Shoshone
indigenous American ethnic group
The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( shoh-SHOH-nee or shə-SHOH-nee), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions:
Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming
Northern Shoshone: Southern Idaho
Western Shoshone: California, Nevada, and Northern Utah
Goshute: western Utah, eastern Nevada
They traditionally speak the Shoshoni language, part of the Numic languages branch of the large Uto-Aztecan language family. The Shoshone were sometimes called the Snake Indians by neighboring tribes and early American explorers.
Their peoples have become members of federally recognized tribes throughout their traditional areas of settlement, often co-located with the Northern Paiute people of the Great Basin.
Etymology
The name "Shoshone" comes from Sosoni, a Shoshone word for high-growing grasses. Some neighboring tribes call the Shoshone "Grass House People," based on their traditional homes made from sosoni. Shoshones call themselves Newe, meaning "People".
Meriwether Lewis recorded the tribe as the "Sosonees or snake Indians" in 1805.
Language
The Shoshoni language is spoken by approximately 1,000 people today. It belongs to the Central Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Speakers are scattered from central Nevada to central Wyoming.
“Shoshone” enters the record as indigenous American ethnic group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shoshone, indigenous and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26774. The Library of Congress control number is sh85122078. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1805.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shoshone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.