THE SHOSHONE OF BANNOCK CREEK AND NORTHERN UTAH
There is little historic information on the specific area of Bannock Creek, Idaho. Almost all references to those Shoshone who were later found to have ranged through the area during part of the year is under the heading of Pocatello's band. This band was a hostile group under Chief Pocatello that raided white settlers and emigrants in the late 1850's and early 1860's. Pocatello's followers were mentioned along many points on the Oregon Trail through southern Idaho and were just as frequently reported in Box Elder and Cache counties in northern Utah.
The Fort Hall Indian Reservation is today effectively divided into two parts by the Portneuf River and the city of Pocatello. Most of the population, including the descendents of the Bannock and of the Lemhi, Fort Hall, Boise-Weiser, and Snake River Shoshone, live on the larger and more fertile northeastern section. On the southwestern half live many Shoshone Indians from northern Utah and from the area of Bannock Creek, which runs through this part of the reservation. The two populations mix to only a limited degree; each holds its own Sun Dance, and the people of the northern part of the reservation feel a true difference between themselves and those of the southern half. This separateness evidently goes back to pre-reservation times. The Bannock Creek Shoshone did not merge or interact very closely with the Shoshone of Fort Hall, and Bannock informants claim that they never had much to do with the latter.
The Bannock Creek Shoshone, as they are often called today, have been assigned a number of names. The most common, and the one most frequently used, is Hukandika or, as Hoebel transcribes it, H
kandika (Hoebel, 1938, p. 410). Steward also reported this name for the Bannock Creek people, but since the Shoshone of Promontory Point were also so designated, Steward uses the alternate food name of Kumuduka, or "jackrabbit eaters," for the residents of Bannock Creek (Steward, 1938, p. 217). Other names are Yahandika (also applied to the salmon-fishing population of the middle Snake River), Yambarika ("yamp-root eaters"), and Sonivedika ("wheat eaters"). This last term is, of course, post-white and illustrates the adaptability of these names. Hukandika, or variants thereof, were reported in earlier times, although as a group living in northern Utah. Dunn wrote of the "Ho-kan-di-ka" of the Salt Lake Valley and Bear River (Dunn, 1886, p. 277), and Lander reported the "Ho-kanti'-kara, or Diggers on Salt Lake, Utah" (Wheeler, 1875, p. 409). For purposes of convenience, we shall refer to these Indians in this report as Bannock Creek Shoshone, although the range of their activities extended to the south well beyond this valley and into Utah.
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 illustrated 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 Massacre 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 documentation in the belief of one of Steward's informants that the Bannock Creek people must have come from Wyoming (Steward, 1938, p. 217).