Book Review

Canada and the United States

Henry E. Stamm IV provides a classic "tribal history" of a group that heretofore had no book-length treatment devoted to it. The time span ranges from ca. 1350, when climatic changes induced Shoshone-Comanche bands to migrate in a northeasterly direction from their hunting grounds in what is now southwestern Nevada, to the end of the bison-oriented economy by 1900. Along the way, Stamm highlights eastern Shoshone interaction with assorted Native groups and with mountain men who inaugurated a trade in furs. He focuses his lens most intensely at the period between 1872 and 1885 to discern the patterns of daily life during the intensification of the U.S. government's forced assimilation program. Stamm wishes to maintain "the Shoshone perspective" (as if there were only one) throughout, even though he devotes much attention to the series of agents, miners, ranchers, merchants, teachers, and missionaries who came to people the Wind River basin as well. His results are mixed.	1
Large herds of bison drew Native groups to the Wind River basin from all directions: Shoshones came from the southwest; Crows journeyed from the northwest on occasion; Lakota and Cheyenne bands from Dakota Territory to the northeast found the area attractive enough to raid until they were conquered militarily in the early 1880s. Such intertribal competition made the area dangerous to inhabit year round. Washakie, the eastern Shoshone leader who grew to greatest prominence during the mid to late nineteenth century, certainly did not intend to "settle" there; he hoped to maintain access to the critical bison herds and continued an annual hunting cycle. However, permanent residence on what would solidify into a reservation in 1868 was precisely what most Euroamericans intended for the Shoshone and eventually the Arapaho as well.	2
The initial impetus to settle the eastern Shoshone in the Wind River basin stemmed less from a desire to assimilate them than to buffer from raids by the ever-present Lakota new mining towns in the southern part of the region that had grown after the discovery of the Cariso Lode of gold in 1867. The Shoshone felt the full brunt of these raids, which undergirded their desire to remain on the move.	3
Furthermore, agency administrators exploited reservation resources mercilessly, from grazing land to everything ever sent by edict of the Indian Office. Stamm is at his best in meticulously documenting the local "Indian Rings," in which agents colluded with local merchants to defraud the Shoshone of what should have been rightfully theirs. Even agents who had shown some concern for Shoshone welfare later in their lives paid greater loyalty to the interests of their Euroamerican neighbors than to those entrusted to their management. Poorly paid employees helped themselves to food, clothing, and implements from the agency warehouse and freely grazed their stock on reservation land. They grew to view this as their right.	4
Shoshone leaders leveraged their situation as best they could. Indignant that the Indian Office expected them to freight annuity goods from distant distribution points themselves, they refused unless paid wages. Unfortunately, this strategy backfired, and the distribution of annuity goods was delayed until after the stormy months of winter. Washakie, who spearheaded this intransigence, lost face and status because of the failure. Shoshone also enlisted as scouts for the U.S. cavalry against Lakota and Cheyenne raiders responsible for their inability to settle permanently in the Wind River basin. They received wages and revenge for their troubles.	. . .