Jason Vilos
Shoshone Game Procurement and Processing Technology
The Great Basin was home to a number of different groups that developed very similar subsistence strategies to cope with the harsh environment that dogged them constantly. These strategies produced very specific technology in their tool kits. These include the technology for hunting and processing Big Game, small game, birds, fish, insects processing technology, as well as methods for preserving and storing processed foods. These resources and the technology that accompanied their use is what I will be exploring in this paper.
Big Game
Large game species were extremely important in the overall subsistence strategy of the Shoshone; both in terms of their large yield and their ability to be preserved and stored for later use. The big game species that were used as food sources in the Salt Lake valley and its surrounding ecosystems were mainly Deer, Elk, Moose, Bighorn Sheep, Pronghorn Antelope, and Bison. Elk, Moose, and Mule Deer were hunted in small two or three man parties with bows and arrows using ambush techniques while bighorn sheep and antelope were driven into brush corrals and killed in large numbers
1. Bison were available after the Shoshone acquired horses from the Ute and Bannock tribesBig Game meat was shared communally and what was not consumed immediately was preserved by drying. The meat was cut into strips and placed on drying racks to facilitate drying. Sometimes the meat was placed in the path of smoke to aid in the drying process, mainly to keep insects off
2. It is important to note however that they were never truly smoked. After drying, the meat could then be stored indefinitely and even rehydrated to produce stews and other meat dishes. It was also routinely pounded into a fine dry meat powder and mixed with tallow to produce a product commonly referred to (by Whites) as pemmican 3. This food was very high in caloric value and became a travel food as well as a long term foodstuff for lean times. It was also stored for use in the winter when resources were at a minimum and weather was dangerous.The Bow and Arrow
Both large and small game were hunted with the bow and arrow. This was also The Shoshone’s preferred weapon of war until muskets and rifles were introduced through trade. Many still retained the bow and arrow for hunting because of its strategic advantage of making less noise and also of being known technology that was less expensive to maintain as trade ties were not required to produce them. The bows were designed so that locally available woods could be used. Favorite woods included chokecherry, serviceberry, and juniper these woods made the best bows but good staves were rather scarce and sometimes were traded for, or at times marginal woods would be used for a short time. There were also bows made from mountain sheep horn with a sinew backing, but these were rare and expensive to acquire and make and wood was the most common material
4.The style of bow made by the Shoshone was well designed for the woods from which they were made, and they took advantage of the natural qualities of these woods
5. Typically these bows would be sinew backed to provide added protection to the surface of the wood that took the most abuse. This backing provided an extra measure of insurance against cracking and allowed less perfect wood to function as a durable bow6. Bowstrings were made of a number of suitable materials. The most common and the most durable were made of two or three ply sinew cordage. A close second was a bow string of dogbane, or milkweed fibers or twisted rawhide.Arrows were made to match the bow and were usually made in sets. Arrow shafts were made from a number of woods such as phragmites, river birch, willow, currant, and wild rose
7. These were all favorites but generally an entire set was all made of the same material. The fletching came from several bird species that were valued as food resources as well as birds of prey. Among those that are documented are, most birds of prey including most varieties of hawks and eagles, magpie, grouse (all varieties including pine and sage) goose, duck and crow. These were held in place with sinew (dried animal tendons) and many times glued with hide glue8.Arrowheads varied with the different use of the arrow but large game were generally taken with stone points made from local tool stone such as chalcedony and obsidian which occurs very close to the area these points are characteristic of the Shoshone and are used to interpret archeological sites and delineate cultural affiliation. The desert side notch and other related small triangular arrowheads are sometimes mistaken for "bird points" but were generally used on large game. Most of the triangular points were notched on the sides making them part of the desert side notch category but there are also unnotched varieties that occur in the general area although they are much less abundant
9. Steel points which were more durable than the stone were traded for as soon as they were available but stone point use continued until very late in the historic period when steel points were not available. Local Indians learned very quickly to use recycled scrap steel from nails and other various paraphernalia that were a by product of White settlement as a medium to produce their own steel heads10.Small Game
There are almost too many small game species to list in this paper. Almost anything that could be readily caught with a snare of some sort could be boiled or dried and ground into pemmican. This included several types of rodents such as packrats or pocket gophers, squirrels and wood rats marmot and various other types of rodents large and small, amphibians, reptiles, although certain snakes were taboo. Birds will be discussed in the next section. These small animals could be taken by one of the various methods of snaring netting or crushing that were developed by the Great Basin Shoshone groups
11. Of these there are four types: net snares, spring snares, noose snares and deadfalls. Insects were also utilized to a large extent and these were mainly grasshoppers, mormon crickets various types of grubs, and insect larvae.Net snares were set on main trails with a small cordage net that was woven to draw up on itself at the end when it was entered by the animal on the run. It was staked to the ground to keep the animal in place until the trapper could dispatch it by clubbing. Spring snares get their name from the bent sapling that held the noose and trigger system together by tension which was touched off when the bait was disturbed.
The noose was usually set up to catch the animal around the neck so that the sprung trap would cause asphyxiation. These could be large and were made according the size of the type of animal being sought. The noose snare is similar although it is simply a noose set along a game trail and secured to a stationary object. When the animal passes through, it gets caught and is entangled and held in place to be bludgeoned by the hunter when he checks his traps.
The dead fall is based on the same principal as the spring snare in that bait and a trigger system are used but instead of a spring pole holding the system in tension , a large rock that is capable of crushing the animal is utilized to hold the trigger system together by compression. It is propped up on one end by the trigger system which is attached to the bait underneath the rock. When the bait is disturbed the trigger is pulled and the entire rock comes down on the prey killing it. All of these methods were utilized to take any number of species of small game and in lean times could become the staple of a Shoshone family. They also became very important to the fur trade because the Shoshone simply adapted their known technology to fur bearing animals
12.Snares triggers could be made from any stick in the field and cordage or twine made from dogbane, milkweed, or nettle was necessary for the noose and net systems or to tie bait on. Sinew, rawhide, leather or gut were not usually used because of the fact that they are an enjoyable snack themselves and they take the focus off of the bait. Plant fiber was used almost exclusively for this type of activity. Deadfalls were used when there was no twine available because their trigger systems don’t require cord
13.Nets were also employed in the hunting of rabbits. These nets were extremely long and a few feet tall and were used in the communal rabbit drives. These nets were almost exclusively made of dogbane and were meticulously and laboriously knotted from hundreds of feet of cordage. They have been found at very early archaeological sites suggesting that they were used not only by Shoshone peoples but also Fremont cultures. Because of their expense in manufacture they were not owned by everyone and ownership usually involved some type of status. The man who owned the net got a bigger share of the rabbit harvest. Rabbits were used extensively by the Shoshone bands in the Salt Lake Valley and due to their prolific breeding they were an easily renewable resource
14.Crickets and Grasshoppers were driven much as the rabbits were in the years that they were prolific. They were scooped up with seed beaters and placed in lidded baskets until they were to be roasted. They were roasted and dried and provided a storable resource that was rich in fats and carbohydrates. Grubs were gathered during the correct season from rotten logs and other places that they inhabit frequently and roasted over hot rocks and eaten raw on the spot as well.
Waterfowl and Fish
Various types of waterfowl were abundant in the Great Basin as it lies underneath an international flyway used by many different species of ducks, geese, cranes and other migratory waterfowl. They come to the Salt Lake Valley and its surrounding area every year on their way south. There are also many species such as mud hen that stay here year round. These waterfowl were exploited in a number of ways including hunting with a bow and arrow and snaring and netting. Their eggs were also a source of food and were gathered from the nests at the appropriate time
15.Fish were caught by a variety of means. They were trapped in small eddies with willow fences called weirs. Weirs could also be made of rocks and sand. The fish could then be speared or netted with small dogbane nets the size of a modern day butterfly net. Fish traps were also made of willow and anchored in a flow of water. Minnows could be caught using nets. Fish were generally filleted and dried for storage. Small fish such as minnows were simply dried whole. When they were to be made into a meal the dried fish could be pounded up and added to a stew or a batch of pemmican or just eaten like jerky
16.Glossary of Terms
Chokecherry: Prunus virginiana, This is a shrub that is plentiful in the great Basin. It was used extensively and served any purpose where a good hard wood was needed, its berries served as food and its bark as medicine. It grows anywhere where it can be partly shaded including oak forest under story and along water routes. It is present at Fort Bueneventura
Currant: Ribes inebrians, Currant was used by the Shoshone for food as well as arrow material. It grows in higher altitudes and can be found in many of the canyons along the Wasatch Front. but is not present at the Fort Bueneventura.
Dogbane: Apocanym canabinum, This is a very important fiber plant that produces a superior fiber in the inner layer of the bark, it is not weakened by moisture and produces very long fibers. As a result it is the easiest of the fiber plants to process and was used extensively throughout North America. This plant is present at Fort Bueneventura and grows in moist soil along the river. There are several patches growing along the path that goes behind the hill along the river.
Fletching: This is the technical term for the feather that guides the arrow in a straight path by producing enough drag to keep the arrow from turning end over end and imparting spin which stabilizes the arrow in flight. Usually three fletchings were used but in a pinch other variations were acceptable.
Hide glue: Hide glue was simply what it sounds like. It is a glue made from rawhide scrapings or sinew scraps. Hoof Glue has been referenced in some material but is not used among Amer-Indian groups and is much more labor intensive to produce than hide glue. The hide or the sinew is simply boiled until the water is gone and the collagen is left in a syrupy consistency when this cooled it would gel and then it could be cut into squares to be dried for later use or could be used fresh. Modern experiments show that hide glue has strength similar to that of super glue and it was used by Europeans almost exclusively for furniture making. Once it is dried it can be completely reversed with a little soaking in water. You can see why bad weather would ruin a good hunting day.
Milkweed: Asclepias cordifolia, This is another very important fiber plant it also produces a very strong fiber in the inner bark layer but is much harder to process due to its sticky milk and the shorter length of the fibers. It is present at Fort Bueneventura and grows along the river or anywhere where there is wet soil. Presently it is far more abundant than dogbane in the Ogden Valley.
Pemmican: a high calorie mixture of dried pounded meat, tallow and nuts and berries. Any number of berries could be used including chokecherry, serviceberry, gooseberry, Hawthorne, Oregon grape, thimble berry rose hips, and pinyon nuts. All the ingredients for pemmican were dried including the meat. Fat from any game species was rendered and the tallow or lard as it is sometimes referred to would keep indefinitely. All of these ingredients were pounded to a fine powder with a stone or ground on a mano and metate and then stored in containers until it was needed.
Phragmites: Phragmites communis, This is a very common plant in the Great Basin and was used for arrows by almost all of the Great Basin groups. Its range extends the length of North America. It grows primarily in wet sandy soils and It is present at Fort Bueneventura. It was also used in snaring as a short tube to serve as a quick noose. Its hollow nature also allowed it to be used as a native cigarette after it was stuffed with tobacco.
Rawhide: This is simply a hide that has been fleshed, dehaired and stretched out to dry. It is soaked before reworking and was used for many household items including horse tack. Any animal with a skin is a potential source for rawhide
River Birch: Betula occidentalis, This is one of the very common plants in the canyons of the Wasatch Front. It is plentiful in almost every accessible canyon along the Wasatch Front and displaces willow at higher altitudes. It loves water and is present along the River at Fort Bueneventura.
Serviceberry: Amelanchier utahensis, Serviceberry was a very important food plant as well as a source for bow wood and wood for many of the everyday activities carried out by the Shoshone including a favorite for digging sticks. It is present right next to the fort structure along the north edge of the clearing at Fort Bueneventura.
Sinew: Many folks incorrectly label this material gut, or rawhide. While having some of the same visual qualities of gut or rawhide, it is quite a different material and has some extraordinary physical qualities. Sinew is tendon material that has been dried and then pulled apart into fine threads these are used in their natural state and are only twisted together for special purposes or when an extra long length is required. The best Sinew comes off of the animals back. It lies in a thin sheet under the fat on each side of the animal’s backbone. This is removed in two pieces, one on each side of the back once dried it can be vigorously worked and flexed until the fibers begin to pull apart these can then be separated from the main piece and used as is for thread for sewing or wetted briefly in the mouth for hafting arrow heads or tying feathers on the shaft. Lesser quality sinew can be obtained from all four legs of an animal These aren’t nearly as long and yield a little shorter fibers. They are nevertheless very good for backing a bow and when back sinew cannot be obtained these will serve the same purpose.
Wild Rose: Rosa woodsii, a very abundant plant material that was used for food as well as weaponry. It was a favorite arrow wood and its rose hips were collected at appropriate times for food. This is also one of the more abundant plants at Fort Bueneventura It grows all over the forrest floor and along the river.
Willow: Salix exiguia, This is one of the most important plants in the great basin and it was used extensively for everything from baskets to fishwiers snares and arrows. It is also found extensively along the Wasatch Front and is plentiful at the fort along the river.
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