Dukun-deka

The Dukun-deka were the Tukudeka, the Mountain Sheepeaters of the Shoshone, named for the bighorn sheep they hunted across the high country; duku meant both bighorn ram and meat in Shoshone. Their homeland ran from the Sawtooth Range and upper Salmon River of Idaho into southern Montana and the Yellowstone plateaus of north-western Wyoming. Speaking Central Numic Shoshone, they moved in small fluid bands and intermarried with the Lemhi and other Shoshone.

The first Europeans entered their mountains in 1824. When the trapper Osborne Russell met a band in Yellowstone in 1834 he found neatly dressed people with pack-dogs, obsidian-tipped arrows, horn bows and fine sheep and elk skins ready to trade for axes, kettles and ammunition.