Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/154

* SKOKTHOTJSE. 120 SHOTGUN. the vivid fidelity of its liistorical portraiture. It is a sort of Aiiglo-Catliolic tract -written in a beautiful style. It was succeeded by The Little Schoolmaster Mark, u Spiritual Romance (1883- 84) : tiir Perciral, a .S'/on/ of the Past and the Present (188G); A Teacher of the Yiolin and Other Talcs (18SS1 ; The Cniintess Eve (1888) ; and Blanche, Lady Falaise (1891). SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS. See Sight, De- FECT.S OF. SHOSHO'NEAN STOCK. An important group of cognate tribes originally holding most of the territory from the central Rocky 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 oft' by the invasion of Shahaptian 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 Shosbonean tribes were characterized by a democratic looseness of organization and lack of elaborate ceremonial. They number now altogether about 16,000. It is now generally held by competent linguistic au- thorities that the Shosbonean, Tanoan (including Isleta, .Temez. and other Pueblos). Piman, and Nahuatlan are all but branches of one great linguistic stock, which Brinton designates as the Uto-Aztecan. See Plate of American Indians, under Indians. SHOSHONE (sho-sho'ne) FALLS. A mag- nificent cataract of the Snake River (q.v.), in .southern Idaho, exceeded in grandeur, in the United States, only by the Niagara and the falls in the Yosemite Valley (Map: Idaho, B 4). After flowing through a canon 800 feet deep the river, here nearly 1000 feet wide, first falls .30 feet through several rocky channels, and then in a single sheet makes a precipitous plunge of 190 feet into a deep and dark-green lake at the bot- tom of a gorge over 1000 feet deep. The falls are formed by a ridge of hard rock uncovered by the wearing away of the superimposed lava beds. The height exceeds that of Niagara, and during the spring floods the volume does not de- scend far short of that of the more celebrated fall. SHOSHONI, shi'i-sh(Vne (probably from Shishinomts. snake, the name given them by the Cheyenne). The tribe, calling themselves simply Numa, 'people,' from which the Shosbonean stock (q.v.) takes its name, formerly holding the mountain country of western Wyoming and the adjacent portions of Colorado, Idaho. Utah, and northeastern Nevada. In common with their neighbors, the Banak and Piute, they have fre- quently been known under the collective term of Snake Indians, a name which seems to have its origin in a misapprebension of the tribal sign in the sign language, viz. a waving outward mo- tion of the index finger. Although commonly in- terpreted as "snake," this sign is said by some good authorities to have been originally intended to indicate a peculiar style of brush-woven lodge formerlv used by the Shoshoni. They were di- vided into several bands with very little cohesion among themselves. The eastern bands had horses and sometimes hunted the buft'alo, but usually were kept close to the mountains by their fear of the more warlike Plains tribes. The more western bands depended chiefly upon camas and other roots, seeds, nuts, rabl>its, and other small game. None of them were agricultural. Their dwellings varied from the skin tipi in the east to the merest brush windbreak in the west. There was no head chief and very little show of authority of any kind. Pbysicallv they are short- er and rather more plump than the people of the Plains tribes. At the beginning of the present cen- tury they numbered about 2300, viz. Banak and Shoshoni of Fort Hall Agency. Idaho, 1400; Shoshoni and Sheepeater (a subtribe). Lemhi Agency, Idaho, 400 ; Western Shoshoni Agency, Nevada, 22.5, besides others unattached; Shoshoni Agency, Wyoming, 800. SHOT. See Ammunitton; Projectiles. SHOTGUN. A term employed to denote a, weapon used for sporting purposes in contra- distinction to the military rifle, which is dis- cussed xmder Sm.ll Arms" (q.v.), where the his- toric development of firearms will be found treated. The flint-lock gun was used for sport- ing purposes well into the nineteenth centur.v, and it was not until after many experiments and failures that percussion caps replaced the flints and priming. It is to a Frenchman, M. Le- faucheux, that the world owes the sporting breech- loader, and although it had but slight resem- blance to its successor of to-day, it nevertheless was the pioneer of the principle which is now practically universal. The original Lefaucheux breech-loader made its appearance in the year 183(5. It consisted of a pair of barrels open at the breech, working on a hinge, with a strong- based cartridge containing its own means of ignition. The gun had a lever lying under and parallel to the barrels when the gun was closed, so that to load the weapon it was necessary to place the hammers at half-cock, move the lever horizontally to the right, and thus liberate the barrels, which would then be raised at the breech end, and lowered at the muzzle; the cartridge was inserted in the breech, and the gun closed by moving the lever back to its original position. The cartridge was exploded by the falling of the hammer on the head of a brass pin inserted through the upper part of the cartridge case, upon which the point of the pin was driven into the percussion cap, and the explosion followed. There were so many faults in the system of pin fire that it was early abandoned in favor of the central-fire system. The first important improve- ment on the Lefaucheux weapon was the inven- tion of an Enelish gunmaker who strengthened the breech action, and devised a more perfect method of securing the barrels to the breech