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The Fort Hall Indian Reservation is an
Indian reservation of the Shoshone and
Bannock people in Idaho. It is located in
southeastern Idaho on the Snake River Plain
north of Pocatello, and comprises 814.874
square miles of land area in four counties:
Bingham,
Power,
Bannock, and
Caribou counties. Founded in 1863,
it is named for Fort Hall, a trading post
that was an important stop along the Oregon
Trail and California Trail in the middle
19th century. The ruins of the fort are
located on the reservation. The community of
Fort Hall, along Interstate 15, is the
largest population center on the
reservation.
Probably
one-third of the Indians on this reservation
are mixed bloods between Bannocks and
Shoshones, and in classifying them the
question as to their parents' blood is
settled by noting with which band they
associate, they wear plenty of beads, brass
trinkets; feathers, and gaudy blankets, and
positively refuse to work, they are put down
as Bannocks; but if, on the other hand, they
take kindly to labor and try to dress and
live like the white people they go on the
records as Shoshones. On this reservation
the latter out number the former almost 2 to
1.
This
reservation was established 21 years ago.
Two years later it was assigned to the
charge of the Catholics. During the year
following the, arrival of the Catholics the
agency was visited quite often by a French
Catholic priest, who christened a, great
many of the young children and tried to
teach the older ones religion and its
duties, all of which has long since been
forgotten. Since that time there have been
occasional sermons preached and interpreted
to them by ministers of the several creeds,
but they do not take to the white mans
doctrine very readily.
The Fort Hall reservation embraces
804,270(b) acres of land: one-tenth is wild
hay land, two-tenths rocky, mountainous
land, upon which grows considerable scrubby
pine as well as cedar, The land designated
farming land requires irrigation, and
nothing can grow without it except wild hay
on the low bottom lands along Snake river.
As the land is close to an extensive mining
region, crops of all kinds bring a better
price than they do in the middle or eastern
states.
Gold dust is known to exist in paying
quantities on the southwest portion of the
reservation along the banks of Snake River.
It is known as Snake River "flue dust". Much
of time mining ground close to the,
reservation has been worked with rockers,
using copper plates and quicksilver, the
millers making from $2 to $10 per day.
This is a good stock country, and cattle
killed for the Indians from the range are
nearly as fat as stall fed cattle. The
greatest revenue of these Indians is from
the sale of hay. They, have this season,
with their own: teams and machines, put up
at least 2,500 tons, which is being sold to
stock men at $5 per ton in the stack.
Indians wile raise stock sometimes reserve a
little hay for their own use, but usually
sell it all and then take the chances for
their own .stock, The result last Winter was
that they lost at least 20 per cent of their
ponies and cattle.*
*Idaho
Indians in the 1890 Census |
