CHIEF WASHAKIE/SHOSHONI BUFFULO HUNT

Trails in and out of the Bighorn Basin continued to be used primarily by Indians following the end of the American fur trade in the 1840s, until Bridger blazed his trail in 1864. From that date through the reservation period of the late 1860s and 1870s and prior to white settlement in the basin, the principal trail users continued to be Indians when they departed the reservations for their fall buffalo hunt. The Shoshoni were allowed to make a seasonal bison hunt after settling on the Wind River Reservation in 1868. As late as 1874, and possibly for a few more years, the Shoshoni traveled to the Bighorn Basin to hunt. James Patten, government teacher on the reservation, accompanied Chief Washakie and the entire (1,800) Shoshoni tribe in October 1874. From Wind River they crossed over the Owl Creek Mountains into the southwestern portion of the basin. According to Patten, they found bison "herds on the Gooseberry about forty miles from its mouth," or west of the Bighorn River, where they killed "one hundred and twenty-five buffalo." At this juncture, the tribe migrated north to the Shoshone River, now using part of Bridger's route laid out 10 years before. "[T]he trail was taken straight across country, crossing the Greybull about where the town of Otto now stands. Thence straight on to the Stinking Water [Shoshone River] . . . This we struck at the old Bridger Crossing, and followed down its banks to its mouth, and made camp among those grand cotton trees on the Big Horn River." Thus in the end, Indian trails first used by American trappers, traders, and emigrants had evolved full circle, the tribes had come to use improved roads pioneered long ago by their forefathers.