The Song Repertoire of Four Shoshone Women: A Reflection of Cultural Movements and Sex Roles

Abstract

Songs express a particular time, place, and culture. The song repertoires of four Wind River Shoshone women, ages 23, 43, 53, and 71, personally document the ebb and flow of religious and social movements as well as the changing musical role of women within these contexts. A comparison of each woman's background--her life experience, education, religious beliefs and values, traditional Shoshone beliefs and practices, and notions about music--elucidates the unique and shared song genres of each repertoire. Wind River Shoshones, once a nomadic Northern Plains group, today share their reservation in west-central Wyoming with the Northern Arapahoes. Originating in the Great Basin, they moved onto the Plains by the 16th century. After acquiring the horse in the early 18th century, they quickly assimilated Plains culture patterns. Livelihood and status that derived from hunting and intertribal warfare fostered a male-oriented society. Plains life bloomed briefly, coming to an abrupt end with the decimation of the bison and with Shoshone confinement to the reservation in the late 19th century. Today over two thousand Shoshones earn livings through ranching, farming, land leasing, and tribal royalties from gas and oil development. My work with the four Shoshone women grew out of an earlier study of Wind River Shoshone music conducted during the summers of 1977 and 1978. Although the initial study of Shoshone ceremonial music led to interviews with male singers who perform this repertoire, I also became acquainted with women who were active singers. During the process of completing my work on ceremonial music I realized that women were conspicuously absent in my readings on North American Indian music. Consequently, I began a study of the music and musical role of the four women presented in this paper.1