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Additional Authors Include Osma Couch Gallinger, Nellie Sargent
Johnson, W. F. McNulty, Eloise Cobb, Lelah Frisbie Adler And
Marguerite P. Davison. Edited By Paul Bernat.
Additional Authors Include Marguerite P. Davison, Elma A. Clark,
Cornelia Stone And Nora Miller. Edited By Paul Bernat.
The Shoshoni Indians have never, until now, found their biographer.
This long-overdue volume at last brings their history into focus.
Perhaps it is the nature of the Shoshonis--"a friend, always a
friend"--which has caused them to be overlooked by historians.
Washakie, their great chieftain of the nineteenth century, suffered
hardship, personal affront, and even loss of prestige to prove his
abiding attachment to the white man.
In their original habitat, the Great Basin--in Oregon and
California, across Nevada, Utah, and Idaho into Wyoming--the
Shoshonis had no knowledge of warfare. They were a primitive people
wandering singly or in small family groups over vast areas in quest
of food. When some of their number ventured into the Rockies, they
found a new way of life. While buffalo hunting, they grouped
together and chose tribal leaders.
Together with the Comanches and Kiowas, for a time the Shoshonis
dominated the Great Plains of Colorado and into Texas. Even after
their allies had drifted southward, they fought creditably with the
Sioux and the Blackfeet--that is, until their enemies acquired the
gun and chased them back into the mountains.
As sentinels of the Rockies, the Shoshonis controlled the great
mountain barrier, a natural fortification which they were
ill-equipped to man. Consequently, their story is less one of
combat and bloodshed than it is of cultural changes brought about
by the force of time and white settlers.
The Arapahoes, who simultaneously occupy the three major divisions
of the Great Plains, are typical but the least known of the Plains
tribes. Overshadowed by their more hostile allies, the Sioux and
Cheyennes, they have been neglected by historians.This book traces
their history from prehistoric times in Minnesota and Canada to the
turn of the century in Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma, when their
cultural history ended and adjustment to the white man's way began.
It covers their way of life, dealings with traders, treaties,
battles, division into branches, and reservation life. There are
detailed accounts of the Ghost Dance and peyote cult. A study of
the two branches-Southern and Northern-is a dramatic lesson in the
effects of acculturation. Forced to accept the white man's way, the
Southern people, after losing their ceremonials and tribal lands in
Oklahoma, have gradually resigned themselves to the alien culture.
The Northern Arapahoes on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming,
however, still cling to their original traditions. They tell their
time-honored tales, pour out their souls in music, and dance to
their drums much as they did in pre-reservation days-although they
dress in the manner of the white man and abide by his regulations.
Flat-Pipe, the sacred palladium, said to have come to ""our
people"" when the world began, stays in their safe-keeping, and
they honor it in occasional ceremony. The Pipe is the unifying
symbol of the two branches of the tribe.
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