Native Foods

The Shoshone were experts at securing a living from the land around them, making intense use of available animals and plants and wasting nothing. Their traditional big game foods included buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, and moose, and historical records refer to Chief Pocatello leading his band into Wyoming on buffalo hunts. They took game by many methods, including bow and arrow, clubs, snares, and sagebrush corrals into which larger animals would be driven. They also hunted small game such as rabbits, rock chuck, and ground squirrels, hunted and trapped ducks, geese, grouse, and other fowl, collected eggs in fields and marshes, and caught fish with spears, fishing poles, and baskets. Using digging sticks, willow baskets, and winnowing pans, they gathered bitterroot, wild onions, carrots, asparagus, garlic, cattail stems, potatoes, camas roots, sego lily, and pine nuts. Sunflower seeds, wild rice, and mustard seeds were ground into mush and cakes, and seasonal berries included chokecherries, buffalo berries, currant berries, service berries, goose berries, strawberries, huckleberries, and blueberries. Grass seed was an especially important staple, used much as wheat is used today. They also gathered wild honey in the fall and, in season, peppermint, rose hips, and herbs for teas and medicines. Salt collected from the Great Salt Lake was an important trade item with other tribes. Because each year required preparation for a long, cold winter, successful hunting and gathering could mean the difference between life and death, so meat was cut into strips and dried on racks, while fish and berries were also dried and stored for winter use.

Pocatello, Idaho · United States