Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society Part 9

More than any other Shoshone group in Idaho, the Bannock Creek people developed in the immediate post-contact period all the characteristics of the "predatory band," familiar to us from the Oregon Paiute and the Nevada Shoshone. The "predatory band" as ill.u.s.trated among the latter population and among certain Ute and Nevada Shoshone groups, was a response to contact with the whites. The aborigines saw the sources of their subsistence threatened and were forced to defend themselves against the whites. Through trade and hostilities they acquired horses and thereby achieved the increased mobility and ease of communication necessary to a centrally led band organization. Plunder from wagon trains and ranches opened up new sources of wealth to them and made warfare attractive, over and above the needs of self defense. But always the nucleating force behind the bands was warfare and the prestige of certain war leaders.

The war leader of the Bannock Creek Shoshone was Pocatello, a name given him by the whites. Pocatello's band was listed among the "Western Snakes" by Lander in 1860: "Po-ca-ta-ra's band. Goose Creek Mountains, head of Humboldt, Raft Creek, and Mormon settlements horses few" (Lander, 1860, p. 137). Pocatello was also one of the signers of a treaty with Governor Doty at Box Elder on July 30, 1863; this treaty was an aftermath of General Connor's slaughter of the Shoshone on Bear River in January of the same year (Doty, 1865, p. 319). There was very little difficulty with the band after the Bear River battle.

Superintendent Irish wrote in 1865 (1866, p. 311):

There are three bands of Indians known as the northwestern bands of the Shoshonees, commanded by three chiefs, Pocatello, Black Beard, and San Pitch, not under the control of Wash-a-kee; they are very poor and number about fifteen hundred; they range through the Bear River lake, Cache and Malade valleys, and Goose Creek mountains, Idaho Territory.

Superintendent Head's report of 1866, however, indicates a continuing relation between the Indians of southern Idaho and northern Utah and those of Wyoming (Head, 1867, p. 123).

A considerable number of these Indians [those of northern Utah and southern Idaho known as Northwestern Shoshone after the treaty of 1863], including the two chiefs Pokatello and Black Beard, have this season accompanied Washakee to the Wind River valley on his annual buffalo hunt.

In the following year, Head summarized the distribution of mixed groups of Shoshone and Bannock in the region (1868, p. 176).

They inhabit, during about six months in each year, the valleys of the Ogden, Weber, and Bear rivers, in this territory. A considerable portion of their numbers remain there also during the whole year, while others accompany the Eastern Shoshone to the Wind River valley to hunt buffalo. They claim as their country also a portion of southern Idaho, and often visit that region, but game being there scarce and the country mostly barren, their favorite haunts are as before stated.

According to Steward, Pocatello's band was an innovation in Bannock Creek (1938, p. 217):

Apparently there were several independent villages in this district in aboriginal days, but when the people acquired many horses and the white man entered the country they began to consolidate under Pocatello, whose authority was extended over people at Goose Creek to the west and probably at Grouse Creek [Utah].

Actual war parties were led by Pocatello and numbered only ten to twenty men, according to one informant. Hostile activities were conducted especially on the Oregon Trail, which ran through southern Idaho, and his band was responsible also for the attack at Ma.s.sacre Rocks (near the Snake River) and for various raids in northern Utah.

When not on the warpath, the Bannock Creek Shoshone followed a more prosaic round of native subsistence activities. Information on the winter quarters of the Bannock Creek people is uncertain. There were some winter camps on Bannock Creek, and one informant reported that Pocatello also wintered on the Portneuf River between Pocatello and McCammon. Others said that Pocatello wintered at times on the Bear River near the Utah-Idaho line.

Pocatello was not the only chief among the Bannock Creek people. Two others were named Pete and Tom Pocatello, although their relation to Pocatello himself was doubtful. These chiefs had their own followers, who were nonetheless known as Hukandika by informants. Tom Pocatello remained in the general area of Malade City, Idaho, and Washakie, Utah, and wintered on the Bear River.

When they were not engaged in or threatened by hostilities, the Bannock Creek Shoshone split into small camp groups much as they did in pre-white days. At least part of the band went to Glenn's Ferry on the Snake River in the springtime, where they remained throughout the salmon run. Similarly, many went--probably as individual families and camp groups--to Camas Prairie for summer root digging. Others might travel into the Bear River and Bear Lake country, while still others journeyed to Nevada to visit or to be present for the September pine-nut harvests. Those who were mounted even traveled into Wyoming and visited and hunted buffalo with the Eastern Shoshone.

With the previously mentioned Paraguitsi, the Bannock Creek people were the only Idaho Shoshone who depended upon the pine nut for an important part of their winter's provisions. These nuts could be obtained in the Goose Creek and Grouse Creek Mountains in late September. One informant reported that, if the harvest failed, many people went into the mountains west of Wendover and Ibapah, Utah, for the gathering there. A family could gather sufficient pine nuts in the fall, it was claimed, to last it until March.

The general round of migrations of the Bannock Creek people brought them into contact with the Shoshone of Nevada and with the small and scattered Shoshone groups of northern Utah, from whom they are almost indistinguishable. Buffalo hunting and common use of the Bear River region resulted in considerable interaction with the Eastern Shoshone, who also made use of this area in pre-reservation times. There was extensive intermarriage between the Eastern Shoshone and those of Bannock Creek and northern Utah, and one informant reports that their dialects were much alike. This affinity between the two groups finds further doc.u.mentation in the belief of one of Steward's informants that the Bannock Creek people must have come from Wyoming (Steward, 1938, p. 217).

FORT HALL BANNOCK AND SHOSHONE

Above American Falls, the native population consisted of both Shoshone and Bannock Indians who were mounted and seasonally pursued the buffalo. Population aggregations were, in general, considerably larger than in any of the foregoing areas of Idaho. Ogden saw a "Snake" camp of 300 tents, 1,300 people and 3,000 horses on Little Lost River in November, 1827 (Ogden, 1910, p. 364), and Beckwourth claimed that he had met thousands of mounted and hostile Indians at the mouth of the Portneuf River in the spring of 1826 (Beckwourth, 1931, pp. 64-65).

The journal of Warren Angus Ferris contains many references to the population in eastern Idaho in the period 1831-1833. The area evidently was frequently entered by warlike Blackfoot parties and by more peaceful groups of Flathead, Nez Perce, and Pend Oreille trappers and buffalo hunters (cf. Ferris, 1940, pp. 87, 146, 153-155, 185).

Buffalo were still to be found and Ferris encountered large herds on the upper Snake River (ibid., p. 87); Nez Perce and Flathead Indians were seen on the divide between Birch Creek and the Lemhi River en route to hunt buffalo (ibid., p. 146). But the Indians most frequently encountered in the region were Bannock and Shoshone. On the Snake River plains near Three b.u.t.tes Ferris noted (p. 132):

In the evening two hundred Indians pa.s.sed our camp, on their way to the village, which was situated at the lower b.u.t.te. They were Ponacks, as they are generally called by the hunters, or Po-nah-ke as they call themselves. They were generally mounted on poor jaded horses, and were illy clad.

In November, 1832, it was reported that "a village of Snakes and Ponacks amounting to about two hundred lodges on Gordiez [Big Lost]

River" was attacked by a party of Blackfoot (ibid., pp. 185-186). The "Snakes" drove them off, but the "Horn Chief" was killed. The Horn Chief was reported on the Bear River in 1830 (ibid., pp. 71-73). This group may have been the same one mentioned a month later as being in winter camp on the Portneuf River (ibid., p. 188). Another Bannock camp was found in December, 1832, on the Blackfoot River. Ferris wrote (ibid., pp. 189-190):

I visited their village on the 20th and found these miserable wretches to the number of eighty or one hundred families, half-naked, and without lodges, except in one or two instances.

They had formed, however, little huts of sage roots, which were yet so open and ill calculated to shield them from the extreme cold, that I could not conceive how they were able to endure such severe exposure.

Ferris' description does not seem typical of the Plainslike Bannock Indians. There are two possible explanations: these Bannock had been attacked by hostiles and had lost their possessions; or they had recently moved westward from Oregon. The latter possibility cannot be ruled out, for the Bannock and the Northern Paiute were in contact during the salmon season and the Oregon people drifted over to join their colinguists on the upper Snake River until much later in the century.

The presence of the Horn Chief on the Big Lost River in Idaho and the Bear River in Utah bespeaks the fact that the residents of eastern Idaho entered the northern Utah region quite as frequently as did the Shoshone of western Wyoming. Zenas Leonard reported meeting Bannock Indians some four days' travel west of the Green River. Depending on their speed, the trappers may have been in southern Idaho or some part of northern Utah. Leonard wrote of the Bannock (1934, p. 105):

On the fourth day of our Journey we arrived at the huts of some Bawnack Indians. These Indians appear to live very poor and in the most forlorn condition. They generally make but one visit to the buffaloe country during the year, where they remain until they jerk as much meat as their females can lug home on their backs. They then quit the mountains and return to the plains where they subsist on fish and small game the remainder of the year. They keep no horses and are always easy prey for other Indians provided with guns and horses.

It would be difficult to imagine a people without horses traveling across the Continental Divide for buffalo, and it must be a.s.sumed that the near-by herds that then existed were used.

Bonneville met a Bannock winter camp in January, 1833, near the Snake River, in the vicinity of Three b.u.t.tes (Irving, 1850, p. 88). They numbered 120 lodges and were said to be deadly enemies of the Blackfoot, whom they easily overcame when their forces were equal. In the following winter the Bannock camp was at the mouth of the Portneuf River, near the last season's site (Irving, 1837, 2:41). And in August, 1834, Townsend saw two lodges of some twenty "Snakes" who were "returning from the fisheries and traveling towards the buffalo on the 'big river' (Shoshone's) [Snake River]" (Townsend, 1905, p. 245).

Russell's journal provides further description of buffalo hunting on the upper Snake River. He himself hunted buffalo out of the newly established Fort Hall post in 1834 (Russell, 1955, pp. 7-8). On October 1 of that year a village of 60 lodges of "Snakes" was found on Blackfoot River; the chief was "Iron wristbands" or "Pah-da-her-wak-un-dah." On October 20 a camp of 250 "Bonnak" lodges arrived at Fort Hall. Russell met some 332 lodges, of six persons each, hunting buffalo in the vicinity of Birch Creek in October, 1835 (p. 36). Their chief was "Aiken-lo-ruckkup," a brother of the late Horn Chief. The trapper also found 15 lodges of "Snakes" in the same area (p. 37). Twenty-five miles east of the Bannock camp, Russell found a buffalo-hunting camp of 15 "Snake" lodges under "Chief Comb Daughter," or the "Lame Chief" (p. 38). Presumably, Russell's "Snakes" were Shoshone. The buffalo evidently disappeared from the Snake River drainage by 1840, for the last reference to their presence in this region is in January, 1839, when Russell mentions the presence of buffalo bulls on the upper Snake River (p. 93).

Lieutenant John Mullan encountered two "Banax" Indians in December, 1853, on the Jefferson River in Montana. They had crossed the mountains from the Salmon River country in hopes of meeting other Bannock returning from the buffalo hunt. He noted the inroads on their numbers made by smallpox and the Blackfoot and commented (Mullan, 1855, p. 329. "The most of them now inhabit the country near the Salmon River, where, in their solitude and security, they live perfectly contented in spearing the salmon, and living on roots and berries.") Across the divide between Montana and Idaho, in the vicinity of Camas Creek, they met a single Bannock lodge en route to the mountains (p. 333). North of Fort Hall, the party came upon three or four families of "Root Digger Indians" whose dest.i.tute condition was described by Mullan (p. 334).

The Bannock had visited Fort Bridger for purposes of trade over a period of many years and continued the practice after the end of the fur boom. Superintendent Jacob Forney reported that some 500 Bannock under chief "Horn" appeared there in 1859 and claimed a home in the Utah Territory (Forney, 1860a, p. 31). Forney granted them permission to remain in the region claimed by Washakie. A body of Bannock was in the vicinity of Fort Bridger in 1867, but Washakie refused to share the Eastern Shoshone allotment with them. It will be remembered that a part of the Bannock population had been collected on the Boise River prior to this time. Indians denominated as Bannock were evidently to be found in a number of places during this period. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Taylor reported in 1868 (1869, p. 683):

The other tribes in Montana are the Bannock and the Shoshones, ranging about the headwaters of the Yellowstone, and reported to be in a miserable and dest.i.tute condition. These Indians it is believed are parties to a treaty made by Gov. Doty on the 14th of Oct., 1863, at Soda Springs, not proclaimed. As they occupy a part of the country claimed by the Crows, I think it advisable ... to induce them to remove to the Shoshone country, in the valley of the Shoshone (Snake) River.

In the same year Mann a.s.sembled 800 Bannock for a treaty conference, but one-half of this number left the gathering in June, 1868, when the commissioner failed to appear (Mann, 1869, p. 617). The 800 Bannock were gathered by Chief "Taggie" (Tygee), who was also mentioned in the 1869 report of the Fort Hall Agent (Danilson, 1870, p. 730).

Unless the Bannock were an amazingly mobile people, they must have traveled in a number of groups during the late 1860's. Superintendent Sully of Montana wrote in September, 1869 (Sully, 1870, p. 731):

... [the Bannock] are a very small tribe of Indians, not mustering over five hundred souls. They claim the southwestern portion of Montana as their land, containing some of the richest portions of the territory, in which are situated Virginia City, Boseman City, and many other places of note.

However, Superintendent Floyd-Jones of Idaho reported in 1869 (1870, p. 721):

The Bannacks, about six hundred strong, have always claimed this country, and promise that this winter's hunt in the Wind River Mountains shall be their last ...

Groups of Bannock were variously reported in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho during these years, and it is to be a.s.sumed that they sought both buffalo and rations. Governor Campbell of Wyoming wrote in October, 1870, that the Bannock had spent the summer with the Crow Indians (J. A. Campbell, 1871, p. 639) after leaving Wind River. The Bannock were evidently the most difficult to settle of all the Idaho Indians, and their nomadic propensities were restrained only after the conclusion of the Bannock War of 1878. The data that follow were gathered through ethnographic means and continue and summarize the foregoing historical account.

The Bannock population of the Fort Hall plains was undoubtedly resident in that area for a considerable period. Living on the western slope of the Continental Divide, they crossed the mountains frequently to hunt in the buffalo country of the Missouri drainage. In the process they came into contact with tribes of the Plains and borrowed a good deal of culture from them. However, contact with the Paiute of Oregon continued. During the Bannock War of 1878 the Fort Hall insurgents were joined by the rebellious inmates of the Malheur Agency in eastern Oregon. Also, genealogies given by informants indicate that many Northern Paiute were still leaving their Oregon habitat as late as the time of the treaty and thereafter and were joining the Bannock in their more abundant and exciting life of warfare and buffalo hunting. In effect, these migrants became "Bannock" when they began to live with the Bannock. The formation of the Bannock in southeastern Idaho from Oregon Paiute who managed to get horses and were attracted by the buffalo hunt was not a single occurrence at some indefinite time in the past; it was a continuing process that lasted into the reservation period. There is no evidence placing the Bannock in the Fort Hall area before the introduction of the horse. It is doubtful that they predated this time, given the fact that buffalo hunting on horse was one of the main attractions of eastern Idaho.

The relation of the Bannock to neighboring Shoshone groups, denominated by the generic term, "Wihinait," is somewhat problematic and can best be understood from detailed consideration of the two populations. Steward says that "the Fort Hall Bannock and Shoshoni were probably comparatively well amalgamated into a band by 1840"

(Steward, 1938, p. 202), but also notes (p. 10) that "Bannock and Shoshoni, though closely cooperating and living on terms of equality, were politically distinct in that each had its band chief." Our evidence indicates that there was a good deal of social intercourse and intermarriage and cooperation in the buffalo hunt between the two groups, but except when engaged in some joint endeavor each appears to have maintained its autonomy. Although there were organized bands, their lines were not very clear-cut because of their frequent fission (ibid., p. 202):

Even with the advantage of the horse, it was not always expedient for the combined Bannock-Shoshoni band to move as a unit. They frequently split into small subdivisions, each of which travelled independently through Southern Idaho to procure different foods, to trade, and occasionally to carry on warfare.

Despite the presence of many Plains Indian culture elements, the social structure of the Fort Hall people was basically that of the Shoshonean population of the Basin-Plateau. While they grouped into larger units for certain defined purposes, these units functioned only during part of the year. The internal organization of the bands was fluid, amorphous, and shifting.

The question of the const.i.tution of the bands also remains: was there one large Fort Hall Shoshone and Bannock band, were there one Fort Hall Bannock and one Fort Hall Shoshone band, or were both populations split into smaller groups? Both Steward and Hoebel reject the first possibility, and the answer seems to lie somewhere between the second and third. Hoebel names four Bannock bands (1938, p. 412): Cottonwood Salmon Eaters, Deer Eaters, Squirrel Eaters, Plant (?) Eaters. One informant told us also of four food names among the Bannock. These were: Biviadzugarika ("root [?] eaters,") Topihabirika ("root [?]

eaters"), Tohocharika ("deer eaters"), and Yaparika ("yamp eaters").

Only part of the Fort Hall Bannock population bore these names. The names did not refer to band groupings of any type, and their bearers were of various bands. Our informant did not know the origin of this nomenclature. It is possible that the names designated Oregon food areas and were applied to more recent migrants from the Oregon Paiute, but the names do not bear sufficiently close correspondence to those given by Blythe and Stewart to validate this a.s.sumption.

Bannock informants claimed that there was a head chief of all the Bannock, Tahgee, and that subchiefs under him were leaders of smaller groups at certain times of the year. The subchiefs were said to have attended the treaty conference at Fort Bridger with Tahgee. Their names were Patsagumudu Po'a, Kusagai, Totowa, Pagoit, and Tahee.

Tahgee represented the Bannock in their affairs with the whites and was the leader of the buffalo hunt. Otherwise, he seems to have exerted little direct authority over his people, although he had great influence in council. Bannock informants all a.s.serted that people went where they wished when they wished and did not necessarily travel under any form of leadership.

Bannock chieftainship was nonhereditary and was a.s.signed by general agreement to a man noted for wisdom and courage.

Among the Shoshone of the Fort Hall region, leadership was more clearly a function of interaction with the whites. One man was said to have become chief "because he helped the whites." Two chiefs were reported, Aidamo and Aramun; the bands of both roamed through southeastern Idaho and into northern Utah. These Shoshone were called by the Bannock, "Winakwat," or "Wihinait" in Shoshone. The name evidently did not refer to a single band but designated all Shoshone-speaking people of the immediate area. I could find no confirmation of Hoebel's Elk Eaters, Groundhog Eaters, and Minnow Eaters, all of whom were said to live in the area roamed over by the various Fort Hall Shoshone and Bannock groups (Hoebel, 1938, pp.

410-413).

In the Fort Hall area, as in the rest of Idaho, winter habitat supplies the only stable criterion for identifying the several groups or populations. The Bannock customarily wintered on the Snake River bottoms above Idaho Falls and at the mouth of Henry's Fork near Rexburg, Idaho. They also wintered downstream in the vicinity of the modern town of Blackfoot, Idaho; historical sources mention Bannock winter camps at the mouth of the Portneuf River. The Snake River--Henry's Fork sites were favored because of the abundance of the mule-tailed deer, which came into the bottomlands in the winter.

Another source of subsistence in winter was cottontail rabbits, which were caught among the willows in the bottoms with a noose snare or by surrounding them and killing them with the bow and arrow.