SHOSHO'NEAN STOCK. An important group of cognate tribes originally holding most of the territory from the central flocky Mountain region, across the interior basin, to the Sierras and extending on the southeast into the Texas prairies and on the southwest across south Cali fornia to the Pacific. At one time also they held the south bank of the Columbia, but were driven off by the invasion of Shabaptian tribes within the past hundred years. Their principal tribes are the Banak. Comanche, Hopi, Kawia, Mission Indians (chiefly). Piute. Ute, and Shoshoni proper. Their general line of migra tion seems to have been southward between the two great mountain chains, the Comanche alone becoming a prairie tribe by separation from the Shoshoni, while other bands of Piute connection penetrated southern California by displacing the weaker natives. Only the Hopi were sedentary or agricultural, the rest being roving savages de pending for subsistence upon hunting, fishing, or the gathering of roots and seeds. The Ute and
Banak were noted for their fighting temper, but the others as a whole were rather below the war like standard of the eastern tribes. With the exception of the Hopi. whose culture was that of the Pueblos generally, the Shoshonean tribes were characterized by a democratic looseness of organization and lack of elaborate ceremonial. They number now altogether about 16,000. It it now generally held by competent linguistic au thorities that the Shoshonean, Taiman (including Isleta, Jemez, and other Pueblos), Piman, and Nahuatlan are all but branches of one great linguistic stock, which Billiton designates as the Uto-Aztecan. See Plate of AMERICAN INDIANS, under INDIANS.