Gosiute

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Gosiute were an Indian tribe of the Western Shoshone from the Uto-Aztec language family . They lived in what is now Utah and northern Nevada .

The Gosiuts spoke Shoshone , which is part of the Uto-Aztec language family. Since the neighboring tribes spoke only slight variants of the same language, they could easily communicate with the Bannock , the Paiute , the Ute and the other Shoshone . Later during the reservation period, the Gosiutes mixed with the various neighboring tribes.

They lived in simple wickiups and ate small game and wild plants such as wild onions, carrots and potatoes.

They referred to themselves as Toi Ticutta ( Cattail Eaters - "Eaters of the broad-leaved cattail ", whose rhizomes are rich in starch and are edible after boiling).

To dig up the roots, they used special digging sticks, the simplest tools in society designed only for this purpose. Different sticks were used for other purposes, such as excavating stones.

Like many other Shoshone-speaking tribes, the whites scornfully called them "Digger Indians".

In 1827, the researcher Jedediah Smith said they were "the most wretched creatures of creation". Mark Twain , who toured the Gosiute area west of the Great Salt Lake in 1861 , reports that he “met the most wretched people he has ever seen”. “They don't produce anything. They know no villages or tribal gatherings, their only protection from the snow is a scrap thrown over a bush, although they inhabit one of the most inhospitable wastelands that can be found on this earth. The Bushmen and our Gosiute are undoubtedly descended from the same gorilla or kangaroo or the same Norwegian rat, or whatever animal the Darwinists attribute them to. "

Historian Hubert Howie Bancroft even suspected that they were hibernating: “During winter they lie half asleep in holes in the ground, in spring they crawl out and eat grass until they have the strength to stand on their feet again. They know no clothes, hardly anything cooked, and often no weapons. Their religious ideas are extremely vague, they live in unimaginable filth and let their passions run free. There is undoubtedly no room for a ' missing link ' between them and the animals . "

Without the knowledge of the Indians about edible wild plants , however, many of the first European settlers would probably have suffered hunger on their wagon trains. After crossing the Great Plains , the supplies they carried often ran out. The women of the pioneers learned from the Indian women how to dig up and cook edible tubers and were thus able to improve the poor diet.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Farb: The Indians development and destruction of a people . Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung GmbH, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-485-00565-7 , p. 39.
  2. ↑ ibid.
  3. ↑ ibid. P. 40.
  4. ^ Elias Yanovsky: Food Plants of the North American Indians. United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, July 1936.