History of Shoshone Indians of Utah

At the time of major white penetration of the Great Basin and the Snake River areas in the 1840s, there were seven distinct Shoshoni groups. The Eastern Shoshoni, 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 Shoshoni and the Western Shoshoni. 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 Shoshoni 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 Shoshoni are usually listed under the general name of the "Northern Shoshoni." One of these groups, the Fort Hall Shoshoni of about 1,000 people, lived together with a band of about 800 Northern Paiute known in history as the Bannock at the confluence of the Portneuf and Snake rivers. A second division, the Lemhi, numbering some 1,800 people, ranged from the Beaverhead country in southwestern Montana westward to the Salmon River area, which was their main homeland. In western Idaho, along the Boise and Bruneau rivers, a third section of about 600 Shoshoni followed a life centered around salmon as their basic food. Finally, the fourth and final division of 1,500 people, the Northwestern Shoshoni, resided in the valleys of northern Utah--especially Weber Valley and Cache Valley--and along the eastern and northern shores of Great Salt Lake.