Copied from “Differential Leadership Patters in Early Twentieth-Century Great Basin Indian Societies” by Richard O. Clemmer, published in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Vol 11, pp 35-49 (1985)

Chieftaincy never became strongly developed among Western Shoshones. Only four chiefs are mentioned with any consistency in reports of Indian agents during the mid-nineteenth century: Sho-kub, Buck, Te- Moke, and Tu-tu-wa. Sho-kub and his successor. Buck, appear to have been leaders of the White Knife Shoshone. They probably were a mounted band that originated along the Humboldt River in the 1860s and 1870s and combined a transhumant lifestyle with occasional alliances with more easterly groups variously known as “Weber Utes” or “Goshutes.” Both in actuality merely were Shoshones who spoke a different dialect from those of Nevada Shoshones. The White Knives appear to have ended up in three different communities by about 1873—Carlin Farms, Battle Mountain, and Elko—and had abandoned band integrity by that time. The majority probably were relocated to Duck Valley between 1878 and 1879.