Shoshone

Some neighboring tribes call the Shoshone "Grass House People," based on their traditional homes made from sosoni.

[1] The Shoshone are a Native American tribe that originated in the western Great Basin and spread north and east into present-day Idaho and Wyoming.

After 1750, warfare and pressure from the Blackfoot, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pushed Eastern Shoshone south and westward.

[2] As more European American settlers migrated west, tensions rose with the indigenous people over competition for territory and resources.

As more settlers encroached on Shoshone hunting territory, the natives raided farms and ranches for food and attacked immigrants.

The warfare resulted in the Bear River Massacre (1863) when U.S. forces attacked and killed an estimated 250 Northwestern Shoshone, who were at their winter encampment in present-day Franklin County, Idaho.

In 1876, by contrast, the Shoshone fought alongside the U.S. Army in the Battle of the Rosebud against their traditional enemies, the Lakota and Cheyenne.

The three older captives died of diseases within a year; Mary Jo Estep survived, and passed away in 1992, around the age of 82.

[9] In 2008 the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation acquired the site of the Bear River Massacre and some surrounding land.

[10] The Shoshone were scattered over a vast area and divided into many bands, therefore many estimates of their population did not cover the entire tribe.

Indian Affairs 1875 gave the Shoshone as 1,740 in Idaho and Montana, 1,945 in Nevada, 700 in Wyoming and 244 (besides those intermixed with the Bannock) in Oregon.