Appendix 9
Native American Indians – Idaho and Utah
INDEX
Conflicts – European countries and U.S. claims to traditional Indian lands
American Indian population circa 1805: Idaho and N. Utah
Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea
Pioneer settlements - Utah and Idaho – Church/Indian relations
Indian approval to settle north of Bear Lake
Indian Chief permission to settle north Cache Valley – conflict
U.S. Army establishes Fort Douglas - Salt Lake City
Bear River Massacre – Happened north of Franklin, Idaho
Bear River Massacre – Aftermath
Fort Hall Indian Reservation created
The Bannock War – 1878 – Idaho’s Last Indian War
Dawes Severalty Act – Break-up reservations – try to assimilate Indians
Today’s Indian Reservations in Southern Idaho and Northwestern Utah
Conflicts – European countries and U.S. claims to traditional Indian lands – Ever since Christopher Columbus landed on the American continents in 1492, European countries began their own explorations of the two “new” continents and staking their claims. In substantially all cases, the Europeans believed that “might made right” and their gunpowder and military sophistication were no match to the indigenous populations. Albeit, Hernan Cortez may have had an easier time conquering Mexico for Spain, because of the indigenous legend of a white bearded God who visited their ancestors and said he would return – they thought Cortez was that God. To the Aztecs he was known as Quetzalcoatl, to the Incas of Peru, Viracocha and other names. (BM, 3 Nephi 10-11).
In north America, the United States ultimately succeeded in acquiring the European claims to the present-day United States by purchase, treaty or conquest. But with respect to the land claims by the American Indians, little changed.
The while settlers and prospectors came onto the Indians historic hunting grounds, turning arable land into farms and ranches; killing wild game; blocking or limiting Indian access to their traditional food sources; including mass killing of buffalo, catching and drying migrating salmon and harvesting Camas Lily bulbs.
This condition provoked hostilities - often leading to Indian attacks; deadly skirmishes.
The U.S. Army responded by building forts; garrisoned with hundreds of cavalry and infantry to protect the miners, settlers and wagon trains traveling the Oregon and California Trails. The nomadic Indians, consisting largely of tribes who were independent from each other, were out-manned and out-gunned. The Indians were capable of successfully attacking smaller parties, but incapable of winning against a modern army.
As the Indian tribes were forced to surrender, the U. S, Bureau of Indian Affairs entered into treaties with them; establishing reservations with defined boundaries; promising to give them food and supplies to offset loss of access to their traditional hunting grounds.
However, Congress, whose general membership was subject to change with each election, did not keep their end of the bargain. As prospectors and settlers converged on Indian treaty lands; Congress often changed the laws to legitimize the taking; essentially forcing new treaties and smaller reservations. (see Dawes Severalty Act, below).
American Indian population circa 1805: Idaho and North Utah - Anthropologist Sven Liljeblad estimated when Lewis and Clark passed through present day Idaho in 1805, the total number of American Indians living in Idaho ranged from 6,000 to 10,000. The Shoshoni, Bannock and Piute tribes that migrated through southern Idaho and northern Utah and Nevada numbered around 4,000. In the north; about 3,000 Nez Perce Indians; 300 Pend d’Oreille (or Kalispel), 700 Coeur d’Alene and 200 Kutenai.
Bands of Nez Perce from the north and Blackfoot and Gros Ventre tribes from present day Wyoming and Montana, went east to hunt buffalo and sometimes came into southern Idaho and northern Utah for seasonal encampments.
Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were tasked by President Thomas Jefferson and Congress to map a route, and study the flora and fauna across the northern part of the “Louisiana Purchase;” and then west to the Pacific Ocean; to find “the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent;” and establish a U.S. presence on “Oregon Country” land claimed by Great Britain.
When their expedition (1804-1806), called the “Corp of Discovery,” reached present day North Dakota on the Missouri River, they built Fort Mandan among friendly Indians and wintered.
The following spring, they sent several men back on the keel boat filled with journals and artifacts for Thomas Jefferson. Lewis and Clark completed their expedition with 33-members; including French interpreter, Charbonneau, and most importantly, his Shoshone Indian wife, Sacajawea and her infant son who they added when at Fort Mandan.
It was Sacajawea, who, when the Corp crossed the Continental Divide and entered present-day Idaho just south of present-day city of Salmon, saved Lewis and Clarks mission. (A few days later a Nez Perce woman would again save the Corp of Discovery; but in a different way. See Commentary, below).
When the Corp encountered the Shoshone Indians, they fortuitously discovered Sacajawea was the (kidnapped) sister of the tribal chief. Because of her, Lewis and Clark traded for pack horses and a guide to take them over the rugged mountain ranges to the Nez Perce Indians near present-day Orofino, Idaho (Canoe Camp).
The Nez Perce helped the Corp build large burned-and-hewn-out log-canoes to transport them down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia Rivers to the Pacific Ocean where they built Fort Clatsop and wintered.
Lewis and Clark had no sooner completed their mission in 1806, when started their western migrations. Congress encouraged settlers, trappers and prospectors to settle the land and exploit the country’s vast natural resources; achieve the country’s “Manifest Destiney.” Keeping treaties with American Indian tribes were secondary to those objectives.
Pioneer settlement - Utah and Idaho – Church/Indian relations – Forty years after Lewis and Clark completed their mission (1846), several thousand members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began their 1,250-mile trek from Illinois to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Refugees forced from their homes, at the point of a gun by mobs sanctioned by state and local government officials. These refugees left with only the supplies they could carry, leaving behind beautiful homes, orchards, gardens and their new Nauvoo Temple (54,000 sq. ft., 162 ft, high, constructed with quarried stone).
These exiles were forced to begin their arduous exodus in the dead of an unusually bitter winter, walking and driving their oxen-pulled wagons across the frozen Mississippi River. Commentary - When I (Hal) was serving my Church mission in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa; 1958-1960, my companion and I called at the home of an elderly lady who said her grandmother said she stood on the eastern banks of the Mississippi River in January 1846 and watched the “Mormons” walk and drive their animals and wagons across the frozen Mississippi River. She said she knew of no other time the river froze hard enough to withstand that much weight.
When the exiles arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, they immediately started settlements throughout the Great Basin; Church leaders sought to avoid conflict with the Indians through negotiation. When opening new settlements where Indian resistance was likely, Church leaders met with the chiefs of the local tribes to obtain permission and gain their goodwill by giving them food to replace some of what they lost when they were deprived of their traditional hunter-gatherer livelihoods.
The U.S. Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Utah, James Duane Doty, was the only Indian agent between “Fort Laramie, Wyoming to California.” He wrote to his superiors on July 30, 1862, “… they (the Indians) are destitute (and) feeble – (that) describes their situation.” He warned of all-out war by the Indians on travelers and settlers if Congress did not appropriate adequate funds to feed and clothe them; to maintain their goodwill as promised.
Doty recommended the Indians placed on a reservation so that they could “cease to be beggars and could learn to be herdsmen.”
His idea may have worked; if the Indians would have agreed. However, such a huge change in their lifestyle was obviously too dramatic – abhorrent to the Indian’s traditional thinking.
Seven years after Doty wrote his letter, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. By that time, well over 200,000 immigrants would travel overland on the California Trail, more than 40,000 would continue on the Oregon Trail to Oregon’s Willamette Valley and 70,000 would travel the Mormon Trail to Utah Territory. From a practical standpoint, the traditional Indian was of life was unsustainable.
Present-day southern Idaho and northern Utah were also impacted by two regional gold rushes that began with the discovery of gold at each location in 1862. Western Montana attracted about 3.000 miners. Idaho’s Boise Basin had 16,000 fortune hunters.
Settler’s fenced and made farms out of natural grasslands and killed wild game. Domestic livestock were released on the range to compete with big game for the native grasses. From the Indian’s perspective, their way of life was being progressively destroyed by an enemy they were ill-prepared to fight.
Indian approval to settle north of Bear Lake - In 1862 Brigham Young sent a surveyor to explore the Bear Lake Valley for settlement. Upon receiving a favorable report, Young negotiated with the chiefs of local bands of Shoshone and Bannock Indians about settlement. The Indians agreed that Church immigrants could settle around the northern part of the lake but not the south. The south meadows were a traditional Shoshone gathering place.
On August 23, 1863, Young asked for an advance party of 50 men from Cache Valley to follow Charles C. Rich and build a wagon road across the mountains from Franklin to the valley on the north end of Bear Lake, a distance of 46 miles. They were to build houses and animal shelters for those who would spend the winter. The following month, the advance party along with settlers that would stay the winter built 20 aspen-log cabins, animal shelters, harvested meadow hay to feed for their animals during the winter and founded Paris, the first township in the valley.
Their entertainment during the first winter was producing the play William Tell with music provided by settlers who could play the violin. Some of the men donated one day in 10, tithing labor, to make a weekly mail-trip to Cache Valley.
The following spring, 700 additional settlers joined the original pioneers with more to follow. Under Rich’s direction, the settlers started several new communities in addition to Paris; including the present-day cities of Bloomington, Georgetown, Montpelier and St. Charles.
Indian chief permission to settle north Cache Valley - conflict – Shoshone tribal leader Chief Kettemere gave Church leaders’ approval in 1860 to establish settlements in the northern end of Cache Valley in exchange for food and supplies when requested - even when the settlers had limited quantities of food for themselves, they were to share.
This policy of co-existence worked reasonably well – but not all Indians agreed with Chief Kettemere. Angry about the large numbers of well-armed prospectors and travelers moving through the region, some of the Indian warriors attacked settlers, small wagon trains and prospectors working the mountain streams.
They also raided outlying farms and rustled livestock. In response, the settlers formed local militias they called Minute Men that could come on short notice to defend, attack and recover stolen livestock. It was only a matter of time before the U.S. Military would become involved.
U.S. Army establishes Fort Douglas - Salt Lake City -The Civil War was raging when federal officials directed Colonel Patrick E. Connor to take his California Volunteers and establish a military fort in the Great Salt Lake Valley. His command was to protect the overland mail, immigrants headed west on the California and Oregon Trails, settlers and the ever-increasing number of gold prospectors working the streams in the mountains of present-day southern Idaho and western Montana.
In route to Salt Lake City, Connor’s army responded to an Indian attack on a wagon train traveling near the Humboldt River in Nevada where 12 settlers and an unknown number of Indians were killed. Connor was given orders to “destroy every male Indian whom you encounter in the vicinity of the late massacre. – in no instance will you molest women and children” – apparent permission to attack Indian Villages.
Conner established Camp Douglas (now Fort Douglas) in the foothills three miles east of Salt Lake City on October 20,1862 (The Army established “Fort Boise,” 300 miles north of Fort Douglas in 1863).
Dr. Brigham D. Madsen, in his book The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre, wrote when Connor left California for Utah he had 850 men and “faced discipline (and desertion) problems within his command of freebooting Volunteers.” Conner led soldiers who were soured by their orders to chase Indians across the sagebrush-covered plains as opposed to achieving military glory in the war against the Confederate States.
Bear River Massacre – Happened north of Franklin, Idaho - In the early 1860s a complex set of circumstances, prejudices and events occurring in the greater Utah-Idaho region, would, on January 29, 1863, come to a head in a terrible battle wherein the U.S. Army attacked a large band of Northern Shoshone Indians encamped a about six miles north of the city of Franklin. The Oregon and California Trails passed less than 70 miles north of Franklin.
The military named the conflict the “Battle of Bear River.” Non-military historians called it the “Bear River Massacre,” one of the bloodiest single-battle killing of Indians in U.S. Army history.
Prospectors discovered gold at Grasshopper Creek, western Montana in 1862; a gold rush of 3,000 armed and determined prospectors ensued - onto the traditional lands of the Shoshone. An Indian attack on Oregon Trail pioneers at today’s Massacre Rocks State Park west of American Falls, Idaho in 1862 resulted in the death of many travelers.
On January 6, 1863 a band of Indians attacked a small wagon train party of miners headed to Salt Lake City. They drove off off the livestock and killed one man. When one of the miners, William Bivens arrived in Salt Lake City, he signed an affidavit before Chief Justice John F, Kenny describing the murder. Kenny, asserted that the Indian warriors were Shoshone. The judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Chiefs Bear Hunter, Sanpitch and
Sagwitch, leaders of Northwestern Shoshone Indian bands, and ordered the territorial marshal to seek assistance from Colonel Connor at Fort Douglas in arresting the chiefs.
In January 1863 Conner received intelligence about the three chief’s winter encampment on the Bear River several miles north of Franklin, the northernmost settlement in Cache Valley, along with an exaggerated report on the number of warriors and their fortifications.
In reality, Dr. Madsen wrote in his book, there were probably around 450 Indians in the village that included less than 200 warriors. Shoshone Chief Pocatello and his band had visited the camp the previous day, but had left.
Conner immediately prepared to execute the warrant, by planning a full-scale attack on the village. Keeping with his earlier charge to kill all Indian men only, he warned his troops to not kill Indian women and children.
Fearing the Indians would find out about his planed attack and escape, his strategy was to depart Fort Douglas in two groups. As a ruse, he announced he was sending a detachment of infantry to escort wagon trains coming from Cache Valley to Salt Lake City. Fifteen covered supply wagons carrying 69 infantry soldiers and two howitzers left snow-covered Camp Douglas on the morning of January 22. Two nights later Conner led four cavalry companies (220 men) out of the fort; traveling at night to avoid detection.
When the 15 wagons entered Franklin at 5 p.m. on February 28, three Indians boys were in town picking up nine bushels of wheat to take to their village that Church Bishop Preston Thomas had authorized. The settler helping them had only loaded six bushels on their pack horses when the boys saw the wagon train of soldiers approaching. They quickly left without taking the remaining three bushels – telling the settler there may be a fight. Shoshone Chief Bear Hunter was also in Franklin trading for supplies.
Conner and the four cavalry companies arrived at midnight. The entire army moved out, but the snow drifts were progressively deep; the infantry wagons were bogging down and only traveled a few miles before becoming stuck in the snow. The infantry with their howitzers would never engage in the battle.
As dawn broke on the morning of January 29, the Indians awoke to see the horse-mounted soldiers looking down on them from the top of 200-foot high bluffs. Dense leafless willow forests grew next to the river, to which the Shoshone had added fortifications of cut willow logs. The chiefs rallied their warriors to defend the village.
Connor began his attack by a frontal assault directly across the river and into the willow forest in what would become hand-to-hand fighting where the soldier’s pistols were a distinct advantage. However, the Indian warriors repulsed the attack, killing several soldiers.
Conner withdrew and re-directed his troops in flanking maneuvers. His men overrun the outgunned Indians. Women and children were often killed or wounded in the crossfire.
However, when the Indian women found the troops were not shooting at them, many stood up with their children and bravely walked out of the line of fire.
Bear River Massacre – Aftermath – Dr. Madsen wrote that as the battle ended, some of the unscrupulous members of Connor’s troops - technically following orders to not shoot women and children – but they did go through the village killing the wounded and committing unspeakable atrocities.
When the carnage was over (reports vary significantly), Dr. Madsen concluded that around 250 Indians were killed, including women and children. About 160 women and children were allowed to take food and trek north to find their people. Many Indian warriors, including Chief Sagwitch, escaped. Twenty-four soldiers lost their life.
Franklin residents opened their homes to the wounded on both sides and to the women and children needing assistance. Two days later, the Franklin settlers assembled 18 horse-drawn sleds and transported the dead and wounded soldiers back to Camp Douglas. Colonel Patrick E. Connor was promoted to brigadier general.
Today, four miles north of Preston is a stone monument commemorating the tragedy; erected by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. The Western Shoshone Indians acquired property at the site in 2008 and plan to build a memorial.
Fort Hall Indian Reservation created - In July, 1863, six months after the battle at Bear River, the Shoshone and Bannock Indians signed a peace treaty at Fort Bridger, Wyoming; agreeing to live on the newly created Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Under the terms of the treaty, the Shoshone-Bannock Indians agreed to live on the reservation and the U.S. Government agreed to provide food and supplies to supplement the loss of their traditional hunter-gather food and clothing sources. Most of the Indians affected by these treaties as well as certain other Indians living in the region were physically moved, some with military escort, to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation.
The Bannock War – 1878 – Idaho’s Last Indian War - After the Indians moved to the Fort Hall Reservation, the federal government, as usual, failed to provide the promised provisions n the treaties. Needing food, the Indians went off the reservation; traveling to the Camas Prairie near present-day Fairfield to gather Camas Lilly bulbs for their winter food storage and hunt wild game.
However, cattlemen were already moving their livestock to graze on the Prairie. Some brought hogs that foraged for food by digging up the Camas bulbs with their snouts and eating them.
The Indians were incensed that the settlers were destroying their traditional food sources and the U.S. government was not fulfilling its promises.
In May, 1878, about 200 Bannock warriors left the Fort Hall Reservation, attacking the settlers at Glen’s Ferry, skirmishing with the miners at Silver City in Southwestern Idaho and continuing on to Oregon; attacking and killing settlers, taking provisions and burning property along the way.
Over the next 16 months, the U.S. Cavalry with a voluntary militia pursued the Indians who had left Oregon and turned east into central Idaho and joined a Shoshoni band called the Sheepeater Indians living in the Salmon River Mountains. The military concluded their campaign by capturing the remaining Indians and escorting them back to the reservation. Collectively termed the Bannock War, these skirmishes were Idaho’s last Indian war.
Following the war, the federal government punished the defeated Shoshone-Bannock Indians by significantly reducing the size of the Fort Hall Reservation land – the southern part was open it for settlement.
Dawes Severalty Act – Break-up reservations – try to assimilate Indians - In an attempt to assimilate Indians into the white mainstream and open reservation land for settlement, Congress passed the General Allotment Act of 1887; generally called the Dawes Severalty Act.
The Act gave the head of each Indian family 160 acres, each single person over 18 years 80 acres and each orphaned child 40 acres. Any lands not allotted became “surplus” and made available for non-Indian settlement.
Indians who did not want to farm could either sell or lease their land. This policy encouraged large-scale settlement by non-Indians on former reservation lands; creating a checkerboard of ownership throughout all of the nation’s affected Indian reservations.
At the signing of the Fort Bridger Treaty that created the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in 1868, the Fort Hall Reservation comprised 1.8 million acres. Within a few decades, federal actions, Indian land sales and the effects of the Dawes Severalty Act had reduced the Fort Hall Reservation to around 544,000 acres.
In 1934 Congress replaced the Dawes Severalty Act with the Indian Reorganization Act, which placed surplus land, that had not been settled by non-Indians, into tribal (reservation) trusts.
Today’s Indian Reservations in Southern Idaho and Northwestern Utah - There are two Indian reservations in the region. Most members of the Shoshone and Bannock Tribes live on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation near Pocatello. The 2010 U.S. Census reported 5,767 of the reservation residents were tribal members. The Fort Hall Indians has gaming casinos and resort on their reservation and are involved in other economic development activity.
Other Shoshone and the Paiute Tribes live on the 289,820-acre Duck Valley Reservation that straddles the Idaho-Nevada border in Southwestern Idaho. Of the 1,700 Indians residing on the reservation, about 350 reside on Idaho. The tribe plans to build a casino in Nevada near the Idaho border.
There was also a band of Northwestern Shoshoni living on private land at Washakie, Utah (near Portage).
Commentary – Washakie settlement - The Church platted the community of Washakie in 1880 (northern Box Elder County, Utah) for the settlement of the Northwestern Shoshone Indians. Hal’s father, William Rudolph Bunderson, served a Church service mission to the Indians at Washakie prior to his death in 1951. (Chapter 18).
The 42nd Parallel boundary resolution: The boundary between Utah and Idaho Territories (42nd Parallel) was originally negotiated between Great Britain and Spain (later Mexico) as the dividing line between their respective claims to the North American continent. England’s claim on the north and Spain’s claim on the south. When Congress created territories and states it retained the 42nd Parallel as the dividing line; separating California, Nevada and Utah on the south; Oregon and Idaho on the north.
Unfortunately, the federal government did not get around to surveying the 42 Parallel until 1872. Up until that time, most people in the area had to assume which territory they lived. Residents of cities, including Franklin, which was located a mile north of the surveyed 42nd Parallel, believed they lived in Utah Territory and did their business accordingly. The survey officials conducting the U.S. Census in 1870 did the same thing.
The results of the survey were shocking. The 1870 U.S. Census had to be restated. Result, Idaho’s population increased 19 percent; from 14,999 to 17.804. The town of Franklin, Idaho, founded in 1860, was declared Idaho’s oldest city; surpassing North Idaho’s Lewiston, which previously had that distinction (founded in 1861).
Lewis and Clark - two women who made major contributions– After the Corp of Discovery met the Shoshone Indians in 1805, they crossed 60 miles of rugged, snow-covered mountains with packhorses. The 33-member Corp sent Clark and six men ahead to kill and hang wild game for the rest of the party; they found none.
Clark and his party were starving when they emerged from the mountains onto the 150 square-mile Weippe Prairie (70 miles east of Lewiston) several days later. They found the Nez Perce Indians harvesting Camas Lilly bulbs for winter food storage. Clark exchanged trade-goods for food. Albeit, the only food the Indians had was dried salmon and crushed Camas Lilly bulbs – a kind of griddle cake cooked on a hot stone. The starving explorers gorged themselves on the unfamiliar food and became violently ill; wreathing on the ground.
Some of the Nez Perce warriors openly considered killing the debilitated explorers for their weapons; until a Nez Perce woman, Watkuweis, spoke-up. She had been kidnapped by Blackfoot Indians several years earlier and sold to white trappers in Canada. The trappers apparently treated her well and allowed her to return to her people. Watkuweis told the Nez Perce warriors; “These are the people who helped me. Do them no hurt.” When Lewis and the rest of the Corp came out of the mountains and joined Clark, they were treated with respect.
Steven E. Ambrose, in his book, Undaunted Courage, wrote, “First Sacagawea, now
Watkuweis. The expedition owed more to Indian women than either captain ever acknowledged.”