4

The Equestrian Revolution, 1690–1780

Among the many oral traditions of the Eastern Shoshones are tales about how their ancestors got their first horses. One such story recounts how three brothers traveled to New Spain, where they together captured about seventy horses. Spanish troops chased them as they made their escape to the north, but the brothers eluded their pursuers by taking refuge in a canyon or cave. They then resumed their journey north and eventually split up, with each of them taking some horses and joining different Indian tribes. One went to the Utes, another went to the Bannocks, and the third, a man named Trujillo, joined the Eastern Shoshones. The brothers married into those tribes and each of those groups thereby obtained their first horses.1 As is the case with most Native American oral traditions, this episode is not dated, but such an event would have likely transpired during the waning years of the seventeenth century, when the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people began to transition to an equestrian culture.

The horse revolution was a seminal event in Wind River Shoshone history, one that contributed to the diversification of the Numic-speaking peoples of the North American West by further distinguishing the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones from their linguistic relatives. Horses constituted the first known influence that European colonizers had on the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones, and the integration of horses into Shoshone culture deeply affected man-land relationships. By opening up new possibilities in terms of transportation, hunting, and warfare, horses created opportunities for subsistence and proved to be catalysts of cultural change. Indeed, as the forebears of the Eastern Shoshones integrated horses into their lifeways, their daily lives transformed, for the animals altered both men’s and women’s work, contributed to changes in material culture, and affected intergroup relations. For the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people, the equestrian revolution profoundly influenced the relationship between culture and environment and, as a result, that story constitutes a critical phase in the story of Wind River Shoshone ethnogenesis.

The impact of the equestrian revolution on Eastern Shoshone ethnogenetic development is a multilayered story that revolves around ecological change. At the most basic level, horses triggered changes in the subsistence systems of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones by enhancing their mobility and thereby enabling them to more effectively utilize various resources. Although the upshot of their improved transportation capabilities most obviously manifested in the development of equestrian bison hunting, as the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones became more proficient bison hunters, it also benefited women’s foraging activities. The equestrian revolution thus fundamentally transformed ecosystems, as the use of horses altered how Indians interacted with the lands they inhabited. Moreover, simply maintaining horse herds challenged the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones to reconfigure their relationships with environments. Over time, horses became ingrained in Eastern Shoshone identity, as was the case among other Indian cultures, although the integration of horses into this particular Great Basin–Great Plains people contributed to the ongoing development of a distinct cultural tradition.

Military developments constitute another layer of the relationship between the equestrian revolution and Eastern Shoshone ethnogenesis. The integration of horses into Shoshone culture and their use as a military technology ensured that they remained a major player in intertribal affairs on the northern Great Plains well into the eighteenth century. Although anthropologists and historians have long explained Shoshone strength on the eighteenth-century grasslands by emphasizing that they capitalized on the military advantages of being the region’s first known equestrian people, I build upon my earlier discussion of pedestrian Numu military prowess during the seventeenth century by adopting archaeologist Douglas B. Bamforth’s ecological approach to Great Plains history.2 I assert that while horses certainly provided those who used them with military benefits, such as enhanced transportation to and from enemy encampments as well as advantages when used in combat itself, the impact of equestrianism on Shoshone military might stemmed from the myriad ways that horses transformed Shoshone subsistence and lifeways. Indeed, the underlying ecological transformations that horses triggered enhanced the military capabilities of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones by stimulating population growth, expanding band sizes, and allowing those bands to more frequently gather with others. This bolstered their available manpower and enabled bands to more frequently send out large war parties. Pekka Hämäläinen and Dan Flores have analyzed how the equestrian revolution altered Comanche ecological relationships and thereby helped make them into a power on the southern Great Plains, but treatments of the Shoshones largely focus on military developments.3

The third layer of this story about the role of equestrianism in Eastern Shoshone ethnogenesis revolves around the impact of the horse revolution on Shoshone women. Taking a cue from Margaret Jacobs’s observation that historians tend to emphasize a “horse-as-empowerment” narrative while at the same time claiming that equestrianism diminished the status of Indian women by turning them into drudge laborers and by expanding the practice of polygyny, I examine the gendered dynamics of the horse revolution among the Eastern Shoshones.4 My work therefore diverges from that of Hämäläinen, which, according to some critics, takes an “emphasis on the wretchedness and misery of Plains women” to “new heights”5 in its treatment of polygyny and bison-hide processing even as it celebrates that Comanches and Utes were “liberated and empowered by the horse.”6 Similarly, Andrew C. Isenberg discusses how the rise of equestrianism generally had a largely detrimental effect on the status of Plains Indian women while observing that “the bison liberated and empowered the nomads.”7 Rather, I demonstrate in the following pages how, even as equestrian bison hunting became a significant part of Shoshone subsistence, women also benefited from horses as they integrated the animals into their daily lives, including their foraging activities, efforts to gather firewood and water, and work in transporting a family’s material goods. And even as men gained greater access to power and prestige through the warfare that the horse revolution stimulated, women maintained considerable influence within families and communities, and they exerted influence as the producers and distributors of various foodstuffs and material goods. Thus by throwing light on women’s work among mounted Shoshone groups, I offer a more nuanced interpretation of equestrian Native American subsistence and the dynamic gendered divisions of labor that one Indian culture, at least, used to most efficiently utilize available technologies and resources. Emphasizing continuity between the pedestrian and equestrian eras in the realm of gender dynamics, I challenge the interpretations of Margot Liberty and others that “hell came with horses” for Indian women and stress that the equestrian revolution did not transform Shoshone women into powerless drudge laborers.8

Dissecting the ways that equestrianism transformed how the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones interacted with the world around them enriches our understanding of eighteenth-century Great Plains history generally and Wind River Shoshone ethnogenesis specifically. By combining ethnographic data, information derived from historical documents and indigenous oral testimony, and key scholarship on Native American history as well as historical and anthropological studies of Indian women, I reveal that while horses did bring tremendous change to Native America, critical components of the Indians’ pedestrian lifeways persisted into the equestrian era. Ultimately, examining eighteenth-century Eastern Shoshone history through the analytical lens of environmental history reveals how new technologies introduced by European colonizers—and how Indian cultures adopted and used those technologies—affected relationships between peoples and the lands that they inhabited. This, in turn, contributed to their historical development as a distinct cultural group.

Species of horses once inhabited North America, but those animals vanished over 10,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene extinctions. Horses returned to the continent in 1519 when Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés introduced them to what is now central Mexico. By the mid-sixteenth century, Spanish colonization had enabled tens of thousands of horses to repopulate Mexico and, by 1600, some could be found in the far northern reaches of New Spain, in what is now the American Southwest. A popular legend once held that the Natives of the North American West acquired horses that descended from a small number of strays left behind by the expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and others, but Francis Haines and other anthropologists debunked that myth long ago. Natives unfamiliar with horses lacked the knowledge needed to care for horses, breed them, and create vast herds out of a few strays.9

Spaniards officially prohibited their Indian subjects from riding horses at first, but that changed in 1621 when colonial authorities allowed Native converts to work as teamsters and herders. The knowledge necessary to use and care for horses thus began to diffuse throughout Indian communities, as did horses themselves. During the 1600s, trade activity gradually spread horses beyond northern New Spain. Some trickled into the southern Great Plains by the 1630s, as Apaches traded war captives and bison hides to the Pueblos and Spaniards for them and, when unsatisfied with trade, they raided Spanish and Pueblo settlements alike. When the Pueblos rose up in rebellion in 1680 and evicted their oppressive Spanish colonizers from their lands, they channeled thousands of horses into indigenous trade networks. Apache, Jumano, and Ute raiders and traders then trafficked horses to the north and east.10

As horses populated the grasslands, they settled into an ecological niche comparable to that once occupied by their extinct predecessors. The southern Great Plains environment was nearly perfect for these descendants of Spanish Barbs. Small, hardy, heat-resistant animals that possessed great stamina, these horses thrived in the warm, arid southwestern Plains; they, after all, descended from animals bred in northern Africa. The grasslands had a long growing season and, aided by the rejuvenating effects of the Little Ice Age, the southern Plains typically provided sufficient supplies of forage from spring into the fall. Scattered riparian areas that afforded shelter, forage, and water helped horses survive the usually mild winters of the southern Plains. One of the horse’s main competitors for forage was, ironically, a species that had greatly benefited from the Pleistocene extinctions: the bison.11

The ancestors of the Southern Paiutes, who resided in the southern Great Basin, were likely the first Numic-speaking peoples to encounter horses. It does not, however, appear that they or other Basin Numu groups capitalized on horses in the same way that their linguistic relatives in neighboring regions later would. The Great Basin was not especially rich in forage and, moreover, horses in some ways competed with the Numu for the same resources, especially the grasses that produced seeds that women gathered and prepared as food. And Basin Natives did not need horses for hunting. In fact, mounted hunting methods would likely do little more than scare away the pronghorn that the Basin Numu stalked, and horses were of little use pursuing bighorn sheep in the mountains. They also reportedly used horses as sources of food. After all, one should not assume that when the Basin Numu first encountered horses in the early 1600s they saw them as a new technology; it is conceivable that they would instead view them as a new source of sustenance. So, although some Numu groups later adopted horses as beasts of burden and for transportation purposes, they generally did not become integral to Basin Numu lifeways because the costs of equestrianism outweighed the benefits.12

But other Numic-speaking groups rapidly integrated horses into their lifeways, and this profoundly affected their relationships with other cultures as well as the physical environment. The first to do so were probably Utes who occupied parts of the eastern Great Basin and southern Rocky Mountains by the early seventeenth century. They acquired their first horses sometime before 1640 and soon thereafter used them to hunt bison in the grasslands of what is now eastern Colorado. With a more abundant and reliable source of sustenance at their disposal, Utes gathered in larger groups (bands) and that, combined with their enhanced mobility, enabled them to more effectively respond to Apache and Navajo raiders who struck at them from the south and east as well as send out more effective raiding parties of their own. In addition to attacking their Apache and Navajo rivals, they also raided some pedestrian Numu groups in the Great Basin, reportedly ambushing Shoshone and Paiute camps early each spring before they had recovered from the winter months that left them hungry, weak, and vulnerable.13 Ute raiders apparently used this advantage to their economic benefit, for the diffusion of horses went hand in hand with a growing market in indigenous captives. According to Ned Blackhawk, Spanish activities in northern New Spain contributed to the development and growth of a “slaving frontier” that drew Utes and the peoples that they raided for captives into “economies of violence.”14

Indeed, the emergence of equestrian societies such as those of the Utes and, later, the Comanches and Shoshones revolutionized long-standing indigenous captivity practices. When warriors from one community raided another, they often killed the men and older boys while capturing women and children. The fates of those captives varied: sometimes their captors adopted them into their bands and families; other times their captors gave them away as gifts to other groups; and occasionally they arranged for them to marry into another community. Prior to the onset of European colonization, this form of violence was typically local rather than far-reaching because raiders usually did not channel their captives into an existing trade network. But with the arrival of the Spanish and their demand for Indian labor as well as the companionship of Native women, captives became commodities that, along with horses and other goods, changed hands within increasingly extensive trade networks. Utes and other indigenous groups seized upon the demand for captives as a means of acquiring horses and other trade goods. Thus Indian women—whom Spanish traders valued because there were far more Spanish men than women in northern New Spain and because women posed less of a violent threat as captives than men—lived under the constant threat of being taken captive during an enemy raid. In northern New Spain, the captive economy bound Indians and Spaniards in what historian James F. Brooks describes as “long-term relations of violence, exchange, interdependence, and interdevelopment” based on the efforts of both Native American and Spanish men to establish and preserve their honor. But even indigenous communities that did not directly interact with the Spanish tapped into the burgeoning market by taking captives and then trading them to others who served as middlemen by conveying them to the Spanish. The ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones were among those who participated in the captive economy of New Spain from afar, and horses served as a means of more effectively taking captives as well as an end as the primary trade good that they sought in exchange for their captives.15

It appears that Utes spread horses to other Numic-speaking peoples, including the Comanches. The people known as the Comanches likely splintered away from Shoshone speakers during the second half of the 1600s, at about the time that Utes acquainted them with horses. Comanches subsequently pushed southward along the front range of the Rocky Mountains, presumably pursuing more direct access to the horse trade of northern New Spain and wanting to capitalize on the bison-rich southern Great Plains. Interacting with their linguistic relatives in what is now Colorado, partially mounted Comanche bands borrowed the Utes’ equestrian hunting techniques and then pushed into the grasslands by way of the Arkansas River Valley by the first decade of the eighteenth century. They entered written history when Spanish officials noted their presence on the southern Plains in 1706. Some Comanches joined with Utes in raiding into New Mexico from the Colorado Plateau, and, following the Ute example, Comanches also became fixtures in the Southwest captive economy.16

Although Comanches quickly became major players on the southern Great Plains, they maintained strong connections with Numic-speaking communities elsewhere, including the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones. By the 1740s, the now fully equestrian Comanches had established a strong presence across a vast stretch of the southern grasslands, pushing their Apache rivals toward the southwest to take control of prime hunting and wintering grounds even as they raided them for horses and captives. And also by that time, Comanches operated an extensive trade network with its nexus in the upper Arkansas River Valley that spanned from the Rio Grande to the Mississippi River and from central Texas to the upper Missouri River.17 Within this context, two general branches of the Comanche nation developed. The Yamparikas (root-eaters), Kwaharis (antelope-eaters), Jupes (timber people), and Kotsotekas (buffalo-eaters) made up the Northern or Western Comanches. These groups concentrated between the upper Canadian and Arkansas rivers, although some ranged further north and thereby connected Shoshones to the horse supply of northern New Spain as well as to the Southern or Eastern Comanches who centralized in the Red River country. Shoshone-Comanche ties remained so close throughout the 1700s that their relations extended well beyond trade. Individuals, families, and even larger groups commonly migrated back and forth between Shoshone and Comanche communities. Once horses reached the northernmost Comanche groups, the Kwaharis and Yamparikas, from their southern relatives, they became the conduit by which the animals reached Shoshones living to the north, as nearby as the Green River Basin.18

Shoshones who inhabited what is now southern Idaho and southwestern Wyoming probably acquired their first horses sometime between 1690 and 1700. They may have done so at an annual rendezvous, which was likely held somewhere in the upper Green River Basin, that Ute and Comanche traders regularly attended. Ethnographic evidence indicates that both Comanches and Utes trafficked horses northward by the early eighteenth century, with the former channeling horses along the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains while the latter used routes that lay west of the Continental Divide along the Colorado, Grand, and Green rivers. Once horses changed hands at an annual rendezvous, as well as at smaller exchanges that occurred as various Numic-speaking groups visited one another, Shoshones passed some of those animals along to their other contacts, including other Shoshone speakers who inhabited such places as the Wyoming Basin, Snake River Plain, and western Great Plains.19

The integration of horses into Shoshone life altered how they interacted with physical environments and, therefore, the place of the people in their ecosystem. Thus the equestrian revolution, a source of cultural and ecological change, contributed immensely to Eastern Shoshone ethnogenesis. Indeed, equestrianism affected virtually every facet of daily life by altering the people’s relationships with landscapes and resources, as well as their interactions with one another. Overall, according to Wind River Shoshone tribal historian John Washakie, “horses made things easier” for his ancestors. Eastern Shoshones so valued and so widely used horses that they continued to extensively utilize them for hunting and other purposes well into the twentieth century, long after automobiles became available. And since both men and women could own and ride horses, he says, they made things easier for everyone.20 Indeed, it would be difficult to overstate the influence of horses on the culture and lifeways of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones. Equestrianism simply revolutionized time and space, enabling those who adopted horses to travel farther at greater speeds, transport more material goods than they previously could, and more effectively travel from one scarce water source to another in such places as the arid Wyoming Basin. Some Numic speakers had used dogs as beasts of burden to transport their material goods and, in fact, some continued to do so into the nineteenth century, even after horses began to fulfill that role; horses allowed for travel at twice the speed of dogs while carrying at least four times more weight. This likely contributed to increased material accumulation. Both men and women integrated horses into their activities, as men found them most useful in both hunting and warring while women used horses in their foraging activities to cover more ground as well as carry more roots, berries, and other plant matter. And horses fueled intertribal trade by increasing the rate, range, and volume of commerce; that horses were in and of themselves high-demand commodities also stimulated trade.21

Among other things, the Eastern Shoshone horse revolution produced the first equestrian bison-hunting societies on the northern Great Plains. Shoshones, of course, had hunted bison on the grasslands before they acquired horses, with both men and women contributing to pedestrian “jumping” and “pounding” efforts. Bison migrations, which could be unpredictable as the ungulates searched for forage and water, tried to escape from danger, and searched for other herds, had made pedestrian hunting activities something of a gamble. But on horseback, Shoshone hunters could more efficiently scout areas for bison, more effectively pursue those animals, and therefore more reliably access the herds as needed. Unforeseeable variations in bison migration patterns still produced occasional shortages, but horses were a form of insurance that helped mitigate those. And horses, by freeing hunters from their reliance on geographical fixtures such as cliffs, enhanced the mobility of Shoshone groups. Overall, equestrianism made Shoshones into more effective and efficient hunters who seized upon the opportunity to more productively and securely focus on bison hunting. In doing so, they participated in what Andrew Isenberg calls a “solar economy.” As the summer sun nurtured the shortgrasses of the western Plains, those grasses transformed solar energy into carbohydrates that bison consumed when they grazed. The bison then turned those carbohydrates into protein, which then nourished the bodies of the people who hunted and fed upon their meat. Thus, a renewable resource, solar energy, was the basis of the equestrian bison-hunting economy. It appears that Shoshone groups that migrated back and forth between the Great Plains and Intermountain West before the horse revolution now became more devoted to the western Plains, where they capitalized on the bison economy; they likely established new debías in the mountain valleys of such places as the Wyoming Basin.22

Figure 5. Shoshone Indian and His Pet Horse. “If an Indian has an alternative given to him between his squaw and his horse, absolutely compelling him to take one or the other, we opine that the horse would be the first choice. He has some little show of reason for this, for what could he do without this noble and useful animal?” Alfred Jacob Miller, 37.1940.62, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Meanwhile, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones who lived west of the Continental Divide also devoted more energy to equestrian bison hunting as they accumulated horses. In fact, it is possible that the rich forage, ample sheltered areas, and more hospitable climate of the Columbia Plateau enabled the Numic speakers of that region to maintain larger herds than their linguistic relatives who inhabited the Wyoming Basin and northern Great Plains could. These Shoshone groups maintained their debías west of the Divide and remained focused on localized subsistence activities, which, depending on their specific areas, might include gathering roots and berries, trapping small game, and fishing for salmon on the tributaries of the Columbia, but many also engaged in equestrian bison hunting to varying degrees. They hunted the bison that inhabited the Snake River Plain and Green River Basin, but these Numic-speaking communities capitalized on their newfound mobility to make annual trips to the western Great Plains to conduct major harvests; some had made periodic trips east to hunt bison during the pedestrian era, but the horses enabled more regular journeys. Further north, the ancestors of the Lemhi Shoshones, which included Agaidikas (salmon-eaters) and Tukudikas or Dukurikas (sheep-eaters), also crossed the Rockies, from what is now central Idaho to the grasslands of what became Montana, to hunt bison. Late each summer, some of those groups began their journey eastward, ultimately gathering in the fall to hunt bison in such areas as the Yellowstone River Valley; they would return once they procured enough dried meat and hides, before snow fell to block the mountain passes. Some Shoshones that lived west of the Continental Divide also sometimes trekked eastward to pursue elk in what became northwestern Wyoming. It appears that some or parts of these communities settled into the Rocky Mountain–Great Plains ecological borderland, where they either joined groups known as Kukundikas (buffalo-eaters) or claimed new debías in the mountains near the western Great Plains. Other Shoshones, however, such as the “sheep-eaters” of what became central Idaho and northwestern Wyoming, made little use of horses because they largely inhabited rugged, climatically harsh, high-elevation areas such the Sawtooth Range and present-day Yellowstone National Park and engaged in subsistence activities—such as hunting bighorn sheep—that horses did not enhance.23

As the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones–Numic-speaking groups who claimed debías scattered throughout the western Great Plains, Wyoming Basin, and the Great Basin—Columbia Plateau ecological borderland—devoted more time and energy to hunting bison, they adapted their migration patterns accordingly. Ultimately, equestrian Shoshone migration patterns reflected a balance between an emphasis on bison hunting efforts and women’s foraging activities. Over a given year, the movements of Shoshone communities to some degree mirrored the movements and actions of the bison herds; like the bison, they often migrated, gathered into larger groups, or splintered into smaller groups. At the same time, Shoshone migrations also catered to various growing seasons, especially the ripening of certain roots and berries in different seasons. During the winter months, Shoshones generally dispersed in small bands to their respective debías, seeking shelter and water, as well as forage for their horses in river bottoms. Conveniently, that was also where many bison wintered. In the spring and summer, when grasslands production peaked, large groups of bison congregated. Native bands also gathered to conduct some communal bison hunts and ceremonies as well as dispatch large war parties. When Shoshone communities gathered in the spring, women dug up yampas, bitterroots, and other tubers that they either prepared immediately or dried for later consumption. As Shoshones again gathered in the late summer in preparation for the major annual bison hunt, women picked chokeberries, currants, and others that they served fresh, dried for later use, or pounded with meat. In many ways, then, Shoshones integrated equestrian bison-hunting efforts into existing subsistence cycles that revolved around women’s foraging activities.24

Indeed, the adoption of equestrian bison hunting was a significant development for the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people, but one must be careful not to overstate that transition to the point of obscuring the continued importance of other subsistence activities. As Demitri Boris Shimkin writes, “In all, the efficiency of bison economy was almost incredibly low. With all their slaughter, the Shoshone could scarcely have lived more than six months a year on bison meat.”25 So, even after they adopted horses, Shoshone speakers maintained broad-based diets, as they hunted elk, deer, pronghorn, and other big game in addition to smaller animals such as sage grouse and rabbits, caught a variety of fish, and gathered various roots and berries. Men sometimes used horses to hunt game other than bison, such as pronghorn. To do so, several dozen riders would surround a herd of pronghorn and then take turns driving them in circles until the animals collapsed from exhaustion; they would then kill the animals with projectiles or clubs. In general, it appears that as Shoshone men adopted equestrian hunting methods and more actively pursed large game, small-game hunting became the province of women and children. In the Wyoming Basin, Numic speakers continued to utilize Great Basin–style traps and snares to capture rabbits, birds, and other small animals. Thus although equestrian Shoshone groups devoted greater attention to grasslands environments where they hunted bison, it appears that many communities capitalized on their mobility to migrate between the grasslands, foothills, and mountain parklands along the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains, in the Wyoming Basin, and west of the Continental Divide where the Columbia Plateau and Great Basin regions meet.26

Figure 6. The equestrian Shoshone world, ca. 1740. Erin Greb Cartography.

Women’s work remained integral to equestrian Shoshone subsistence, and they in many ways used horses to their benefit. Indeed, even though Shoshones adapted their migration patterns and lifeways to accommodate men’s bison-hunting efforts, myriad roots and berries remained key components of Shoshone diets. Depending on specific environments, Shoshone women might, over the course of a given year, harvest chokeberries, gooseberries, currants, and other berries, as well as extract bitterroots, yampas, camas, and other roots that provided human bodies with essential nutrients that bison flesh and other meats did not. The integration of horses into women’s gathering efforts enhanced and to some degree eased that work by allowing them to travel more quickly to and from harvest sites as well as transport greater volumes of plant matter; they could therefore harvest more roots and berries during a given trip. This increased efficiency enabled women to devote more time to processing the greater volume of bison and other game that men killed into usable resources, namely food and material goods. Women butchered, dried, and cooked meat, stored some of it for later use, and continued to control the distribution of a family’s food supplies. This was an important responsibility, for they had to address immediate sustenance needs while at the same time rationing some food for the winter months when supplies of fresh foodstuffs usually ran low. Women also engaged in the time-consuming and labor-intensive work of turning hides into tepees, robes, clothing, parfleche bags, and other items that they and their families used. The fruits of their labor were theirs to keep, give away, or trade; they did not simply surrender their finished products to their husbands. Their crafts—such as making the tepees that they owned, maintained, and transported—were highly specialized and specific to women. Horses, moreover, helped women—who managed the transportation of their family’s homes and material goods—by giving them a powerful new beast of burden to ease their labor.27 So, in the area of women’s work, horses augmented the existing relationship between environment and culture.

While historians have tended to conclude that the advent of equestrian bison hunting generally reduced the status of Indian women, a close examination of Shoshone gender dynamics allows for a more nuanced understanding of how horses affected Native American cultures.28 Among the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones, developments often cited in support of the argument that the horse revolution detrimentally affected women—such as the growth of polygyny and the immersion of women in hide processing and other “drudge labor”—did not necessarily indicate a loss of female autonomy and influence. It is easy to arrive at the conclusion that horses empowered men and weakened the status of women, as the impact of horses was, in the traditional male-centric ethnographic and historical studies of Native America that focused on such things as hunting and warfare, obviously skewed toward the benefit of men to the detriment of women. However, the cultural continuity among the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people from the pedestrian to the equestrian era, including that in the area of gender dynamics, helped ensure that Shoshone women did not become the inferiors of men.29

Overall, it appears that women maintained considerable status inside the home and beyond as the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones transitioned to equestrianism. Shoshone communities maintained the practice of matrilocal residence, meaning that a man typically moved in with his bride’s family and subsequently married one or more of her sisters (sororal polygyny). The husband, then, did not simply take his wife or wives away from her/their family and put her/them to work for his benefit. Rather, he joined her/their household and engaged in activities—hunting and warring—that benefited his wife’s (or wives’) family. Shoshone women traditionally had a voice in marriage decisions, so fathers usually did not simply give their daughters away without their consent. The institution of marriage, including the practice of polygyny, to some degree reflected male social status, for often only men who owned horses possessed the necessary wealth and influence to marry one or more wives. However, an entire living unit—men and women alike—shared the benefits of horse ownership, including the material comforts that came with using them as well as the social standing that large horse herds commanded. Thus the bride-price, typically in the form of horses, that a man gave to the father of the woman he married not only reflected his affluence but also contributed to the wealth and standing of the family that he joined; there was no true exchange involved in the marriage process whereby a wife’s father reciprocated with any sort of gift other than his daughter’s hand in marriage. Moreover, men did not have a monopoly on horse use or ownership, and the historical record indicates that both Shoshone men and women were expert horse riders. While men owned and cared for their hunting horses and warhorses (or had boys do so), women tended to those that they used to complete their tasks; they often inherited the animals from their fathers or acquired them through trade, either with other women or when their husbands received them in exchange for goods that women produced. Some early nineteenth-century observers noted that Shoshone women sometimes raced horses and participated in equestrian bison hunting. Furthermore, Shoshone women maintained autonomy through gender-specific activities and institutions. Those included menstrual huts—which men could not enter because of taboos—and group berry-picking and root-digging efforts that gave women their own space in which to socialize as well as, in the case of midwifery, gain status through their skills. Finally, controlling the distribution of food and material goods that they produced secured considerable influence for women, and that horses enabled them to harvest and transport more roots or berries possibly earned women greater influence as surplus foodstuffs could serve as valuable trade goods.30

The horse revolution contributed to Wind River Shoshone ethnogenesis by transforming their ancestors’ material culture. Indeed, women’s work and the fruits of their labor evolved as Shoshones adopted equestrian bison-hunting practices. For one, Shoshones gradually moved away from their Basin-style grass lodges toward bison-skin tepees as they became more oriented toward the bison herds. This transition apparently took some time, though, for into the nineteenth century other Plains Indian cultures used a weaving motion in signs to refer to Shoshones, presumably symbolizing the method that they used to construct their grass lodges. But as group mobility and access to bison increased, women adopted skin tepees, which they became adept at building, disassembling, and transporting; horses proved especially useful for the latter. Also, women fashioned a variety of robes, leggings, moccasins, and other attire for their families from the animals that men killed, including bison, elk, deer, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep skins, largely abandoning sage bark and other garments made of plant matter. Especially skillful tepee construction and clothing manufacture earned women recognition, including the respect of other women and men alike. Far from mere laborers who produced goods at the behest of others, Shoshone women took pride in their crafts and quality work received due credit. Women, moreover, sometimes produced extra material goods that they exchanged for other commodities. Customarily, Shoshone women traded with the women of other Indian communities, obtaining horses, produce, and other trade goods that they then used as they wished.31

Figure 7. Shoshone Female—Catching a Horse. “At rare intervals females take the field in pursuit of game or catching horses.” Alfred Jacob Miller, 37.1940.137, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Meanwhile, Shoshones and other Plains cultures adopted a variety of material culture for using horses themselves. By all accounts, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones initially used Spanish-style saddles, bridles, and stirrups, but over time they developed their own riding equipment. European American fur traders reported that by the early nineteenth century some northern Plains cultures utilized at least two distinct styles: ones made from wood overlaid with bison rawhide (often covered with a bison robe) and others made from dressed leather stuffed with moose or deer hair. Additionally, Shoshone women crafted parfleche bags of various sizes and shapes that both men and women used, often on horseback, to carry items such as tools and clothing as well as pemmican and other foodstuffs.32

The enhanced mobility that came with the adoption of horses also contributed to Eastern Shoshone ethnogenesis by intensifying contact between their ancestors and people of other cultures. Although warfare constituted a major part of intertribal affairs, trade was also a critical medium of interaction across cultures. Equestrianism intensified trade activity by enabling those who possessed horses to travel greater distances to engage in commerce even as the desire for horses themselves stimulated commerce. Shoshones, for example, established a lively trade relationship with Crow bands that split from their semisedentary Hidatsa relatives on the upper Missouri in the early eighteenth century and then focused on hunting as they moved westward into the Yellowstone River country. Crows obtained vegetables (especially maize) that Hidatsa and Mandan women cultivated on the upper Missouri, some of which they traded to Shoshones, who in return provided bison meat, obsidian, and various material goods that women crafted. Shoshones also hosted an annual trade rendezvous in the Green River country of what is now southwestern Wyoming that served as a hub of commercial activity for peoples of the Great Basin, Columbia Plateau, Great Plains, and Southwest. At the rendezvous, Indians exchanged horses, produce, and Spanish-manufactured goods from the Southwest, vegetables from the upper Missouri, meat and hides from the Great Plains, fish and shells from the Columbia Plateau, and obsidian as well as roots and nuts from the Great Basin. It appears that Shoshone women participated in such commercial activities, for while men performed elaborate ceremonial trades involving such things as horses, women traded food, garments, and other goods with one another on a more informal basis. Shoshone trade contacts included Plateau peoples such as the Nez Perce, Salish, and Kutenai who inhabited the northern Rockies. Through their commercial relationships with so many different peoples, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones acquired goods and customs that enriched their Basin-Plains culture.33

One of the most significant intercultural developments that contributed to Shoshone ethnogenesis was the eastward migration of the peoples who became known as the Bannocks. Attracted by the opportunities of the developing bison-horse economies that their Numic-speaking relatives adopted, some Paiute speakers left their homelands in the northwestern Great Basin and migrated along the Snake River to its upper reaches, where they often attached themselves to Shoshone-speaking groups. This laid the foundation for the development of the Shoshone-Bannock bands of the upper Snake River. Although these peoples commonly interacted with and sometimes resided with ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones, they became more closely associated with the people who became known as the Northern Shoshones. This intercultural development, therefore, helped to distinguish the “hybrid” Shoshone-Bannock communities from the groups that became known as the Eastern Shoshones.34

Although equestrianism entailed many benefits, horse ownership posed some significant challenges and addressing them affected indigenous lifeways. Maintaining horse herds required steady supplies of water and forage, and especially as Shoshone groups acquired more and more horses, they found that they had to regularly relocate to fresh grazing grounds. It appears that horses significantly influenced group migrations, for, generally speaking, the larger a community and its herds became, the more frequently it had to relocate to accommodate the horses’ needs. Shoshones also had to protect horses from predators such as wolves and bears, the elements, and enemy raiders. The horse, moreover, was a significant addition to grassland ecosystems, for it competed for forage with large game, including the bison herds. By cutting into the forage available to the indigenous animals of the Great Plains, horses effectively reduced the carrying capacity of the grasslands. They also affected bison migration patterns as they grazed out riparian areas and other locales that the herds frequented, forcing bison as well as other wildlife to seek sustenance elsewhere. This, in turn, required Indians to follow their quarry to new areas, where their horses again affected ecosystems. Thus horses demanded a tremendous amount of their owners’ time and energy, in part because of their ecological impact.35

Horses, moreover, simply could not be taken to any given place and be expected to thrive or even survive. While they largely did well on the southern Great Plains, grassland ecosystems to the north proved increasingly inhospitable to the descendants of Spanish Barbs. In fact, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones and other northern Plains peoples found that horses were something of a liability during the winter months. Since they were of little use in the extreme cold and heavy snow that characterized northern Plains winters, Indians typically corralled them in sheltered river valleys so they could feed on cottonwood bark and branches; more than a few could be expected not to make it to the spring thaw. This was the case because the Little Ice Age had created nearly ideal conditions for horses on the southern grasslands, but the greater cold and shorter growing seasons that it brought to the northern Plains proved a detriment to horse owners. Especially north of the Missouri River, winters were downright harsh, as typical winter conditions during the Little Ice Age included several feet of snowfall, strong winds, and frequent below-zero temperatures that created an unforgiving environment for the non-native animals. Thus it was not merely distance and the rate of diffusion that limited the number of horses on the northern Plains during the early eighteenth century; the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones and other peoples also had to learn how to preserve the few horses that reached them.36

Shoshones, however, had the good fortune of introducing horses to diverse landscapes that helped them preserve and expand their herds. Some Numic-speaking groups, for example, hunted and foraged in the valleys and foothills of the Wind and Bighorn rivers during part of a given year, and then wintered west of South Pass in their debías in the valleys of the Green or Bear River. This migration cycle allowed them to utilize resource-rich areas for much of the year while providing horses with quality wintering grounds. In this Great Plains–Rocky Mountain ecological borderland, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones capitalized on milder winters than those that prevailed on the grasslands to the east, mountain valleys that sheltered their herds, and growing seasons that provided sufficient forage for their horses. Although Shoshones who lived farther north, in what are now Montana and Alberta, introduced horses to areas that had long, cold winters that were generally hard on those animals, they found some excellent wintering grounds along the eastern foot of the northern Rockies. The Marias River Valley, for example, was a haven that provided horses with much-needed forage and water as well as protection from the elements during the long winter months. Some ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones wintered further north in the Chinook belt along the eastern foot of the Rockies in what is now Alberta, where drier winds made the winters more hospitable for people and horses alike. Others ventured even further west, wintering deep in the shelter of the mountain valleys.37

It appears that, despite the challenges that horses posed to the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people, equestrianism contributed to population growth and triggered changes in social and political organization. As Isenberg details, there was a correlation between equestrianism and indigenous population growth, as increased supplies of protein-rich food in the form of bison and other game likely stimulated an increase in the Shoshone population over the course of several decades. This, combined with the improved efficiency of hunting practices in the age of equestrianism, probably enhanced their subsistence and military activities alike by enabling Shoshone communities to field more hunters and warriors, and more effective ones at that. Equestrian Shoshone villages tended to be larger than pedestrian-era camps, since Shoshones’ greater ability to relocate as needed, as well as their enhanced capacity to more readily acquire food and other resources, allowed Shoshone groups to regularly consist of hundreds of people. Larger encampments were now possible because women could now more effectively transport the plant matter that they harvested, the material goods that their families accumulated, and animal products from kill sites to camps. And more substantial villages were increasingly vital for defensive purposes, as intertribal conflict over the resources of the grasslands intensified over the course of the eighteenth century. Group sizes certainly varied on a seasonal basis, especially as supplies of food and forage fluctuated, but the equestrian ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones typically lived in larger villages than had their pedestrian predecessors. These units can be most accurately referred to as “food name groups” rather than bands or the like, for they were fluid rather than semipermanent social units. These buffalo-eaters, root-eaters, sheep-eaters, and so forth were groups of family clusters that regularly worked and lived together as they focused on cooperative subsistence systems, but they changed frequently as families joined other communities and individual food name groups themselves shifted to focusing on other subsistence activities.38

The equestrian revolution did enhance leadership roles for men. Leaders called dai’gwhani (talkers), charged with ensuring adequate sustenance for their people, including uncontested access to their debías, exercised increasing influence over Shoshone communities, especially those that focused on bison hunting. These men, who derived their influence from a combination of heredity and merit based on hunting, spiritual, and/or military abilities, arranged group hunts, maintained order within a village, and organized raids as well as defense measures. But their authority was far from absolute. It was more advisory than anything else, as families and bands retained considerable autonomy and they splintered away from larger villages as they wished. And it appears that women exercised considerable informal influence within families and bands, as their many responsibilities required that they have a voice in group decisions, such as migrations and the timing of various subsistence activities. Although it does not appear that military-police societies developed among the Eastern Shoshones, as they did among other Plains peoples, men could earn higher status as warriors, up to that of a war leader who could direct raids, by distinguishing themselves in combat; it appears that such systems of rank among Shoshones were based on merit rather than age or wealth in terms of horses.39

Although it is problematic to conclude that equestrianism diminished the status of women among the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones, it is important to note that the integration of such animals into Shoshone lifeways altered how men gained status and authority, and that those paths to prestige were more visible than those available to women. The horse revolution contributed to the development of a new set of masculine ideals, providing young men with new means of achieving honor and status. During the pedestrian era, one’s social status and political influence derived from some combination of one’s age, wisdom, and accomplishments as a hunter and warrior. Since horses constituted a major form of wealth among equestrian Shoshones, men gained status and influence by accumulating large horse herds. They could do so through raiding and trading, as they commonly took captives in raids that they subsequently exchanged for horses and captured enemy mounts during raids once they acquired horses. In some cases in Native America, it appears that these developments adversely affected women; Pekka Hämäläinen concludes that Comanche women became commodified as men who amassed large horse herds could offer high bride-prices to “buy” the women that they wanted as wives. Moreover, many scholars assert that equestrian bison hunting subjected women to lives of drudge work as part of polygynous living units. While horses likely also gave Shoshone men greater ability to marry the women of their choice, as well as engaging women in more hide working, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people continued to practice matrilocal residence even as women continued to have a say in marriage arrangements. Consequently, men took their wealth and influence into their wives’ households, and within those sometimes polygynous living units, wife hierarchies (usually headed by the first wife) organized labor, parceling out tasks and maintaining an efficient productive relationship among the women. Therefore, the growth of polygyny among the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones may have actually benefited women by effectively reducing the workload of each.40

All of these factors contributed to the emergence of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones as a formidable military power on the northern Great Plains by the early eighteenth century. Archaeological findings of Numic-style material culture indicate that Shoshones established a considerable presence along the western fringes of the northern grasslands before they acquired horses, from approximately the Platte River in the south to the Milk River in the north. But as the people who introduced horses to that region sometime around 1700, they capitalized on the many advantages of horses to expand further into the Great Plains. By about 1730, Shoshones regularly warred with Piegans in the Saskatchewan River Basin, in what is now southern Alberta. Their activities also extended further east than they had during the pedestrian era, as the semisedentary villagers of the upper Missouri River reportedly feared Shoshone raiders well into the eighteenth century.41 As a Mandan or Hidatsa chief informed some French explorers in 1739, Shoshones were “a brave people dreaded of all the other tribes” and “wander about occupying a large extent of territory.” As late as the 1770s, their range reportedly extended into the grasslands-parklands region of what is now southern Saskatchewan.42

The Numic speakers of the northern Great Plains gradually integrated horses into their military culture. Saukamappee’s account of an “infantry-style” battle between Shoshones and Piegans that occurred during the 1730s suggests that the Numic-speaking peoples who inhabited the grasslands of present-day Canada likely had not yet integrated horses into their combat methods, perhaps because they had too few to risk in warfare and therefore used them only for hunting and travel. Indeed, it appears that as Shoshones and other peoples established their horse herds they rode their mounts to and from battlefields but protected them from harm or capture by dismounting and engaging the enemy on foot while a small group watched the picketed animals. Thus although they were not directly used in combat situations at first, horses enabled warriors to expend less energy as they more quickly approached enemy encampments and then more effectively flee their pursuers after an engagement. But Saukamappee observed that the situation changed within a decade. He recalled that by the 1740s “the Snake Indians and their allies had Misstutim (Big Dogs, that is Horses) on which they rode, swift as the Deer, on which they dashed at the Peeagans, and with their stone Pukamoggan knocked them on the head, and they had thus lost several of their best men.” This strange new beast produced fear among Saukamappee’s companions, as he remembered that “this news we did not well comprehend and it alarmed us, for we had no idea of Horses and could not make out what they were.”43

Horses enhanced the military capabilities of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones and contributed to their ethnogenesis by altering their material culture. As Saukamappee’s account indicates, a people’s initial encounter with equestrian enemies was nothing short of traumatic, as one can imagine the confusion and fright that might overtake the targets of a raid when a party of mounted warriors suddenly appeared and then thundered toward them. Horses enabled warriors to travel farther and faster to raid their enemies, expanding opportunities to launch ambushes on unsuspecting rivals. In fact, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people intensified and revolutionized warfare on the northern Great Plains as they integrated horses into their military activities. By all accounts, Numic speakers in what are now Montana and Alberta possessed many horses by the late 1730s, and they became the terror of the grasslands as they expanded the range of their devastating equestrian raids. Riding mounts armored with dressed animal skins and themselves wearing quilted armor (both of which they adopted from equestrian cultures on the southern Great Plains), Shoshones usually targeted small, isolated encampments and descended upon them while swinging their deadly stone-headed war clubs (pukamoggan). It appears that their enemies responded to this by, whenever possible, establishing larger camps that had more warriors available to respond to such raids. Even when their opponents had a rare opportunity to prepare to face them, mounted Shoshones often broke through stationary lines of “infantry” with relative ease because their enemies lacked any real means of countering the speed and power of equestrian warriors. Horses also proved advantageous after a fight ended, as mounted warriors could quickly outdistance anyone who tried to pursue them on foot. The ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones adapted their weaponry to the demands of equestrian warfare by, for example, abandoning large shields in favor of small, round ones that were less cumbersome to use on horseback. They also adapted their bows and lances to mounted warfare by shortening both to make them easier to wield on horseback.44

This powerful new instrument of war also contributed to Eastern Shoshone ethnogenesis by enabling their ancestors to gain a foothold in the captive economy of the Southwest, which enriched Shoshone culture through trade as well as through the integration of captives into Shoshone communities. Though Shoshone warriors often killed enemy warriors during raids, they usually took some of the women and children captive. They adopted some of those captives into their families, usually to replace individuals who died for one reason or another, and many became valued tribal members. Other captives became commodities that Shoshones traded to their Ute and Comanche contacts for horses, Spanish saddles and bridles, and other goods.45 Demand for such captives may have encouraged Shoshone warriors to intensify their raiding activities on the northern Plains. As the Chevalier de la Verendrye, a French explorer who ventured west in pursuit of a route to the “Western Sea,” remarked in his account of a 1742–43 visit to the northern Great Plains, “[The Snakes] are not friendly with any tribe. It is said that in 1741 they had entirely ruined seventeen villages, killed all the men and the old women, made slaves of the young women and sold them on the coast for horses and merchandise.” Indeed, the few historical records from this period indicate that the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones raided neighboring indigenous communities indiscriminately and relentlessly, earning the lasting enmity of their many victims even as they subjected the women of other groups to the persistent threat of violence and captivity.46

The emergence of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people as a formidable military power on the northern Great Plains caused some of their enemies, including the Assiniboines, Crees, and the tribes of the Blackfeet Confederacy, to form a loose alliance. Many of these groups had warred with one another during the late 1600s, but by the 1730s they regularly traded and sometimes conducted joint war expeditions, although they engaged in brief conflicts from time to time.47 The notes of the Chevalier de la Verendrye highlight Shoshone power at or near its peak on the grasslands as well as the impact of the Eastern Shoshones on other communities. Where, exactly, the Chevalier traveled remains unclear, but it appears likely that his party trekked westward through part of what is now South Dakota before turning back near the Black Hills or, perhaps, the Bighorn Mountains. It is also difficult to identify most of the indigenous groups to which he refers, but they had a common enemy that we can identify. They were the Gens du Serpent, or “Snakes”; they were most likely ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones. When the Chevalier encountered the Indians that he called the Gens des Chevaux, he noted that they “were in great distress, nothing but tears and groans, all their villages having been destroyed by the Gens du Serpent and very few having escaped.”48 They agreed to escort the Chevalier to a distant Spanish settlement, but it soon became clear that they instead had vengeance in mind. During their journey westward, the Chevalier’s party met up with other camps, including a village of the Gens de l’Arc, which, according to the Frenchman, was “the only tribe sufficiently brave not to stand in dread of the Gens du Serpent.”49 As a chief informed the Chevalier, “Don’t be surprised if you see so many villages assembled with us. Word has been sent in all directions for them to join us. You are hearing war shouts every day; it is not without intention.” Before long, perhaps two thousand warriors gathered and located what the war leaders reported was the “main” Gens du Serpent village. However, scouts found it deserted and the Indians therefore feared that their enemies had moved to attack the women and children they had left behind at their camps. Much to the Chevalier’s dismay, his indigenous companions hastened back to their villages, where they discovered that their fears for their families had been unfounded. The Shoshone threat, whether real or imagined, loomed large on the northern Plains by the 1740s.50

However, by the time the Chevalier de la Verendrye visited the northern Plains during the 1740s, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones no longer possessed a monopoly on horses. While traveling through what is now South Dakota, the Chevalier had noted that “all the tribes of those countries have a great many horses, asses, and mules.”51 Indeed, not long after Numic speakers introduced horses to the northern grasslands, other peoples—their friends and enemies alike—began to acquire their first mounts and develop their own equestrian cultures. Most obtained their first horses through trade and then augmented their herds through a combination of raiding and trading; propagation through breeding, which required additional knowledge and experience, did not become a factor until decades later. It appears that soon after 1700, Shoshones began to trade some horses to their neighbors in the northern Rockies and Columbia Plateau, such as the Nez Perce, Cayuse, Kutenai, and Salish peoples, as well as to their friendly contacts on the grasslands, such as Crows. Their first enemies to acquire horses were likely Piegans, the southwestern portion of the Blackfeet Confederacy, who probably got their first horses from Plateau peoples just before 1740. Once their herds began to grow, they traded some to the other Blackfeet divisions—the Bloods and Siksikas—who then passed some along to the Assiniboines, Crees, and Gros Ventres by the 1750s. And by the early 1740s, the Mandans and Hidatsas on the upper Missouri River had obtained horses, probably from their Crow contacts; they served as an additional source of mounts for their Assiniboine, Cree, and other trade contacts on the northeastern Plains. Thus by midcentury, horses had diffused throughout the northern Plains.52

Nevertheless, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones maintained a decided advantage over their rivals for a time. Their close ties with Comanches and Utes, as well as the productive Green River trade rendezvous, ensured that they maintained access to the horse trade of the Southwest and that their involvement was more direct than that of their northern Plains neighbors. Indeed, trade, rather than propagation, was the primary source of horses on the northern Plains well into the eighteenth century; traders and explorers noted that the peoples they encountered in the grasslands possessed many horses, mules, and donkeys that bore Spanish brands. And since indigenous groups tended to keep the best animals for themselves, especially as they established their herds, one generally found fewer and lower-quality animals as one moved further away from the point of entry of horses on the northern Plains—the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people. So, even though they lost their monopoly on horses, Numic speakers remained a preeminent indigenous power on the northern Plains well into the second half of the 1700s because of the quantity and quality of their horses and as a result of how effectively Shoshones utilized them in sustenance, commercial, and military activities. But at the same time, their wealth in horses made them a target for their enemies as well as their sometime allies and trade partners who sought to expand their own herds and therefore seized upon opportunities to raid Shoshone camps.53

During the seventeenth century, horses dramatically altered the military landscape of the northern Great Plains, simultaneously revolutionizing warfare methods and giving indigenous cultures additional motivation to raid one another. As historian Colin Calloway succinctly writes, “Raiding for horses became both a cause of war and a way of war.”54 People who possessed an early advantage in horses—such as the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones—preyed upon their vulnerable pedestrian neighbors, taking captives that they often exchanged for more mounts. Peoples who initially had few horses—such as the tribes of the Blackfeet Confederacy—tried to make up ground by raiding those who possessed many. Retaliatory expeditions often followed raids, generating a vicious cycle of warfare. Conflict also ensued when equestrian peoples pursued bison into hunting grounds that their rivals claimed. Horses, moreover, became a key form—if not the primary form—of men’s wealth and status, so raiding for horses as well as captives that could be exchanged for horses also stimulated warfare. Because raiders focused on capturing horses and taking captives, equestrian warfare on the northern Plains typically consisted of small-scale ambushes in which few men lost their lives; on rare occasions, however, war parties did wipe out entire camps. Large-scale engagements reminiscent of the pedestrian-era battles described by Saukamappee became obsolete as mounted raids became the dominant form of military action on the northern Plains. The sheer power of the horse as a tool of subsistence and warfare—which the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones first harnessed and demonstrated on the northern Great Plains—thus inaugurated a new age of warfare on the northern grasslands.55

Over time, though, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones lost their advantages over their rivals as they, too, enjoyed the benefits of the equestrian revolution. In 1754, a party of Hudson Bay Company traders trekked along the Saskatchewan River in search of Blackfeet Indians whom they hoped to persuade to trade at York Factory by following “their horses dung and foot-steps.”56 Once they located the Blackfeet, trader Alexander Hendry observed that they had many “fine tractable animals” and that “the Natives are fine Horsemen & kill Buffalo on them.”57 By this time, the Piegans, the most southwestern Blackfeet group, had accumulated considerable horse herds by raiding their Shoshone enemies and trading with Plateau peoples; and they wintered in the Chinook belt along the eastern foot of the Rockies, which helped their mounts survive the harsh winter months. As Piegans and other rivals of the Shoshones initiated their own horse revolutions, they too enjoyed greater mobility, engaging in intensified bison hunting and equestrian warfare methods even as they expanded the range of their hunting, gathering, trading, and raiding activities. And it appears that the Blackfeet population likewise grew as the transition to equestrian bison-hunting practices made food supplies—especially protein-rich game—more reliable. This growth in numbers, in tandem with more efficient hunting and gathering practices, apparently enabled the groups of the Blackfeet Confederacy to more regularly harass their Shoshone rivals with raids. Strengthened militarily by horses and seeking to capitalize on equestrian hunting methods, the groups of the Blackfeet Confederacy pushed further into the game-rich northwestern Plains during the second half of the eighteenth century. This intensified conflict between the Blackfeet Confederacy and the Eastern Shoshones.58

Indeed, the spread of the equestrian revolution affected the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people by intensifying competition over the bison herds. It appears that bison responded to the intensified hunting pressure that came with the equestrian revolution by deviating from their migration patterns in an effort to avoid certain areas or visit them at different times of the year. And although the depletion of the bison herds did not become a visible problem until the nineteenth century, the development of Plains equestrianism sowed the seeds of the ungulate’s eventual near-extinction. As more and more indigenous cultures acquired horses during the 1700s and more (such as the Blackfeet) moved into the grasslands from peripheral areas or visited the region on a seasonal basis, they collectively applied unprecedented pressure on the bison herds and bison populations began to slowly decline. Contrary to popular myths that cast Native Americans as astute environmental managers, their ancestors sometimes overhunted bison and left part of their kill to waste. Because bison availability tended to be “boom” or “bust,” Indians often killed as many as they could whenever they had the chance, immediately consuming and preserving as much of the kill as possible, although a good deal invariably rotted. As early as the mid-1700s, therefore, Shoshones likely faced periodic subsistence challenges because they were no longer the only equestrian hunters on the northern Great Plains.59

The hold that ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones had on debías they claimed and seasonal hunting grounds they used in the northern Great Plains further weakened as European-introduced firearms arrived on the grasslands in the hands of their enemies. Even before the groups of the Blackfeet Confederacy acquired substantial horse herds, they began to enjoy the advantages of guns. As part of his testimony to trader David Thompson, Saukamappee recalled how, sometime during the 1730s, a band of Piegans had appealed to Crees and Assiniboines for assistance against their equestrian Numic-speaking enemies. Saukamappee and nine other Cree warriors responded to the call, and each carried a gun when they met their Piegan allies. Those firearms played a decisive role in the ensuing fight, as the Crees opened fire and shot several Shoshone warriors and that, combined with the spectacle of those new weapons discharging, produced a rout as the Shoshones fled the battlefield. It appears that the arrival of firearms on the northern Great Plains reinforced the Shoshone affinity for quick, hard-hitting equestrian raids, as Saukamappee noted that they all but avoided large battles between lines of “infantry” after their first encounter with guns. Using their horses to surprise their enemies and then quickly escape, Shoshone war parties minimized the effects of firearms and other weapons, such as steel-headed arrows, bayonets, and “long knives” that their Blackfeet enemies acquired through the fur trade. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Blackfeet and their allies accumulated more and better guns that they used in battle against Shoshones even as their involvement in the fur trade ensured reliable access to ammunition.60

Although the fur-trade guns had some limitations, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones became increasingly disadvantaged as the combination of guns and horses enhanced the military capabilities of their rivals. Eighteenth-century muskets were, for lack of a better term, primitive, as well-practiced users could, at best, reload and fire perhaps four times per minute and the accuracy of such weapons was suspect beyond fifty yards. Thus they might be effective against pedestrian enemies, but those muskets were generally too slow and cumbersome to be effective against mounted raiders. And effectively using muskets required a reliable supply of balls and powder, the availability of which fluctuated because such things as poor weather and periodic wars between the French and English affected trade activity. Because of these limitations, the primary effects of firearms prior to about 1750 was probably more psychological than anything else as the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people encountered them for the first time.61

But during the second half of the 1700s, even as they expanded their horse herds, the Blackfeet and their allies accumulated more and better guns, and they became more adept at using and maintaining those weapons. Their loose alliance with the Crees and Assiniboines proved especially useful in this regard, for the Blackfeet dealt furs and surplus horses to their eastern neighbors in exchange for firearms, ammunition, and other trade goods. At the same time, the Blackfeet obtained some guns and other items directly from fur traders; as Hendry returned to York Factory from Blackfeet country in 1754 he noted that “there are scarce a Gun, Kettle, Hatchet, or Knife amongst us, having traded them with the Archithinue [Blackfeet] Natives.”62 The Seven Years’ War (1754–63), which disrupted English and French fur-trade systems and thereby reduced the flow of guns and ammunition into Blackfeet country, brought Shoshones some respite, but during the 1770s the renewed westward expansion of the fur trade brought unprecedented riches to their rivals. Blackfeet access to guns, ball, and powder grew as the Hudson Bay Company established a series of trading posts along the Saskatchewan River, including Cumberland House (1774) and Hudson House (1778) in Cree and Assiniboine country as well as Buckingham House (1780) in Blackfeet Country. And when a group of independent traders established the first North West Company in 1779 to challenge the Hudson Bay Company, they generated competition that greatly benefited the Blackfeet and other enemies of the Shoshones.63

Meanwhile, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones acquired few guns during the eighteenth century as Spanish policy forbade the trading of firearms to Natives while the Blackfeet strove to prevent guns from reaching Shoshones from the northeast. They may have acquired a few from their Comanche contacts, who traded with the French based on the lower Mississippi, but if so, they had no visible impact on affairs on the northwestern Plains. Still bearing clubs, bows, lances, and other indigenous weapons, Shoshone warriors were at a disadvantage when up against enemies armed with guns. And their hide armor and shields, which stopped enemy arrows, provided little protection against musket balls.64

Ultimately, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones lost their hold on the northwestern Great Plains as the spread of the horse revolution and the growth of the fur trade strengthened their enemies. By forging a deadly style of warfare that harnessed the power of both horses and guns, the Blackfeet and their allies gradually displaced Shoshones from their hunting grounds near the Canadian parklands. The Piegans led the Blackfeet push southward into the Plains and turned the land between the North and South Saskatchewan rivers into a battleground while, further east, Cree and Assiniboine bands pushed from the parklands into the northeastern fringes of the Plains where they, too, engaged in equestrian bison hunting and warred with Shoshones and other peoples. Harassed by mounted raiders who carried guns, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones lost increasing numbers of men in battle even as their enemies captured more women, children, and horses. But they withdrew from the northwestern Plains gradually, as the historical record indicates that they ceded the Red Deer River country before maintaining a presence in the Bow River area by 1780.65

Although this loss of territory was slight, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people faced some environmental, economic, and military challenges. First, they lost access to some key hunting grounds as the Blackfeet pushed into some bison-rich lands. In 1772, Hudson Bay Company trader Matthew Cocking visited the Blackfeet on the northwestern Plains, where he observed that it was a “plentiful Country of provisions, for when the present stock is expended, an Indian need only to mount his Horse, taking his Gun or Bow, & in a short time return with his Horse loaded with meat, supplying his neighbors also.”66 Second, their reversal of fortunes weakened their ability to raid for captives that they could exchange for horses and other trade goods. Their trade with Comanches, Utes, and others likely suffered as a result, compromising their ability to maintain and expand their horse herds. Third, the Blackfeet and their other rivals now conducted increasingly successful raids of their own, taking greater numbers of Shoshone women, children, and horses than ever before. By all accounts, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones had, during the early 1700s, raided others mercilessly and carried off countless captives, but the Blackfeet and their allies now exacted revenge even as they bolstered their populations as well as their economic and productive capacities with the captives that they took.67 During his 1754–55 journey into Blackfeet country, trader Anthony Hendry reported that he “saw many fine Girls who were Captives; & a great many dried scalps with fine long black hair, displayed on poles, & before the Leader’s tent” in one camp.68 Thus by the second half of the eighteenth century the enemies of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones had offset the subsistence and military advantages that horses had afforded and, as a result, the tide of Shoshone expansion into the northern Plains had begun to ebb.

Nevertheless, Numic-speaking peoples maintained a considerable presence on the northwestern Plains and they remained, as Cocking learned in 1772, feared by other Native peoples. As he trekked along the Saskatchewan toward Blackfeet territory, he remarked that the Indian hunters who accompanied his party of fur traders “saw several Horses up the branch of the other side: they are all in general affraid, supposing the horses to belong to the Snake Indians with whom they are always at variance.”69 Cocking made several similar reports during the following weeks, as his indigenous companions seemingly perceived every strange horse and unidentified fire as a sign that their Shoshone enemies were near. Shoshones might have lost their monopoly on horses and they lacked guns, but they remained a formidable threat on the far northern Plains into the 1770s. However, as Cocking also learned during his visit, his Blackfeet contacts frequently raided Shoshone villages, taking many captives and horses in the process.70

As a confluence of environmental and military developments altered the intertribal balance of power on the northern Great Plains, the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones strengthened their ties with other indigenous groups. For decades, the horse trade had enmeshed Numic-speaking peoples in usually amicable relationships with Crow, Salish, Kutenai, Nez Perce, and other peoples who resided along the fringes of the northern Rockies and Plains. As their hold on the far northwestern grasslands slipped in the face of mounting pressure from the Blackfeet and their allies, it appears that the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones strengthened their ties with their long-time trade partners, who likewise suffered from attacks by mounted raiders who carried firearms. While the historical record does not provide abundant evidence of military cooperation between Shoshones and others, it does indicate that they traded regularly and occasionally conducted joint hunting expeditions into the grasslands, where they sought safety from their common enemies in numbers.71 On the other hand, the loose alliance between the Blackfeet, Crees, and Assiniboines began to fragment by the late 1770s. These groups had been united by a powerful common enemy, but the decline of the Shoshone threat had reduced the need for cooperation. Similarly, mutually beneficial trade had brought them together, but changing trade patterns, especially more direct exchanges between the Blackfeet and European fur traders, as well as the fact that Crees and Assiniboines acquired more and more of their horses from the upper Missouri trade center, had weakened that connection as well. Also, it appears that during the second half of the 1700s, fur-bearing animal populations in the Saskatchewan parklands northeast of the Great Plains declined significantly because of over-trapping. That and the allure of equestrian bison hunting contributed to a migration of Cree and Assiniboine groups southward onto the grasslands, where they competed with Blackfeet and others over hunting grounds. The ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones may have experienced less pressure from enemy raiders as these groups occasionally warred with one another.72

The equestrian revolution played a pivotal role in Wind River Shoshone ethnogenesis. The integration of horses into the lifeways of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones fundamentally transformed their relationships with the environments that they inhabited, profoundly affecting their subsistence systems, altering their social organization, and enhancing their military capabilities. In particular, the development of equestrian bison-hunting practices, as well as women’s use of horses in their gathering activities, enabled the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people to more effectively capitalize on the resources of the northern Great Plains and expand their range of activities in that region even as other Numic-speaking communities developed equestrian lifeways elsewhere, such as the Columbia Plateau and Rocky Mountain regions. At the same time, horses provided Shoshone men with new avenues to honor and status while extending the practice of polygyny and increasing the amount of time that women spent processing hides and meats. But there is no evidence to indicate that this paralleled a decline in women’s status. Equestrian Shoshone communities continued to practice matrilocal residence while women still distributed essential foods and goods, so they maintained considerable autonomy and influence. In fact, women in many ways benefited from owning and using horses.

Horses also enhanced the military power of the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshones, especially when they enjoyed a near-monopoly on horses, but the spread of the equestrian revolution later strengthened that of their rivals. The equestrian revolution bolstered Shoshone populations by providing a secure subsistence base and supported the maintenance of larger camps, which enabled sizable war parties to raid their enemies; women’s work within the gendered divisions of labor effectively supported camps and thereby afforded men ample time to engage in military activities when they were not hunting. Capitalizing on the enhanced mobility afforded by horses, Shoshones took countless captives from the camps of their pedestrian enemies, some of whom they adopted while they exchanged others for more horses. But as their enemies—especially Blackfeet, Crees, and Assiniboines—began to also acquire horses, as well as firearms and ammunition through the Canadian fur trade, they experienced their own subsistence and military revolutions that enabled them to challenge Shoshone claims to hunting grounds on the northern Great Plains. The raiding efforts of Shoshone groups, which continued to obtain horses through trade but did not have much, if any, access to guns, suffered even as they became the targets of increasingly effective enemy raids. By 1780, Shoshones had lost access to hunting grounds along the far northern fringes of the Plains, but they remained a threat to their rivals. Thus the ways that horses altered the place of Shoshones and other peoples within ecosystems had implications for intertribal relations.

During the eighteenth century, the initial impact of European colonization—horses—deeply influenced Shoshone interactions with their environments and indigenous neighbors alike. Even though there is no hard evidence that the ancestors of the Eastern Shoshone people encountered any Europeans during that time, the descendants of Spanish Barbs—but one part of the Columbian Exchange—had profoundly transformed the Numic-speaking cultures of the northern Plains, Rockies, and Plateau by changing the ways that they utilized their lands and resources. Further changes loomed on the horizon, for in 1780—after a long history in other parts of the New World—smallpox for the first time visited Shoshones and their neighbors.