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    Shoshone Customary Marriages

    Shoshone customary marriages were an integral part of Shoshone society and were essential for household economic productivity as well as the forging and maintaining of kinship ties. Men and women brought complementary skills to marriages—including hunting and seed gathering—which made the partners “substantially equal.”1 According to Northwestern Shoshone tribal historian Mae Timbimboo Parry, “nearly all” Shoshone marriages were arranged, wherein the parents of a daughter identified a suitable mate for her, sometimes when she was a child. Gifts were often exchanged between the families of the husband and the wife. Female relatives would offer marital counsel to couples, and the marriage union would often be symbolized by the knotting together of locks of the bride’s and groom’s hair.2

    Some Shoshone customary marriages, however, were not arranged in advance, but were consummated when a couple courted and formed a household together. These customary marriages were usually solidified when a child was born.3 While males usually did not enter into marriage relationships until late teens or early twenties, when they had developed sufficient hunting skills to support a family, females were seen as eligible for marriage after puberty.4 While Shoshone spent most of their adult lives married, separations for incompatibility and infidelity were common, with one party removing his or her belongings from the household to mark the divorce. Quick marriage to a new partner was prevalent.5

    When Shoshone people began joining the church in the 1870s and 1880s, they continued to practice customary forms of marriage. Although some white church members expressed discomfort over how these practices diverged from Euro-American cultural norms, in 1892 church leaders determined that “it [would] be best at the present time to have them continue to marry Indian style.” Even as Shoshone Latter-day Saints increasingly solemnized their marriages civilly and ecclesiastically, Euro-American church leaders continued this culturally sensitive approach to marriage well into the twentieth century.6

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    Shoshone Customary Marriages, Native Saints, accessed May 28, 2026 https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/native-saints/reference-material/glossary/shoshone-customary-marriages

      Footnotes

      1. [1]Julian H. Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 120 (Government Printing Office, 1938), 231, 239–40, 242, 245–46.

      2. [2]Mae Timbimboo Parry, “The Northwestern Shoshone,” in A History of Utah’s American Indians, ed. Forrest S. Cuch (Utah State Division of Indian Affairs; Utah State Division of History, 2003), 31–32; Seymour B. Young to Lorenzo Snow and the Council of the Twelve Apostles, ca. July 1889, Wilford Woodruff Stake Correspondence, 1887–98, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City (Church History Library hereafter cited as CHL); Robert H. Lowie, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 2, part II, The Northern Shoshone (Order of the Trustees, 1909), 210; Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, 213; Judith Shapiro, “Kinship,” in Handbook of American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 11, Great Basin, ed. Warren L. d’Azevedo (Smithsonian Institution, 1986), 624.

      3. [3]Abraham H. Cannon, Journal, 24 Jan. 1892, typescript, CHL; Lowie, Northern Shoshone, 210; Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, 213–14; Shapiro, “Kinship,” 624.

      4. [4]Young to Snow and the Council of the Twelve Apostles, ca. July 1889; Lowie, Northern Shoshone, 210; John W. Heaton, The Shoshone-Bannocks: Culture and Commerce at Fort Hall, 1870–1940 (University Press of Kansas, 2005), 83; Phoebe Zundel Ward, interview by Charles Dibble, 1 Aug. 1945, transcript, p. 1, CHL.

      5. [5]Cannon, Journal, 24 Jan. 1892, typescript, CHL; Lowie, Northern Shoshone, 210; Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, 216, 239; Shapiro, “Kinship,” 624–25. Polygyny was known among Shoshone people, when a man could sustain multiple families through his hunting skills. Rarer still was polyandry, when a woman could sustain multiple husbands through her gathering prowess. (Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, 215, 240.)

      6. [6]Cannon, Journal, 24 Jan. 1892; Washakie Branch, part 2, image 130, Record of Members Collection, 1836–1970, CHL; F. A. Gross to Mary Pearse Owen, 7 Jan. 1936, Legal Department Subject Files, 1912–51, CHL; biographies of Henry Woonsook, Rhoda Elnora Moemberg Woonsook, Moses Neaman, and Emmeline Pabawena Neaman; Fullmer Allred, interview by Martin E. Seneca, 4 Aug. 1967, Doris Duke Oral History Collection, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.