Intermountain Histories

1878 Bannock War and Chief Buffalo Horn

2020-03-20T00:38:31+00:00

By rebelling against the United States military, Chief Buffalo Horn took initiative in improving the livelihood of the Bannocks after their relocation to the Fort Hall Reservation. Although his death did not immediately end the war, the Bannocks eventually returned to the reservation, forced to deal with confinement and limited resources.

The first Bannock War against the United States military occurred in 1878. With close ties to the Shoshones, groups of Bannocks and Paiutes joined together to oppose confinement at Fort Hall in southern Idaho. Reasons for action included limited agricultural opportunities, lack of promised supplies, and discontent with their treatment by the American military.
The Bannocks and Shoshones exhibited friendship toward Americans during the fur trade in the first half of the 19th century. Relations turned sour when the fur trade declined and increasing numbers of permanent American settlers encroached upon tribal homelands and consumed native resources without compensation. Additionally, as native peoples’ land and resources diminished, so did their ability to maintain independence. During the 1860s, treaties held at Fort Bridger and Box Elder in 1863 and 1868 relocated indigenous people to the Fort Hall reservation.
Although the U.S. government required that the Bannocks remain on the reservation, in the summer of 1877, many natives left the territorial limits dissatisfied with their current situation. Despite threats of military involvement, the Bannock rebellion and subsequent war quickly commenced in May 1878, perhaps because the Bannocks felt that the United States had failed to fulfill treaty obligations.
Bannock leader Chief Buffalo Horn mobilized several hundred Bannocks, adding additional Paiute allies to augment their numbers. These warriors engaged in a sequence of attacks along the Snake River, raiding settlements and even killing some settlers who opposed them. Word reached American leadership in Boise, who called upon military action to force Chief Buffalo Horn’s men to surrender. In early June, Chief Buffalo Horn and his accompanying warriors briefly fought against a small volunteer group of militiamen, resulting in a few casualties, including the fatality of Chief Buffalo Horn. Chief Egan took his place until the Umatilla people, posing as allies, killed him to collect an alleged bounty reward offered by the United States.
The remaining Bannocks separated into smaller groups or surrendered and returned to Fort Hall by August 1878. Following this resolution, the U.S. government carefully monitored Bannock movement within the reservation, limiting their use of local resources and interactions with local native groups. As a result of their surrender, the Bannocks conceded to rebuilding their livelihood on the allotted territory on the Fort Hall reservation.
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Nez Perce and Bannock Flight Through Yellowstone National Park

2019-09-26T01:22:58+00:00

The Nez Perce and Bannock Wars were sparked by increasing federal involvement in Indian affairs and Native rejection of reservation life and its implications. During both wars, groups traveled through the newly created Yellowstone National Park, hoping to find refuge in familiar territory as they tried to reach Canada.

By the late 1870s, the United States government was fully engaged in the process of forcing American Indians in the West onto reservations. In 1855, Nez Perce in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington signed a treaty in which they accepted a 5,000-square-mile reservation. Later, in 1869, their reservation was reduced in size following the discovery of gold on their land. A division grew between some converted Christian Nez Perce who supported treaties and traditional Nez Perce who refused to live on the reservation. One traditional Nez Perce leader argued, “I belong to the land out of which I came.” Groups led by White Bird, Looking Glass, and Chief Joseph separated from the treaty group. In June of 1877, a violent outburst from White Bird’s group left four white settlers dead. The anti-treaty Nez Perce feared retaliation and fled in an effort to join Sitting Bull in Canada.
The Nez Perce headed through Yellowstone National Park in late August. Yellow Wolf recalled that Nez Perce scouts “knew that country well before passing through there in 1877. The hot springs and high-shooting water were nothing new to us.” On their second day in the park, scouts found a group of tourists and held the party captive for two days. Following a skirmish that left one of the tourists severely wounded, they were released. Some anxious scouts would attack other groups and kill two tourists. The Nez Perce were able to outmaneuver the army as they exited the park, and almost reached Canada before being forced to surrender in October at the Battle of Bear Paw. Around sixty Nez Perce were able to escape during the battle, including White Bird and Chief Joseph’s daughter, who successfully joined the Lakota in Canada. Between 1878 and 1880, many of them returned to Idaho.
Similarly, in 1878, Bannocks faced starvation at Fort Hall. Ranchers had destroyed important camas bulb pastures, their main source of food, and the government neglected to supplement with sufficient rations. Many Bannocks left the reservation and clashed with white farmers and federal troops. A small band headed north, following the Nez Perce route through Yellowstone National Park, hoping to reach Canada. They were ambushed east of the park in September, and the uprising was eventually quelled by federal troops. Restrictions were placed on the Fort Hall Reservation and most of the insurgents were split up between allotments and other forts.
These conflicts damaged Yellowstone’s public relations image and park officials would work hard to assuage tourist fears of an Indian threat. Some tourists found the battles exciting, and in efforts to live out fantasies about the ‘wild west’ joined expeditions following the path used by the Nez Perce and Bannock. Others feared continued Indian contact and avoided the area altogether. The wars also caused a shift in military management of the park; officials would use the conflict to justify military necessity to the park’s success and took a firm stance against Indian presence in the park.
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The Indian New Deal and the Shoshone-Bannock Constitution

2018-06-08T02:45:06+00:00

The Great Depression brought hard times to the Intermountain West but also provided an opportunity for Native Americans to change the existing state of affairs. An “Indian New Deal” brought the Shoshone-Bannock together and gave the opportunity for the establishment of an intertribal constitution on Fort Hall.

Two thousand miles away from the rich farmland and pastures of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, the future of America’s native peoples was decided by politicians and sociologists in Washington, D.C. The new Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, John Collier, hoped to implement policies that would strengthen tribal cultures rather than destroy them. While President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress passed laws as part of the “New Deal,” Collier hoped for an “Indian New Deal” that would reverse the assault on Indian lands, rejuvenate tribal governments, preserve native languages, and revive tribal customs. For the Shoshone-Bannock, these new policies meant a fundamental transformation of their whole reservation system.
Although Fort Hall may have been one of the more prosperous reservations in the United States, too many of its residents lived in or near poverty. Tribal leader John Ballard lamented, “The things that [the government has] promised me in the past have not been fulfilled . . . [We] have been placed in a condition that is poor.” To combat economic deprivation and provide Native Americans with more input into local decisions, John Collier spearheaded the effort to pass the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). John Ballard agreed with Collier’s plan, as did eight of the other nine representatives from Fort Hall who met with government agents. Tribal leader Tom Cosgrove agreed, telling other Native Americans, “If we accept this bill we are going to help our Indians.” Although Congress passed the IRA in June 1934, each tribe had to also separately approve the bill before adhering to its policies. When it came time for the Shoshone-Bannock to vote, 375 voted yes and only 31 voted no.
The next great task for the Shoshone-Bannock was the implementation of the IRA. To do so, they needed to create a constitution that would satisfy Shoshone, Bannocks, ranchers, farmers, the federal government, the state government, and other factions on the reservation. On April 30, 1936, they finally succeeded in ratifying a constitution everyone could support. Although small disagreements continued to flare up after its ratification, the 1936 constitution held fast until today. Among other things, the constitution established laws for the reservation, set requirements for tribal membership, and established a reservation government called the Fort Hall Business Council. This marked a new chapter for the history of Fort Hall.
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The Division of Fort Hall: Allotment and Land Loss

2018-06-08T01:30:07+00:00

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Americans believed that the best way to help Native Americans was through forced assimilation. Laws and social activists worked to inhibit traditional culture and practices. Allotment was one such attempt to split Shoshone-Bannock land holdings and fracture their culture.

After the Native Americans were forced onto reservations, the U.S. Congress was concerned that most tribes had not discontinued collective living. In response, the Dawes Act was passed in 1887 to “allot” reservation lands to individual owners. This meant that the reservations would be divided among the tribe members so that necessity would require them to adopt agriculture. Each reservation was thus partitioned, including Fort Hall.
In 1868, Fort Hall was comprised of 1.8 million acres for approximately 4,500 residents. Between 1888 and 1902, the Shoshone-Bannock were pressured to cede away nearly a third of the reservation to the growing town of Pocatello. With the remaining land, each tribe member would receive a certain share. Married couples received 160 acres, single adults 80 acres, and children 40 acres. All of the “excess” was sold by the government. Before any of this could happen, the Shoshone-Bannock requested that all properties have access to irrigation. The first of the irrigation projects was completed in 1911. Between 1911 and 1913, half a million acres were allotted to Shoshone-Bannock tribe members. The remaining 600,000 acres were subsequently sold to non-Natives for a fraction of their worth.
Land allotment was divisive in its implementation, but the controversy surrounding the policy has not disappeared in the intervening century. For some, division of tribal lands into individual allotments was an unmitigated economic disaster. Thrown into the turbulence of crop prices and agriculture, many either went hungry or had to sell their land. For another segment of the population, allotment proved an opportunity to successfully experiment with ranching and farming. Local newspapers tended to exaggerate the truth with regards to both the successes and failures of allotment, so it is difficult to reach a historical consensus.
Today, 97 percent of Fort Hall is under the control of the tribe or individual Shoshone-Bannock owners. These lands are farmed individually or rented out to local farmers.
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