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HISTORY: More on Albright column

| August 15, 2014 9:00 PM

I write to take issue with the Monday, Aug. 11 story, “Chief Pocatello forced to live on reservation in Idaho,” written by Syd Albright and reprinted in indianz.com.

Albright writes: “Chief Pocatello was leader of the Lemhi Indians that roamed the Salmon River Mountains and surrounding areas. They were part of a larger Shoshone Nation which some called ‘fierce and bloodthirsty.’ The Shoshone did indeed attack and kill white settlers, and white settlers heading west along the Oregon and California trails.”

Without addressing the rest of the article, let me focus on the first paragraph. (1) Pocatello (1815-1884) was not the leader of the “Lemhi Indians.” (2) These people, “the mixed band of Shoshone, Bannock and Sheepeaters,” did not “roam” the Salmon River Mountains. (3) Historical quotes abound about the peaceful nature of these people, and (4) They did not kill non-Indians along the Oregon and California trails.

The leader of the “Lemhi Indians,” more accurately, the “mixed band of Shoshone, Bannock and Sheapeater” people, was Chief Tendoy (1834-1907). They lived in several villages and campsites in the Lemhi Valley and in southwestern Montana. Rather than “roaming,” these people made purposeful, annual visits to salmon-filled rivers and creeks in central Idaho, hunted mountain sheep, dug roots at camas fields near Yellowstone Park, and made annual buffalo hunting trips beyond their hunting campsites in southwestern Montana out onto the buffalo commons east of the Yellowstone River.

The people referred to by many non-Indians as “the Lemhi Shoshone” are really the 600-800 people comprising the mixed band of Shoshone, Bannock and Sheepeaters — people removed from the Lemhi Valley 220 miles south to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in 1907.

They were distinct enough to have signed their own treaty with the federal government at Laurin/Virginia City on Sept. 24, 1868.

And the Bear River Massacre of 1863 involving Col. Connor and Chief Sagwitchs’ people had focused on problems, dynamics and people far distant from the peaceful mixed band living several hundred miles to the north.

My comments are not intended to offend or antagonize, but my mixed-band friends now living at Fort Hall, people whose ancestors come from the Lemhi Valley, smart under historical accounts that depict them unfairly and inaccurately.

ORLAN J. SVINGEN

Professor, History Dept.

Washington State University

Pullman