Washakie - Early Life

Early Life

Much about Washakie's early life remains unknown, although several family traditions suggest similar origins. Washakie was born in 1798 to his mother Lost Woman, who was a Tussawehee (White Knife) Shoshoni by birth, and his father, Crooked Leg (Paseego), an Umatilla rescued as a boy from slave traders at Wakemap and Celilo in 1786 by Weasel Lungs, a Tussawehee dog soldier (White Knife) Shoshoni medicine man. Washakie's father, Crooked Leg, was adopted into Weasel Lungs' clan. There, Crooked Leg, would become a Tussawehee dog soldier (White Knife) Shoshoni, as he would meet and marry Weasel Lungs' eldest daughter Lost Girl, later Lost Woman. Thus, Washakie's maternal grandfather was Weasel Lungs. His maternal grandmother, Chosro (Bluebird)), was also Tussawehee by birth. Lost Woman's younger sister, Washakie's aunt was Nanawu (Little Striped Squirrel), the mother of Chochoco (Has No Horse), who was therefore a first cousin to Washakie.

Crooked Leg and Lost Woman's child, Washakie's birth name was Pinaquanah ("Smells of Sugar") and he had other names before being called Washakie. When he was a teenager, he changed his name to Shoots the Buffalo Running. He was a high-stakes gambler, playing a game involving shaking small stones inside of a gourd rattle, rather like dice, so his friends renamed him Gourd Rattler.

Smells of Sugar met his first "white men," in 1811. Wilson Hunt's main party of Astorians with the Pacific Fur brigade were travelling down the Boise River from the mouth of the Bruneau River, seven months late for their scheduled arrival at Fort Astoria, when they happened into Crooked Leg's camp on the Boise. They needed horses, which Crooked Leg refused to sell to them; instead reluctantly selling them a few camas roots, dried fish, and four dogs.

Washakie's father was killed in 1824 by members of the Piegan Blackfeet when they raided a Shoshone hunting camp inside the Blackfoot hunting Boundary. Every able-bodied Shoshoni was following and hunting the migrating herds of game, as bison were now scarce in the Ochoco and the rest of the southern Blue Mountains and food was in short supply. There had been a weak truce in the summer of 1820, between Fires Black Gun (Tooite Coon), (also known to white men as Cameahwait and Comeah Wait, brother to Sacajawea), and Piegon Blackfoot chief Ugly Head, but the Shoshoni were hunting high in the Montana Rockies, well north of the southern boundary of the Blackfoot hunting grounds, for any game they could find. A Piegon war party, led by Large Kidney and Four Horns, burst into one of their encampments on the Boulder River, to find Shoshoni head chief Owitze (Twisted Hand), his war chief Red Wolf, and the popular young chief of the Tussawehee White Knife dog soldiers, Po'have (The Horse). Fighting ensued. Washakie, by now in his late teens and riding with the dog soldiers, led by Weahwewa (Wolf Dog), was moving north out of Wyoming country with a weapons shipment of Mexican guns from Comanche chief Shaved Head, and overheard the disturbance. His father, Crooked Leg, was camped a few miles away and Washakie got word to him immediately of the attack, whereupon Crooked Leg arrived on the scene, only to be killed. The hunting ceased and the dog soldiers went on the war trail, backed by Comanche war chief Red Sleeves and his reinforcements. They combed the Boulder, the Yellowstone, and the Musselshell for Blackfoot to kill, and they did kill many. This victory by the Shoshoni led to a council with the Blackfeet tribes, with the Shoshoni once again a proud warrior society. At the council, it was agreed that the Blackfeet tribes would join forces with the Shoshoni to restrict the trappers expanding encroachment into both tribes' hunting grounds.

By the late 19th century Washakie would become head chief of the Eastern Snakes. He was the only Snake warrior to be honored by the United States Government, for leading General Crook's army to defeat the Sioux, after the Custer defeat.

There are differing opinions about the year of his birth. A missionary in 1883 recorded the year of his birth as 1798, and later his tombstone was inscribed with the date 1804. Late in his life he told an agent at the Shoshone Agency that he had met Jim Bridger when he was 16. Interpolating from the age of Bridger when he first went into the wilderness, researchers have determined that Washakie was likely born between 1808 and 1810. During his early childhood, the Blackfeet Indians attacked a combined camp of Flathead and Lemhi people while the latter were on a buffalo hunt near the Three Forks area of Montana (where the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson rivers form the headwaters of the Missouri River). Washakie's father was killed; his mother and at least one sister were able to make their way back to the Lemhis on the Salmon River in Idaho. In the melee of the attack, Washakie was lost and possibly wounded. According to some family traditions, he was found by either a band of Bannock Indians who had also come to hunt in the region, or by a combined Shoshone and Bannock band. He may have become the adopted son of the band leader, but for the next two-and-one-half decades (c. 1815-1840) he learned the traditions and the ways of a warrior that were typical of any Shoshone youth of that period.

Although the name by which he would be widely known has been translated in various ways, it apparently dealt with his tactics in battle. One story describes how Washakie devised a large rattle by placing stones in an inflated and dried balloon of buffalo hide, which he tied on a stick. He carried the device into battle to frighten enemy horses, earning the name "The Rattle" or "Gourd Rattler". Another translation of "Washakie" is "Shoots-on-the-Run."