Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

Native Inhabitants of the Craters of the Moon Region:
OVERVIEW OF THE SNAKE RIVER PLAIN: PRE-CONTACT PERIOD

The human history of the Snake River Plain borders on the recent past, it seems, for it was only at the turn of the century that large-scale irrigation projects transformed this arid land into a habitable place. That perception, however, is an illusion. Long before these technological advances made the desert bloom, people inhabited the Snake River region. They lived in closer contact with and adapted their needs to the harsh desert environment, more so than those who inhabit the region today. From a historical perspective, the distant human past provides an important introduction to the changing patterns of human activity in this region.

Humans first appeared in southern Idaho 12,000-14,000 years ago. They lived in the Upper Snake and Salmon River country where they hunted large mammals and gathered edible plants. Archaeologists note that the period was culturally diverse, lasting up until about 6,000 B.C., and composed of three distinct groups: Clovis (10,000-9,000 B.C.), Folsom (9,000-8,000 B.C.), and Plano (8,600-5,800 B.C.). These first peoples made their homes in the region during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. It was a cold and wet period during which they fashioned weapons tipped with large lancelot, or spear like, points and hunted herds of elephants, bison, horses, camels, elk, deer, and mountain sheep that grazed the fertile grasslands and wetlands of the time. Like the animals they hunted, these early hunters also migrated across the plain. It was a natural travel corridor that allowed them to reach more favorable climates as the Great Basin gradually grew hotter and drier after 8,000 B.C. For this reason, it is believed that large fauna populations and big-game hunters persisted in this region longer than anywhere else in the Great Basin. [1]

By about 5,800 B.C., the Upper Snake and Salmon River country entered the Archaic period, characterized by extreme heat and aridity. Big game populations thinned and began, along with the region's plant life, the long retreat north or to higher elevations. The lower plains turned to desert where flora and fauna were scarce and poor. Early inhabitants still hunted and gathered. Rather than large spear points, they made side notched points, following the Plains and Basin patterns, and used a new weapon system, the atlatl and dart. With these they pursued evolving modern forms of game, bison and sheep. [2]

Hardly stable, the climate over the last several thousand years became less extreme. In this rather moderate environment, more recent culture groups of the plain, the Northern Fremont and the Shoshonean, emerged in what archaeologists classify as the Late Period, around the sixth century. Archaeologists debate the identity of these culture groups based on artifacts--points, tools, and pottery--excavated from caves, rock shelters, and other occupation sites on the edges of the Snake River Plain. With some certainty, they suggest that by the fifteenth century small groups of Shoshone, a Numic speaking people, migrated to the Snake River Plain from northern Utah as an extension of their hunting and gathering activities. [3]

Today's Northern Shoshone and Bannock tribes, descendants of the Shoshonean culture group, were the Indians who occupied southern Idaho when the Lewis and Clark expedition ventured into the region in 1805. These Indians, whether considered in groups or "tribes," were hardly discrete political or social unions, and amounted to a loose aggregation of villages or bands bound by language and kinship. The Northern Shoshone dwelled in the drainage of the Upper Columbia River apart from the Western Shoshone, who lived to the south and east in Utah and Nevada, and the Eastern Shoshone who made their homes in Western Wyoming. Each group possessed specific economic and social characteristics based largely on what they used for nourishment and their geographical locale. The Western Shoshone owned few horses and thus had only limited access to buffalo hunting grounds on the plains. Conversely, the Eastern and Northern Shoshone were well mounted and hunted on the plains extensively, and in turn displayed the cultural and social influences of the Plains Indians, which was all but absent among the Western Shoshone. What distinguished the Northern and Eastern groups from each other were their separate locales and salmon fishing, an important part of the Northern Shoshone diet. Sometimes referred to as the Snake River Shoshone, the Northern Shoshone were further subdivided into numerous bands, one notable group being the Lemhi Shoshone. Despite such classifications, the various Shoshone did not recognize these distinctions; they lived in a wide variety of social and political units where cultural boundaries blurred. [4]

The Bannock distinctiveness, on the other hand, was based on language and migration. They were Northern Paiute speakers who had migrated from Oregon to the Snake River region where they lived peacefully among Shoshone speakers. Although not substantially different from their fellow Northern Paiutes, the Bannock took on their own cultural identity after they acquired the horse and began hunting buffalo. [5]

Both the Shoshone and Bannock intermingled, sharing similar social characteristics, and speaking similar yet different branches of the Numic languages that spread throughout the Great Basin. Living in the vast expanse of southern Idaho, the Shoshone and Bannock were highly mobile, seminomadic groups, and for this reason they varied little culturally or linguistically from each other. [6]

Southern Idaho tribes lived in a region where the margin of survival was narrow. The area received at the most fifteen inches of annual precipitation, mostly snow, and some years received no measurable amounts. The Shoshone and Bannock adapted to the semi-arid environment, especially in the prehorse period, by subsisting on birds, small game, nuts, seeds, and various insects. By 1700, the Shoshone and Bannock acquired the horse and depended less on small game and plants, and hunted larger game such as bison, deer, mountain sheep, antelope, and bear. [7]

Whether on foot or on horseback, the Indian groups (or bands) moved constantly in order to exploit the region's edible resources. Their seasonal pattern would find some groups in the spring moving to the mountains on the fringes of the Snake River Plain to hunt large game and to gather camas and other roots in well-watered areas such as Camas Prairie and Smith Prairie in southeastern Idaho. Other groups would travel to the Snake River to fish for salmon, a popular destination being Shoshone Falls. By mid summer those Indians who had horses would head east to the plains of Wyoming and Montana to hunt bison. The entire year, but in the summer especially, Indian bands would hunt birds. Throughout the spring, summer, and early fall, they would collect berries, and in the late fall they would prepare for winter by caching foods in dry places. During the winter months, they would gather in multiple family groups in villages located in well-watered and well-sheltered areas, live off of their stores, and continue to hunt and gather on a limited basis. [8]

Compared to most Great Basin Indian groups, the Shoshone and Bannock were rich in food sources, such as salmon and other fish, game animals and birds, and edible plants, many of which were found in the drainages of the Snake and Boise rivers. The horse also played a valuable role, for it allowed the tribes to leave the semi-arid plain for river valleys and mountain ranges where the environment was more favorable. In addition, migratory and subsistence patterns showed how the Shoshone-Bannock culture was influenced by and attuned to the environment. To survive in the semi-arid Snake River Plain country meant living in scattered groups near water resources or at higher elevations; population densities were no more than two people per one hundred square miles. Indian groups had relatively little contact with their neighbors. Nonetheless, they shared a primarily peaceful demeanor and a shaman-centered religion. [9]

By the end of the eighteenth century, the Shoshone and Bannock occupied two main geographic areas. One was the upper Snake River Valley, near what would become Fort Hall. Here horse-owning Indians lived in the rich grassland country where the Blackfoot, Ross Fork, and Portneuf rivers and Bannock Creek entered the Snake. The other was farther west, in the general vicinity of what would become Fort Boise. The Shoshone and Bannock operated an important trading center here during the salmon fishing season on the Snake River. A large intertribal population was also drawn to the country between Camas Prairie and the confluence of the Boise, Payette, Weiser, and Owyhee rivers on the Snake. Other areas of special importance were the magnificent Sawtooth Range, the Lemhi River and Bruneau River valleys. Population estimates for Indians in the region vary greatly and are unreliable for the tribes. Estimates range, for example, from 3,000 to 36,000; the lower figure most likely represents the population for the mid to late nineteenth century. Although population statistics are somewhat dubious, the importance of the Snake River to the survival of the Shoshone and Bannock is not. The river's waters provided fish; its plains produced roots; its upper reaches supported rich grasslands for buffalo and horses, and its bottoms afforded shelter during winter. [10]

By the time the first white explorers, fur traders, and settlers encountered the Indian groups in the early nineteenth century, historian Brigham D. Madsen suggests, the Shoshone and Bannock appeared to be at a cultural apex. Survivors of the smallpox epidemic had gained some of the advantages of white contact--primarily the horse--without the destructive aspects of white settlement. They had also adopted more of the Plains tribes's cultural traits in the form of clothing, shelter, food preparation, containers, and political organization. In the case of the latter, the Indian groups formed loosely into bands with trusted leaders. These cultural developments, perhaps, better prepared the Shoshone and Bannock for more extensive cultural changes brought by direct and more destructive contact with whites in the nineteenth century. [11]