children. They are mounted, and contrast strikingly with their Goshoot neighbors (Diggers) ..." (Beckwith, 1855, p. 25). Beckwith classed only mounted Indians as Shoshone: in Butte Valley, Nevada, the inhabitants of a "Digger wick-e-up" fled from the party, "taking us for Shoshonees" (p. 26). After leaving Western Shoshone territory he spoke of "Digger Indians, who call themselves Pah-Utah, however" (p. 34).

The name "Shoshone" became more commonly applied to the Western Shoshone after they had had increased contact with the whites. The French traveler, Jules Remy, spoke of them as "Shoshones, or Snakes" in 1855 (Remy and Brenchley, 1861, p. 123), and the British explorer, Richard Burton, distinguished the "Shoshone" from the "Gosh-Yuta" (Burton, 1861, p. 567) and the "Pa Yuta," or Northern Paiute, in 1860 (p. 591). The term "Shoshonee" was applied by Indian Agent Holeman to the Indians of Thousand Spring Valley, Nevada (Holeman, 1854, p. 443), and to those of the Humboldt River (p. 444); However, on Willow Creek, Utah, Agent Garland Hurt met a group of mounted Indians whom he called "Shoshonees, or Snakes proper, from the Green River country" (Hurt, 1856, p. 517). He distinguished these from the "Diggers" of the Humboldt River (p. 779). Thus the distinction between the mounted Shoshone and the unmounted people of the more arid regions of the Great Basin continued, despite the recognition of their unity of language. This implicit recognition may be found in the statement made by Brigham Young (1858, p. 599):

The Shoshones are not hostile to travelers, so far as they inhabit this territory, except perhaps a few called "Snake diggers," who inhabit, as before stated, along the line of travel west of the settlements.

It is possible to document almost endlessly the ways in which the labels "Shoshone," "Digger," and "Snake" were applied in turn or at the same time to Shoshone-Comanche and Mono-Bannock speakers alike. Since political or social significance has frequently been attributed to Indians' names—both those bestowed by the whites and those by which the several sectors of the Shoshone population referred to each other—we will discuss this nomenclature in the context of each section of the following report.

II. THE EASTERN SHOSHONE

It is necessary to preface all discussions of Shoshone Indians with a clarification of what is implied by the names attached to Shoshone subgroups. The commonly used appellation "Wind River Shoshone" implies no more than reservation membership. Thus, we also have "Owyhee Shoshone" and "Fort Hall Shoshone" (and Bannock). Wind River residents of admitted descent from other groups are also referred to as "Wind River people," if they are on the agency rolls. They were, of course, not known by this name or a native equivalent in the pre-reservation period. The names, "Eastern Shoshones" and "Eastern Snakes," by which the Shoshone of Wyoming are also known in anthropology, were first consistently applied by government officials during the 1850's and 1860's (cf. Lander, 1860, p. 131; Head, 1868, p. 179; Mann, 1869, p. 616). Lander also referred to the Eastern Shoshone as the "Wash-i-kee band of the Snake Indians" (Lander, 1859, p. 66). This term came into common use after Chief Washakie rose to prominence in the eyes of the whites.

Previous to this period the Eastern Shoshone were called Snakes and Shoshones (or variations thereof), indiscriminately. As has been mentioned, the only firm distinction was made according to whether or not the Indians in question owned horses and hunted buffalo. Although Lewis and Clark never visited the Wyoming lands, the tribal lists which they compiled at Fort Mandan before pushing west mention a group, said by Clark to be "Snake," called the "Cas-ta-ha-na" or "Gens de Vache" (Lewis and Clark, 1904-06, 6:102). They were said to number 500 lodges having a population of about 5,000 people. The Shoshone identity of this people is somewhat obscured by Clark's report of an affinity between their language and that of the Minitaree, but, on the other hand, they were said to "rove on a S. E. fork of the Yellow Rock River called Big Horn, and the heads of the Loup" (ibid.). The "Cas-ta-ha-na" are mentioned also during the return trip of the expedition. Lewis and Clark noted of the Big Horn River: "It is inhabited by a great number of roving Indians of the Crow Nation, the paunch Nation (a band of Crows) and the Castahanas (a band of Snake In.)." The editor of the journals, Reuben Thwaites, identifies the latter as "Comanche." (Ibid., 5:297.)

The paucity of boundary nomenclature found in the historical sources is continued in the ethnographic data, for the food-area terminology used by the Nevada and Idaho Shoshone is even