It is from near this point the Snakes form into a body prior to their starting point for buffalo; they collect camasse for the journey across the mountains. Their camp is 300 tents. In Spring they scattered from this place for the salmon and horse thieving expeditions.
Buffalo were formerly found on the plains of the upper Snake River, but American Falls was apparently their approximate western limit. Wyeth was at American Falls in August, 1832, and wrote (1899, p. 163):
We found here plenty of Buffaloe sign and the Pawnacks come here to winter often on account of the Buffaloe we now find no buffaloe.
The Wyeth party then turned up the Raft River where they "met a village of the Snakes of about 150 persons having about 75 horses" and farther upstream found "the banks lined with Diggers Camps and Trails but they are shy and can seldom be spoken." On Rock Creek, the party met some 120 Indians who evidently had fresh salmon, and farther on their journey on this stream they found "Diggers," "Sohonees," and "Pawnacks" (ibid., pp. 166-168). A chief and some sub-chiefs were mentioned at one of these camps. Small and scattered camps of Indians were mentioned throughout Wyeth's journeys on the southern tributaries of the Snake River.
Fewer Indians were encountered in the salmon-yielding sections of the Snake River during the winter. Bonneville's party met only footgoing Indians near Salmon Falls in the winter of 1834; the Indians lived in a scattered fashion and groups of no more than three or four grass huts were found (Irving, 1873, p. 300), although large numbers of Indians were seen in the same area during the salmon season (p. 444). Crawford met numbers of Indians along the Oregon Trail in southern Idaho in August, 1842 (Crawford, 1897, pp. 15-17) and in October of the following year Talbot observed of Indians near Shoshone Falls (1931, p. 53):
These Indians speak the same language as the Snakes but are far poorer and are distinguished by the name of Shoshoccos, "Diggers," or "Uprooters." They have very few, and indeed most of them, have no horses....
Near Glenn's Ferry, however, Talbot met a large number of Indians of the "Waptico band of the Shoshonees," who had many horses (ibid., p. 55). Talbot drew the following conclusion from his experience on the Snake River (p. 56):