The agricultural soil of the county is composed largely of disintegrated lava and volcanic ash, which, when irrigated, is very fertile. The principal waterways are the Portneuf, the Snake, and the Belle Marsh, which are fed by many mountain tributaries.
The county contains 3,179 square miles.
Having now determined in our first chapter the geographical location and early history of Bannock county, and in our second examined the nature of the country and what resources it contains, we will in the third chapter turn our attention to its first inhabitants, and consider the case of our brother, “the noble Indian.”
CHAPTER III.
THE INDIANS.
Some years ago, when life was young and all the world one luring and beckoning field of adventure, the writer of this modest history spent five dollars to hear Dan Beard, Ernest Seton Thompson and others, lecture on “Woodcraft and Indians.” They spoke of the “noble red man,” and pictured a romantic and heroic being of high ideals and chivalrous life, whose adventures were clean and admirable, whose domestic life was happy and blameless. At least one member of the audience went home from those lectures and shed bitter tears of remorse and shame because it was his sad lot to be a cowardly pale-face. We mention the incident because it serves to illustrate the nonsense that is published broadcast for mercenary reasons, by people who really know the truth.
This chapter does not pretend to be a scholarly dissertation on the American Indian, but is rather intended to preserve the first impressions made by the Indians on an interested and uninitiated observer. For the salient and noticeable traits of these people are more likely to excite the comment of a newcomer than they are to live in the hard soil of familiarity.
The Arabs of the Sahara desert, like our own Bannock Indians, wrap themselves closely in camels-hair blankets during the hottest weather, which as everyone knows, is extreme in North Africa. They also wrap their heads in turbans, and explain the custom by saying that it protects them from the scorching rays of the sun. Otherwise their skin would blister and dry up with the reflected heat of the desert. This is probably true, and it is no doubt for some similar reason that the Indians wear blankets all through the summer. It has been said that the Indians use a powder of vegetable or mineral character with which they rub the inside of their blankets, thereby rendering them impervious to heat rays. Certain it is that an Indian, clad in a blanket, is seldom seen to perspire, even in the hottest weather, while his civilized brother drips just as profusely as a white man.
In like manner all strange and seemingly fantastic and heathen customs have their birth in reason, if we can only detect it. The Indian, for instance, paints his face as a protection from the dry and arid western winds, which make some artificial application of grease necessary. Let those who doubt this take a glance at the parched visage of some Arizona rancher.
Some people maintain that the Indian is equal in intelligence to the white man. Common sense tells us that this is not true. No race mentally equal to the Caucasian would remain for centuries in barbarism and turn from civilization even when it is thrust upon them. It is sometimes said that an Indian is a white man’s equal because he can pass the intelligence test of a twelve year old white boy, this modicum of intelligence being scientifically sufficient to rescue a white man from the ranks of the mentally deficient. A man might almost as well be insane as to escape insanity by a hair’s breadth. And so, also, of his intellect.