Current Anthropology Volume 50, Number 6, December 2009 849 Pristine Aborigines or Victims of Progress? The Western Shoshones in the Anthropological Imagination by Richard O. Clemmer In the anthropological literature, the Western Shoshones as presented by Julian Steward loom large as a group of people who adapted as best they could to scarce resources in the high interior desert areas of North America: Utah and Nevada. Steward’s work has become entrenched and enshrined as unassailable, at least from a methodological point of view. I suggest that Steward’s Shoshones are an example of a tradition that has become entrenched in the discipline of anthropology, resulting in its constant replication as a form of particular intellectual authority despite the development of new approaches. Attention is focused on Steward’s actual data and the historical circumstances that produced them. In light of these historical circumstances, it might be more accurate to conceptualize Steward’s Shoshones as “victims of progress” than as a pristine group of hunter-gather-foragers. Examination of three cases of Western Shoshone subsistence along the Humboldt River in 1828–1829, Ruby Valley and vicinity in the 1860s, and the mountains and valleys of south-central Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s supports and illustrates this point. The Western Shoshone Mystique landers and the Trobriand Islanders, the Western Shoshones carry a revered anthropological mystique. In the anthropological literature, the Western Shoshones loom Steward’s work has become entrenched and enshrined as large as a group of people who adapted as best they could to unassailable, at least from a methodological point of view. scarce resources in the high interior desert areas of North Not that there have not been critics and dissenters. The orig- America: Utah and Nevada. Until Lee introduced the !Kung inal dissenters to the wider implications of Steward’s theo- into anthropology (Lee 1968, 1979, 1984), the Western Sho- retical statement focused squarely on the very resources of shones were presented as the quintessential hunter-gather- the Great Basin that Steward downplayed: riparian resources. foragers getting by on scarce resources. The assumption with The view that neither Steward nor Jennings (1957, 1968, which anthropology as a discipline greeted the introduction 1973), who based his concept of the “desert culture” on Stew- of the Western Shoshones into its kit bag of case studies ard’s (1938) work, did not sufficiently take lakeshore resources (Steward 1938, 1955) was that, as with Radcliffe-Brown’s An- into account has long been held by archaeologists Heizer daman Islanders, Malinowski’s Trobriand Islanders, and Ni- (1956, 1966), Napton (1969, 55), Rozaire (1963), and Swan- muendaju’s (1942) Serente, these were “pristine” peoples, un- son (1966), among others (Davis 1966; Rhode 1999, 37). They affected by contact with the outside world until the were later joined by ethnographer Stewart (1980). Other crit- introduction of horses and armed warfare. In fact, Steward ics, particularly Rappaport (1967, 1968) and Crum (1987, (1955) himself certainly gave this impression: his chapter on 1990, 1999, 123), have criticized Steward for portraying West- the Western Shoshones in his highly influential Theory of ern Shoshone culture as primarily “gastric” and have “criti- Culture Change distinctly contrasted the “aboriginal times” of cized Steward and his followers for neglecting environmental the Western Shoshones with the time when their “territory phenomena other than food resources” (Vayda and McCay was occupied by white settlers” (1955, 112), clearly implying 1975, 295). And finally, recent reexamination of Julian Stew- that the previous 12 pages of description (1955, 101–112), ard as an anthropologist and as a major influence in the based on his 1938 monograph did, in fact, present Shoshones academic world (Blackhawk 1999; Clemmer, Myers, and Rud- and their culture in a pristine state. Like the Andaman Is- den 1999; Kerns 2003; Patterson and Lauria-Perricelli 1999; Pinkoski 2008a) certainly compels close attention to the spirit Richard O. Clemmer is Professor and Chair of the Department of of the times and the state of the discipline that to a large Anthropology at the University of Denver (Sturm Hall 146, 2000 earned him his important place in anthropological theory (cf. East Asbury, Denver, Colorado 80208, U.S.A. [[email protected]]). Harris 1968, 644–670). This paper was submitted 3 VII 08 and accepted 6 X 08. However, my focus here is on a different issue. I wish to ᭧ 2009 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2009/5006-0004$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/646607 This content downloaded from 134.121.167.211 on March 15, 2016 15:02:59 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 850 Current Anthropology Volume 50, Number 6, December 2009 refocus attention to Steward’s actual data and the historical the discipline of anthropology that result in the constant rep- circumstances that produced them. This refocus requires at- lication of particular intellectual authorities, almost like the tention to one particular issue: probable availability of and reenactment of rituals or the construction of a myth that access to ecological resources and consequent population lev- reaffirm the discipline’s image of itself and the social structure els within the historical context in which Shoshones and their that maintains it. One of these traditions is that a body of relationships to resources were first observed, that is, between ethnographic data exists that constitutes the foundation of 1828, the year of first systematic intrusion and observations anthropological assumptions and that this body of data can by Europeans, and the early 1860s, the earliest period that be constantly invoked and reinvoked to provide a basis for Steward’s consultants—whom he was interviewing in 1935 subsequent anthropological research, even when new ap- and 1936—could have remembered with any accuracy. Several proaches brought in from other disciplines or developed reexaminations of historical circumstances give reason to within anthropology itself urge resettling of that foundation question the assumption of “aboriginality.” This assumption on firmer ground. Space constraints preclude an exhaustive underlies Steward’s work and is denoted in the title of his review of all of Steward’s data here; however, I would like to groundbreaking ethnography, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Socio- examine Western Shoshone subsistence in three areas and political Groups, and is reinforced in several chapters of his time periods: the Humboldt River in 1826–1829; Ruby Valley heavily influential Theory of Culture Change. In 1987 I sug- and vicinity in the 1860s; and the mountains and valleys of gested that the large numbers of emigrants trooping through south-central Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s, particularly the Western Shoshone country with ox-drawn wagons, mules, Reese River Valley and vicinity. and horses along the Humboldt River road each summer, especially between 1848 and 1860, would have severely com- promised the degree to which resources would have been Newe: The Western Shoshone People available to Western Shoshones. The emigrants poached game animals, shot wild fowl, secured fish, and grazed their animals The Western Shoshones, or the Newe, were historically Uto- wherever they found a bit of grass. In turn, Shoshones selec- Aztekan-speakers who were linguistically related to Utes and tively took a horse or steer whenever they could do so. Despite Paiutes and who made their living by gathering, foraging, occasionally successful retaliation by emigrants, Shoshones hunting, fishing and doing a little farming here and there. seem to have successfully maintained a presence along the They call themselves “Newe,” “Nuwa,” or “Numa,” or a var- Humboldt, although perhaps in diminished numbers. Thus, iation on one of those terms depending on dialect, and are although their use and occupation of this part of their ter- identifiable as “Shoshone” on the basis of cultural and lin- ritory was not prevented, it was certainly altered. In 1999 guistic criteria. Anthropologists categorize them as either Fowler et al. (1999) documented Western Shoshones’ quick “western,” “northern,” or “eastern” not only on the basis of adaptation to the mining economy far to the west, in Death geographical location but also on the basis of shared cultural Valley in the 1860s, by growing crops and selling them to the characteristics. For Eastern Shoshones, home was the Wind miners. Steward made mention neither of the emigrants and River Range and the headwaters of the Green and Wind rivers their possible impacts nor the homesteads and cash-cropping just to the south and west of it. They rode their horses south that his consultants undoubtedly remembered and probably to the Plains to hunt bison in the late summer and early fall talked about. Nor did he mention anything about Death Valley and into the Snake River drainage in the summer to trade Shoshones’ involvement in the mining economy (Fowler et with other Shoshones and with the Nez Perce. Because they al. 1999, 56, 57). were mounted, they had the largest geographical range of any I wish to extend this critical reexamination of Steward’s of the Great Basin groups, but they were constantly on the presentation of the Western Shoshones and to suggest two lookout against Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe who things about the place of the Western Shoshones in the an- clashed with them when they came down from the north to thropological literature. First, if Western Shoshones are to hunt the bison in Wyoming. Among their resources, they have a place in that literature, it might be more accurate to relied heavily on bison as well as on pronghorn antelope, conceptualize them as “victims of progress” (e.g., Bodley mule deer, elk, fish, and rabbits. Their horse-based lifestyle 1990) or perhaps as reluctant participants in it than as a engendered a degree of political and military cohesion that pristine group of hunter-gather-foragers.