Northern Shoshone and Bannock

ETHNONYMS: Northern Shoshoni, Ponasht, Snake

Orientation

Identification. The Northern Shoshone (Nimi, Wihinaitti) and Bannock (Banakwut, Nimi, Pan'akwati, Pannaitti) lived in an area roughly within the present boundaries of the state of Idaho, south of the Salmon River, but at times extending slightly into northern Utah. The names do not describe discrete sociopolitical groups, but serve to separate the Shoshonean-speaking groups in this area from those in Western Wyoming (Eastern Shoshone) and those in Nevada and Utah (Western Shoshone and Northern Paiute). The Northern Shoshone are distinguished from the Western Shoshone mainly in having had many horses in late aboriginal times, and from the Eastern Shoshone in having had an economy based more on salmon fishing than on bison hunting. The Bannock are distinct from the Northern Shoshone in being Northern Paiute speakers. But they lived with the Northern Shoshone in Idaho for a long period and are similar to them culturally, having adopted the horse and participated with them in organized bison hunts. There are, however, no really clear cultural boundaries between all of these groups. The Northern Shoshone have been divided into six local groupings that are not political divisions. The subgroups are Agaideka (Agaidüka), "Salmon Eaters"; Kammedeka (Kamadüka), "Eaters of Jackrabbits"; Lemhi, Pohogwe (Bohogue, Fort Hall Shoshone, and Bannock), "People of Sagebrush Butte"; Tukudeka, (Tukadüka), "Eaters of Mountain Sheep"; and Yahandeka (Yahandüka), "Eaters of Groundhogs." Most of them are included among the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation, Idaho.

Location. The area they live in belongs to the Columbia Plateau physiographic region, having a generally low precipitation of less than fifteen inches a year. There are two major mountain ranges, the Sawtooth and the Bitterroot, plus the Snake River plains, which provided ecological diversity.

Demography. There were 2,542 Indians living on the Reservation in 1980, with many more living in the area. It is estimated that there were about 3,900 in 1984.

Linguistic Affiliation. Both the Northern Shoshone and Bannock languages are members of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Bannock speak a dialect of Northern Paiute, a Western Numic language; the Northern Shoshone speak a Central Numic dialect related to Eastern Shoshone, Western Shoshone, and Comanche. There is considerable Northern Shoshone-Bannock bilingualism.

History and Cultural Relations

Little is known of these peoples before the early nineteenth century. The horse probably reached the Shoshone in the late seventeenth century, perhaps from the Spanish settlements in the Southwest. With the aid of the horse, they spread as far as the Canadian border of Montana where they met the Blackfoot, who pushed them back to their present area by the mid-eighteenth century. In contrast, relations with the Flathead to the north and the Nez Percé to the northwest were generally friendly and peaceful, although relations with the latter may not always have been so. They were also on friendly terms with their linguistic relatives, the Western Shoshone to the south and the Northern Paiute to the west. Fur trappers and traders came into their territory in the early nineteenth century, reaching Lake Pend Oreille in the first decade. American expeditions and traders from the time of Lewis and Clark (1803-1804) moved westward from the Missouri River, with various trading posts being established in the period 1807-1832, all with fairly negative implications for Shoshone life. The fur trade had collapsed by 1840, and by 1860 the local bison herds had been almost extinguished. White settlers were moving through the area in fairly large numbers, beginning about 1840. Mormons began moving into the southern areas in 1860, followed by other settlers and gold miners, which resulted in several wars.

Treaties with the United States were signed in 1863 and 1864, and the Fort Hall Reservation in southeastern Idaho was established in 1867. The Lemhi Reservation to the north was established in 1875, but was terminated and the inhabitants removed to Fort Hall in 1907. Because of the demands of a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad and the establishment of the city of Pocatello, as well as the Dawes Act of 1887, the lands of the Fort Hall Reservation were much diminished. Day and boarding schools were established in the 1870s and 1880s.

After the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Shoshone and Bannock of the Fort Hall Reservation approved a constitution and by-laws in 1936 and ratified a corporate charter in 1937. The Fort Hall Business Council consists of individuals elected from the reservation to two-year terms. The council has authority over purchases, borrowing, engaging in business, performing contracts, and other normal business procedures. The tribes are actively trying to increase and to buy land for the reservation. Phosphate deposits on the reservation are being mined and a tribal trading post has been established. There is an annual tribal festival held in mid-August, as well as Sun Dances, an all-Indian rodeo, an Indian Day in late September, and other traditional dances throughout the year.

Settlements

Both groups were seminomadic, ranging over fairly large Territories in the warmer months, but returning to protected Winter quarters. The major foci of population were the upper Snake River valley in the general region surrounding Fort Hall, the Lemhi River valley, the Sawtooth range, the Boise, Payette, and Weiser River valleys, and the valley of the Bruneau River. The Fort Hall and Lemhi peoples originally lived in tipis, first of hide and later built of canvas. Through the rest of the area, the standard summer dwelling was a small conical lodge or tipi made of sagebrush, grass, or woven willow branches. Small versions of these were used as menstrual huts and sweat houses. Today, they live in typical mainstream society wooden houses and bungalows.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Bison were hunted by groups using the Plains Indians' technique of flanking the herds on horses and shooting them with bows and arrows or rifles. The summer was spent collecting wild foods and hunting. The mounted Shoshone of the Boise, Payette, and Weiser rivers in southwestern Idaho depended on the spring and fall salmon runs for most of their subsistence, but sometimes they took part in the Fort Hall bison hunt. The remainder of the Idaho Shoshone population was largely unmounted, did not participate in the bison hunt, were largely peaceful. Antelope were taken by individual hunters and by running them on horses. Elk, mountain sheep, and deer were pursued by individuals or small parties of hunters. Salmon fishing was basic all through the area, and salmon was the principal food source below Shoshone Falls (near Twin Falls in south-central Idaho) and in the western Idaho region. Salmon were speared from platforms in the streams or while wading, or were captured in weirs built across small streams and channels. Sturgeon, suckers, perch, and trout were also caught. Principal vegetables collected included camas bulbs, yampa roots, tobacco-root, and bitter-root, all dug from the ground by women using digging sticks. Some residents south of Bannock Creek, and south of Fort Hall, relied on pine nuts. Chokecherries, service berries, sunflower seeds, and roots, such as prairie turnips, were also collected, often incidental to hunting expeditions. All the groups had horses, introduced from the south and the Plains, with dogs also available. Nowadays, they engage in farming, livestock raising, and other agriculturally related enterprises, and are heavily involved with the mainstream economy.

Industrial Arts. Among the mounted people in the east, who were influenced by Plains Indians, both sexes wore bison robes in the winter and dressed elk skins with the hair removed in the summer. Both men and women at Lemhi added leggings and breechclouts to their dress. Breechclouts and robes of the fur of smaller animals were standard farther west. Moccasins were made of elk, deer, and bison hide, although people often went barefoot. Some crude pottery was made, but baskets, both coiled and woven, were more common and important. They were made watertight by applying pitch on the interiors. Rawhide containers were important among the eastern groups. Among other manufactures were steatite cups, bowls, and pipe bowls; cradle boards of willow sticks and buckskin; and leather snow goggles. They had arrowheads and knives made from chipped obsidian and, in later times, from metal. High-wheeled wooden wagons drawn by horses were a basic mode of transport from the later nineteenth century to modern times.

Trade. Trade was extensive throughout the region, with the Western Shoshone to the south and the Paiute to the west, as well as with the Nez Percé and Flathead to the north. By the 1820s, the fur trade had become important to some groups, particularly the mounted peoples. The Nez Percé joined the Cayuse, the Umatilla, and the Shoshone at an annual trading market on the Weiser River in the far northwest of Shoshone territory, and some mixed villages of Nez Percé and Shoshone have been reported.

Division of Labor. Women took care of leather- and hideworking, house construction, and most of the gathering. Men did the hunting and fishing, took care of the horses, and engaged in warfare.

Land Tenure. Both groups apparently lacked any form of ownership of land or of the resources upon it. But tools, weapons, and other artifacts, as well as foods after they were obtained were considered private property.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The Shoshone and Bannock had bilateral descent without kindreds or other kin groups. The basic unit of the society was the bilateral family group, composed of four or five nuclear families that maintained relatively close and continuing association.

Kinship Terminology. The Shoshone and Bannock used a Hawaiian type of kinship terminology, with a fairly Consistent pattern of terminological merging of the mother's sister with the mother and the father's brother with the father. There was no distinction between cross and parallel cousins, all being addressed by brother and sister terms. The terminology was of the Dakota type on the first ascending generation, and grandparents and grandchildren addressed each other by the same terms, distinguished only by sex.

Marriage and Family

There were no strict rules on postmarital residence; couples could live with the relatives of the husband or wife and occasionally with more distant relatives. Depending on the group, there were tendencies toward matrilocality or bilocality, the latter probably being more common. Marriages were most often monogamous, but polygamy, usually polygyny, was possible. Some informal polyandry has been noted. Sororal Polygyny occurred, and the levirate and sororate were common. Divorce was simple, fairly common, and without formal rules. The usual domestic unit was the independent nuclear family. There seems to have been no concept of inheritance.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. The main feature of their social organization was a looseness and lack of definition of groups. The presence or absence of bands or chieftains depended upon the type of economic pursuit in which the people were engaged. Organization was needed for the bison hunts and for protection from tribal enemies.

Political Organization. The Northern Shoshone and Bannock showed a wide range of types of political organization and grouping from bands to villages to the scattered groups of foot-going families living in the Sawtooth Range and south of the Snake River. The Shoshone and Bannock of the upper Snake River formed into large composite bands of varying composition and leadership. The Shoshone were always the majority, but the chieftaincy was sometimes held by a Bannock. Most of the Fort Hall and Lemhi peoples formed into single groups each fall to hunt bison in the east and Returned west for the winter. The large bands split into smaller groups for the spring salmon fishing. Apart from Fort Hall and Lemhi, the population was widely scattered and villages were small, with chieftainship and larger forms of political organization being absent. The power of the chiefs was limited by camp or band councils which existed among the bison hunters. The office of chief was an achieved role and was not firmly institutionalized, and his powers were quite limited. Band organization in the western part of the region was almost nonexistent. At the base of organization were the basic Shoshone characteristics of loose and shifting group association and individual autonomy.

Social Control and Conflict. A few "police" were needed to keep order in the larger bands, but there were no police societies or sodalities. They shared in the warfare practices of the Plains Indians, counting coup and taking the scalps of enemies. They also borrowed the Scalp Dance from the Plains Indians. There was periodic conflict with the Blackfeet, Usually at the time of bison hunts. Otherwise, contacts with neighboring tribes were peaceful.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. The basis of their religion seems to have been a belief in the effectiveness of dreams and visions. These were used in acquiring the assistance of guardian spirits. They shared a modified version of the vision quest of the Plains Indians for spirits and other manifestations that gave the questor powers and medicines and imposed food and other taboos. They believed in Appi, a creator, but the principal mythological figures were Wolf and Coyote. The benevolent Wolf created people and the solar system, and Coyote was a trickster who brought disorder. Also known were ogres and animal creatures. Nowadays, over half of the tribes belong to a Christian church—Baptist, Episcopal, Mormon, and Roman Catholic—and others belong to the Native American church.

Religious Practitioners. All men were shamans to some degree.

Ceremonies. Most ceremonialism took the form of dances. Ceremonies were held to ensure the return of the salmon and at the actual time of the run. The Round Dance was used to seek blessings, usually in time of adversity.

Medicine. There was a category of medicine men, who specialized in curing. In addition, they possessed much practical knowledge of plant remedies.

Death and Afterlife. Aboriginally, the dead were wrapped in blankets and deposited in rock crevices. The souls of the dead went to the Land of Wolf and Coyote.

Bibliography

Liljebad, Sven (1972). The Idaho Indians in Transition, 1805-1960. Pocatello: Idaho State Museum.

Lowie, Robert H. (1909). The Northern Shoshone. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropologial Papers 2(2). New York.

Madsen, Brigham D. (1958). The Bannock of Idaho. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers.

Madsen, Brigham D. (1980). The Northern Shoshone. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers.

Murphy, Robert F., and Yolanda Murphy (1986). "Northern Shoshone and Bannock." In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 11, Great Basin, edited by Warren L. d'Azevedo, 284-307. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

Steward, Julian H. (1938). Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 120. Washington, D.C. Reprint. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1970.