Only three crimes were committed by Indians during the year. Two arrests were made for drunkenness.
The most prevalent diseases among the Bannock Indians are tuberculosis and trachoma.
There are no longer any soldiers on the reservation, but a patrol of Indian police guards the public safety. These men are splendid types of their race. The delight of their lives is to arrest a white man.
There is an atmosphere of contentment on the reservation and a goodwill between the Indians and government agents employed there that is a credit alike to red men and white. While most of the full-blooded bucks on the reservation wear thick braids of hair, most of them appear to be clean shaven. Yet they seldom, if ever, use a razor. When their beards begin to come in, they pluck out the hairs, thereby solving the barber problem for all time.
In the government school, too, the air is one of wholesome contentment. No more cheering sight could be wished for than that of the Indian boys and girls chatting cheerily as they eat their bountiful dinner in the large, well-lighted, dining room of the government school. It is a pleasure to acknowledge here the unfailing and uniform courtesy the writer has always experienced on his visits to Fort Hall.
CHAPTER VI.
The Nez Perce Indian War.
In the days when Bannock was a part of Oneida county, the Nez Perce Indians went on the war path. The trouble started in Oregon and ended a thousand miles away at Bear Paw, Montana. Several accounts of this outbreak have been published, some of them going into much detail, but no one, to our knowledge, has told the story of the rapid flight of a band of Chief Joseph’s followers across Oneida county. To fill the gap and because the history of Bannock county up to 1889 is identical with that of the county of which she formed a part, this chapter is written.
The Nez Perce war, like so many of the early troubles between red men and white, was due to a dispute caused by a treaty.
The first Indian treaty in Idaho was executed between Governor Stevens, of Washington Territory, who was also ex-officio superintendent of Indian affairs, and the Nez Perce Indians, June 1, 1855. Up to this time there had been no serious trouble with the Indians in this part of the northwest, with the exception of the Whitman massacre in 1847, when the Cayuse Indians killed Dr. Whitman and several other settlers. The Nez Perce, however, showing signs of uneasiness at the increasing number of whites and the large tracts of land they were appropriating, Governor Stevens thought it wise to have an understanding with them. In brief, the treaty set apart the Nez Perce reservation, allowing to the Indians certain annual payments and providing for the establishment of an agency and Indian schools, in return for which the Indians ceded to the United States their claim to other lands. One independent, sagacious and brave Nez Perce chief, named Joseph, refused to sign this treaty, and with his adherents, continued to roam the country as before, untramelled by reservation limits or the provisions of treaties.