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, Hzkandika
(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).