In 1913, Billings, Montana dentist W.F. "Doc" Allen claimed to have found the last-living Sheepeater living among the Crow Tribe, a 115-year-old woman whom he communicated with in sign language. His book
The Sheepeaters was later considered by later anthropologist Ake Hultkrantz to be almost entirely fabricated, and a source of myths and folklore describing the Tukudika as impoverished pygmies without guns or horses. A similarly fraudulent book, ''Trapper Jim's Fables of Sheepeater Indians in Yellowstone'', was the only book about Natives available in Yellowstone Park gift shops in the early 20th century, although its contents were entirely fictional. Early administrators of Yellowstone described the Sheepeaters as simple in technology and diminutive in stature and intelligence. In contrast, when fur trapper
Osborne Russell encountered a band of Tukudika in what is now Yellowstone in 1834, he found them to be well-clothed, accompanied by pack-dogs, and possessing a quantity of skins for trading: "Here we found a few Snake Indians comprising 6 men, 7 women, and 8 or 10 children who were the only inhabitants of this lonely spot. They were all neatly clothed in dressed deer and Sheep skins of the best quality and all seemed to be perfectly contented and happy. ... Their personal property consisted of one old butcher knife nearly worn to the back, two old, shattered fusees which had long since become useless for want of ammunition, a small stone pot and about thirty dogs on which they carried their skins, clothing, provisions, etc., on their hunting excursions. They were well armed with bows and arrows pointed with obsidian. The bows were beautifully wrought from sheep, buffalo and elk horns, secured with deer and elk sinews, and ornamented with porcupine quills, and generally about three feet long. We obtained a large number of deer, elk and sheep skins from them of the finest quality, and three large, neatly dressed panther skins, in return for awls and axes, kettles, tobacco, ammunition, etc. ... One of them drew a map of the country around us on a white elk skin with a piece of charcoal, after which he explained the direction of the different passes, streams, etc." The Tukudeka are considered to have developed various complex practices to survive the difficult winter conditions of northwestern Wyoming. The Tukudika economy was largely derived from the large numbers of mountain sheep that the Tukudika were expert at hunting, whether with their sheep horn bows, or with corral traps in the shape of a spiral. They also consumed fish caught in the mountain streams using weirs. In contrast to the horse-mounted buffalo-hunting Shoshone, the Tukudika did not rely on horses. Their pedestrian way of life was well-suited for spending summer at high-elevations where migratory animals like bighorn sheep, elk, and deer abounded, and they could also harvest calorie-rich edible plants like white bark pine nuts. The lifestyle meant they weren't limited to plains areas where they needed large numbers of horses or forage to graze the horses. In contrast, horse-mounted Shoshones were much more dependent on bison hunting on the plains, which offered a major source of wealth for trade, but was also a resource that other tribes coveted, leading to conflict through much of the 1800s. The Tukudika were smaller in numbers than the other Shoshone, but judging by Russel's account lived a prosperous life by relying on a variety of food resources. The Sheepeater were potentially subject to misidentification by the 1860s and 1870s, with the Cook-Folsom expedition and the Raynolds expedition describing horse-mounted Bannock-speaking Indians as Sheepeaters. In 1870,
Wind River Indian Reservation agent G.W. Fleming stated that Chief Washakie allowed a band of "Toorooreka" Sheepeaters to share in the annual annuity. This likely represents the period when the Wyoming Tukudika merged with the Washakie band of the Eastern Shoshone to reside on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Later anthropologists Are Hultkrantz and Demetri Shimkin reported that members of the Tukudika formed an enclave within the Trout Creek area near
Fort Washakie. Since Tukudika were aware migratory patterns of deer and elk and bighorn sheep, they likely migrated out of high elevations to spend winter at the mouth of mountain canyons where they spill out to the plains, or in the basins themselves. Some big game wintering areas, such as Sunlight Basin and the upper Wind River Valley, are nearly snow-free in winter. Other recent excavations have suggested that certain snow-free areas within the Wind River Range may have been used by Indians in mid-winter for up to 12,000 years. ==Technology==