People of the Wind River: The Eastern Shoshones 1825-1900 (review)

People of the Wind River: The Eastern Shoshones 1825–1900. By Henry E. Stamm IV. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. 272 pp., 12 b&w illustrations, 5 maps, 2 charts, 2 tables. $27.90 cloth.)

The University of Oklahoma Press announcement of this book as “the first book-length history of the Eastern Shoshones” whose descendants continue to live on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming is not quite accurate. The University of Oklahoma Press published The Shoshones: Sentinels of the Rockies, by Virginia C. Trenholm and Maurine Carley, in 1964. That book had a different perspective and availed itself of sources different from those used in this one, but it certainly contained much historical information on the group that came to occupy the Wind River Reservation in the period from 1870 to the present.

The main virtue of this volume is that it brings together published as well as unpublished material from several archives to reveal much about interactions between early settlers and government agents. The major addition to our knowledge of these people includes correspondence and reports from the early 1860s, when the Shoshone were still prosperous and made their peace treaty and secured a reservation, to about 1880, when they became destitute. By 1885 the Shoshone and Arapaho literally were starving and increasingly were forced to give up much of their reservation in order to survive. The Arapaho, who had been placed on the Shoshone Reservation illegally in 1878, have been treated elsewhere (Fowler 1982; Trenholm 1970).

Stamm underscores the failure of the federal government during this entire period to furnish supplies to the Shoshone and to live up to treaty obligations. As a result, several well-intentioned early agents, such as Irwin and Patten, incurred the ire of the Shoshone, who had to take advantage of any food resource available to them. As the supply of wild game dwindled, so did their security. At the same time, a “sweetheart” symbiotic economic relationship existed between government agents and local settlers, who often did work for the Wind River or Shoshone Agency or supplied food and other necessities. The agency was the first market for the sale of commodities in a remote and sparsely settled region located more than 100 miles from the nearest railroad. Thus local settlers benefited enormously from the reservation, and most of the leading citizens of Lander got their starts as purveyors to the agency or through the illegal use of reservation grazing lands. Their greed knew no bounds. Attempts by Indians to farm were bound to fail, as there were no oxen to break the ground and little irrigation, the latter a necessity for a successful crop. Large stockgrowers increasingly used reservation land without paying grazing fees or rent. By 1887, as elsewhere, the Dawes Act had spelled the end of communalism, which might have created a viable farming and ranching economy had steps been taken to create a Shoshone agricultural cooperative. But the highly individualistic capitalism of the expanding Euroamerican frontier of that era prevailed, along with misguided attempts, as elsewhere, to Christianize and to civilize the natives. It is ironic that the official missionary, Episcopalian John Roberts, had far more success organizing white congregations than native. Despite being Arapaho, Rev. Sherman Coolidge (who was taken captive and raised by whites) also had mixed success among the Arapaho during this period. As Stamm points out, with the death of Arapaho chiefs in the 1890s and the Shoshone chief Washakie in 1900, the group of ethnically mixed Shoshone who had adopted white economic strategies gained control of tribal politics and supported the cession of two-thirds of the reservation in 1904. More research needs to be done on this subject, for the murder of one of their leaders, George Terry, indicates a depth of division among the Shoshone over his leadership.

Especially rich are Stamm’s data for the period between 1868 and 1885, which provide sufficient evidence for why...