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Food Waste: Northwestern Shoshone: Pre-1824

Array ( [0] => HONR Think Tank Spring 2016 [1] => no-show [2] => student exhibit )

Native Americans 

HONRS16group2-Shoshone.png
A band of Northwestern Shoshone

Northwestern Shoshone Native Americans were the first to occupy what is now Cache Valley. They roamed this area for as much as 5,000 years before the first white Mountain Men and Mormon settlers ever set eyes on it. To them it was known as Willow Valley. The Shoshone were nomadic hunters and gatherers, using controlled fire to drive buffalo herds, a main source of meat [1]. 

HONRS16group2-DsBuffalo.jpg
Buffalo in Cache Valley by D Willey
 

While some hunting methods of Native Americans could be considered wasteful (one method is known as the Buffalo Jump, in which entire herds of buffalo were frightened into stampeding over cliffs to their deaths [2]), it is generally understood that they had developed innovative uses for virtually every part of the animal, leaving little to no waste [3].

HONRS16group2-BladderPouch.png
Medicine pouch made from a buffalo bladder

Here are some examples of how individual parts of the buffalo were used [4]:

  • Hide - shoes, clothing, bedding, pouches, tipi covers

  • Brains - tanning hides

  • Horns - cups, spoons, scrapers

  • Bones - tools like needles, awls, ground pegs, digging hoes

  • Stomach - cooking containers

  • Bladder - pouches

  • Scrotum - rattles

  • Tallow - healing wounds, weaning children, mixing paints, sealing food containers

  • Sinew - ropes, cords, attaching arrowheads, bow strings

Anything discarded was recycled into the environment by natural processes, leaving very few traces.

1. Cache Valley Visitors Bureau. (n.d.). The Early History of Cache Valley [Brochure]. Author. Retrieved April 18, 2016, from http://ewb.usu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/INFO-History-of-Cache-Valley.pdf
2. Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains. (2011, March 9). Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/889
3. Parry, M. (n.d.). Chapter Two - The Northwestern Shoshone. Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://historytogo.utah.gov/people/ethnic_cultures/the_history_of_utahs_american_indians/chapter2.html
4. How the Buffalo was Used by the Plains Indians. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://www.webpanda.us/There/uot_uses_of_the_buffalo.htm