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    Shoshone Language and Group Names

    The Shoshone language is part of the Central Numic division of the Uto-Aztecan language family.1 Shoshone people historically referred to themselves as newe or neme, meaning “the people.”2 Prior to obtaining horses, the newe who lived in present-day Utah and southeastern Idaho were called so-so-goi, meaning “people who travel on foot.” They were also called the hukandika, meaning “Seed-Eaters,” reflecting their primary subsistence on seeds, nuts, roots, and plants.3 The term Shoshone was first attested by Lewis and Clark and may derive from sosoni’, a word for grass that newe used to construct distinctive dwellings. Euro–Americans sometimes pejoratively referred to the newe who lived around the Salt Lake as “Diggers” as well as “Snakes,” but these terms were largely replaced by “Shoshone” by the mid-nineteenth century.4 United States officials used the term “Northwestern” to differentiate the Shoshone bands living in northern Utah and southeastern Idaho from groups living in Wyoming (Eastern), northern Idaho (Northern), and Nevada (Western). These geographic terms were included in a series of treaties signed in the 1860s that defined the relationship between the branches of the Shoshone Nation and the United States government. Over time, tribal nations—including the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation—adopted these geographic terms themselves, and scholars typically apply the terms when referring to these groups historically.5

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    Shoshone Language and Group Names, Native Saints, accessed May 28, 2026 https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/native-saints/reference-material/glossary/shoshone-language-and-group-names

      Footnotes

      1. [1]See Wick R. Miller, “Numic Languages,” in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 11, Great Basin, ed. Warren L. d’Azevedo (Smithsonian Institution, 1986), 98–106.

      2. [2]Gregory E. Smoak, Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century (University of California Press, 2006), 16.

      3. [3]Mae Timbimboo Parry, (part 1 of 2) interview by Dan Kane, Rios Pacheco, and Karen Duffy, Sept. 2001, transcript, p. 2, The Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation Tribal Library, available at Utah State University Digital History Collections, libraryusu.access.preservica.com; 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), 25–31.

      4. [4]Smoak, Ghost Dances and Identity, 16; David Hurst Thomas, Lorann S. A. Pendleton, and Stephen C. Cappannari, “Western Shoshone,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 11:279–81; Robert F. Murphy and Yolanda Murphy, “Northern Shoshone and Bannock,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 11:284–85, 305–6; Demitri B. Shimkin, “Eastern Shoshone,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 11:334; Robert F. Murphy and Yolanda Murphy, “Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society,” Anthropological Records 16, no. 7 (1960): 323–25.

      5. [5]Ratified Indian Treaty 325, Box Elder Co., Utah Territory, 30 July 1863, NAID 74859412, General Records of the United States Government, RG 11, National Archives, Washington, DC; Brigham D. Madsen, The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre, vol. 1 of Utah Centennial Series (University of Utah Press, 1985), 203–16; see also Parry, “Northwestern Shoshone,” 25–72.