Eastern Shoshone

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The Eastern Shoshone or Snakes ("snakes") are an Indian tribal group of the Shoshone . They speak the Eastern Shoshoni dialect of Shoshoni (Sosoni 'da̲i̲gwape or newe da̲i̲gwape) , a central Numic language that belongs to the northernmost branch of the Uto-Aztec language family . Linguistically and culturally, the closest relatives are the Comanche who once split off from them , whose language is sometimes simply regarded as another Shoshoni dialect. The Eastern Shoshone, who referred to themselves simply as Nimi ("people" or "people"), lived in the area of ​​today's US states Wyoming and Montana and in northern Colorado .

Subdivision

The Shoshone are broadly divided into three categories, both geographically and culturally:

The division into these three categories comes from the European settlers, the Shoshone themselves did not make this division. Accordingly, there is also no clear cultural boundary between the ethnic groups.

Culture

In contrast to the Western Shoshone, they and the Northern Shoshone developed a horse-based nomadic Plains culture .

The cultural differences between the Northern and Eastern Shoshone, however, were small. The boundary between the two categories is based on geographically different settlements and on the fact that fishing , especially salmon , was much more important for the Northern Shoshone than for the Eastern Shoshone.

history

The Eastern Shoshone, together with the Northern Shoshone, were the first to breed horses on the northern plains and they were at war against neighboring tribes, especially the Blackfoot , Sioux ( Lakota , Nakota , Dakota ) and the sedentary Hidatsa , Arikara and Mandan took advantage of. The horse made it possible for these Shoshone groups to cover greater distances on the raids and wars than their unmounted enemies, to undertake surprising raids and simply to ride down opposing warriors on the open plains or to catch up with fleeing enemies. Soon the Shoshone groups had achieved hegemony over the central and northern plains and were feared by all neighboring peoples and envied for their military strength. But the Shoshone not only used the horse in war, but also bartered the coveted surplus horses to friendly tribes such as the Absarokee , Flathead , Coeur d'Alene and Nez Percé .

Between 1700 and 1730/40 the Shoshone were at the height of their power, they roamed unchallenged from Alberta all the way down to Oklahoma and were commonly known as the Snakes . Like other Plains tribes, the Eastern Shoshone lived in spacious tipis and lived mainly from bison hunting, supplemented, as with their northern cousins, by hunting and the gathering of roots and grasses. But around 1730 the Blackfoot, the Plains Cree and the other hostile tribes also had their first horses and were technologically equal to the Shoshone in battle, but far superior in numbers.

When, from 1750, neighboring tribes also had weapons in addition to horses in contrast to the Shoshone, the balance of power was reversed and the once powerful Eastern Shoshone had to give up most of the areas on the Plains and settle in their peripheral zones with the protective Rocky Mountains in the back, withdraw. The Sioux in particular, driven out of Alberta and northern Montana by the Blackfoot, began armed to advance into the northern plains, which were ruled by the eastern and northern Shoshone. The Absarokee for their part now displaced the Eastern Shoshone from the area of ​​the Yellowstone River and thus secured good grazing places for their horses. As a result, they hunted the bison far more successfully and often blocked access to the most productive hunting grounds for the Shoshone. Her enemies also included the Arapaho and the Cheyenne .

When the first "whites" met around 1800 groups of the Eastern Shoshone (as well as the Northern Shoshone), the old warriors and their relatives could still remember their former homeland east on the Plains.

For the annual bison hunt, large groups of the Eastern Shoshone always gathered to hunt in the current tribal area of ​​their enemies. Like all Plains tribes, they lived in spacious, large tipis.

literature

  • Kristin Thoennes Keller: The Shoshone: Pine Nut Harvesters of the Great Basin , Compass Point Books, 2003, ISBN 0736821732 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barry Pritzker: A Native American encyclopedia: history, culture, and peoples , page 233ff, Oxford University Press US, 2000, ISBN 0195138775 , page 234 in the Google book search
  2. ↑ Donald T. Healy, Peter J. Orenski: Native American flags , page 75ff, University of Oklahoma Press, 2003, ISBN 0806135565 ,