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Idaho's
Native Americans
Idaho's
Native American history is very extensive. The land
that would become Idaho remained untouched by white
men until 1805 and was not settled by Americans
until the late 19th century. Idaho's Indians were
able to live without interruption for much longer
than their counterparts in the eastern part of the
United States.
Idaho's
prehistoric Native Americans are separated into
three groups. These tribes existed between 15,000
B.C. and A.D. 1800, before the arrival of white
people to the area. The Lewis and Clark expedition
of 1805 brought the first white men to the area
and signalled the onset of a new period for the
Native Americans that included influences from Americans
and Europeans.
The
first Native Americans in Idaho are identified as
Big-Game Hunters. The period that they lived in
lasted from about 15,000 B.C. to 6,000 B.C.(1)
This group received its name from the large game,
such as the mastodon, that they hunted for food.
Along with hunting large animals, the Big-Game Hunters
fished and gathered wild plants. They lived a nomadic
life and followed the migratory patterns of the
animals they hunted. They used bones, wood, and
stone to create weapons and tools including knives,
scrapers, and axes. This tool-making ability evolved
throughout the period. They learned from neighboring
Plains People how to make the Clovis spear point,
crucial in hunting large animals. As the numbers
of large mammals decreased, the native lifestyle
would evolve into a small-game hunting society.
During
the Archaic Period (6,000 B.C. - A.D. 500), Idaho
experienced a dramatic climate change that affected
the land and its people dramatically. During this
time, the entire planet experienced a warming trend
that lasted for nearly 2,000 years. Large mammals,
such as the woolly mammoth and the mastodon, became
extinct. The ice in the mountains melted, making
the rivers of the area much larger. Rivers became
increasingly important in the lives of the Archaic
People as their diet staples shifted to fish and
mussels. These people also hunted animals and gathered
wild plants. There is also evidence that the people
of this era traded with nearby tribes. They lived
in small, self-sufficient family units where men
and women had specific duties. Women traditionally
did the cooking and gathering of roots, seeds, and
berries. Men were responsible for hunting and making
tools. The Archaic People had not yet learned how
to grow crops, so they depended entirely on their
hunting, fishing, and gathering skills to survive.
The
last prehistoric period in the history of Idaho's
natives is the Late Period (A.D. 500 - 1805). Being
descendants of the earlier Archaic tribes, these
natives who mixed with the in-migration of desert
people during this time form what is known as the
modern tribes of Idaho. These people are ancestors
of the tribes that existed at the time of Lewis
and Clark's journey through Idaho in 1805. As the
drought that began with the climate change in the
Archaic Period continued, many natives moved into
the Snake River Plain. These people hunted, gathered,
and fished for food. The descendents of the Archaic
People in southern Idaho became the Shoshone, the
Cascade group of the Archaic Indians became the
Nez Perce, and the Desert People became the Western
Shoshone and the Northern Paiute.
In
1805, the estimated Native population of Idaho was
between 6,000 and 10,000.(2) In the
north lived the Kootenai, Pend d'Oreille, Coeur
d'Alene, and Nez Perce tribes. The Kootenai were
the northernmost and smallest tribe in Idaho. They
are linguistically distinct from all other Idaho
tribes. The Pend d'Oreille tribe lived south of
the Kootenai and ranged into Montana, Washington,
and Canada. They belonged to the Kalispel linguistic
group. Below the Pend d'Oreille lived the Coeur
d'Alene. This tribe was related to the Flat Heads
of Montana and the Spokane of Washington. They lived
in an area that spanned four million acres between
Washington and Montana. The southernmost northern
tribe was the Nez Perce. They lived between the
Bitterroot and the Blue Mountains.
Because
of shared climate and natural resources, the northern
Native American tribes maintained similar living
conditions. During the summer they fished for salmon,
steelhead, trout, and sturgeon. They would dry the
salmon and save it for the winter months. Tribesmen
migrated to Montana to participate in communal bison
hunts. They also hunted bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain
goat, bears, moose, elk, deer, caribou, and small
game. Fowl were also an import part of their diet.
The northern tribes to supplement their diet gathered
roots, huckleberries, chokecherries, serviceberries,
blackberries, and wild rhubarb. These northern tribes
lived in small, individualistic bands, lead by a
headman. Later, after the introduction of the horse
in the 1850s, the family and clan dynamics changed
significantly. Groups were organized under the leadership
of powerful chiefs and they adapted to following
herds of buffalo.
The
southern tribes, which included the Shoshone, Northern
Paiute, and the Bannock, also shared similar characteristics.
The climate was much more arid than in the northern
region of Idaho, forcing the southern tribes to
be frugal and resourceful. They lived much differently
than the northern tribes. They dwelled in grass
huts instead of houses, made pottery instead of
weaving baskets, and used a grinding stone instead
of a mortar. For food, southern tribes fished for
salmon, gathered roots, nuts and seeds, hunted small
game, and ate insects. After the introduction of
the horse in the mid-18th century, they began to
hunt bison in the Great Plains, as well as other
large game such as deer and bear. Unlike other southern
tribes, the Northern Paiute did not ride horses.
Their environment was so arid that they ate the
occasional horse that came into their territory.
They were forced to hunt small game, such as rabbits,
gophers, mink, squirrel, and birds. Insects were
also part of their diet.
Idaho
was home to an expansive Native American population
that had evolved in the region over thousands of
years. The encroachment and settlement of Americans
decimated the native way of life. By the end of
the 19th century, all of Idaho's Indian population
had been forced onto reservations.
Early Explorers
The
exploration of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
are synonymous with American western history. Their
journey from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean was one
of the country's most important expeditions. It
marked the beginning of the westward movement that
successfully populated the continental United States
by the end of the century. It was on this expedition
that Lewis and Clark became the first white men
to see and set foot in what would later become the
state of Idaho. The Lewis and Clark expedition included
27 soldiers, a half-Indian interpreter named George
Drouilliard, and Clark's black slave York. A corporal,
five privates, and several French boatmen accompanied
the party for the first season of the journey, leaving
early to bring back specimens and information. They
left St. Louis on May 21, 1804. They reached the
villages of the Mandan and Minnetree Indians of
the Dakotas in October where they stayed for the
winter. They continued their journey the following
April. Toussaint Charbonneau, his Shoshone wife
Sacagawea, and their baby son Jean Baptiste accompanied
the expedition to act as guides and interpreters.
They arrived in what is now Dillon, Montana on August
8, 1805. From there, Lewis and three men split from
the main group and reached the Continental Divide
on August 12. They became the first white men to
set eyes on Idaho. The party traveled into Idaho
and camped with the Shoshone, rejoining their party
on the 16th of August and going on to meet the Nez
Perce near the Clearwater River. After a brief stay
with the Nez Perce, they traveled to the junction
of the Clearwater and the Snake Rivers, and left
Idaho. However, they would returned to Idaho on
their way back to the east the following spring.
On May 5, 1806 they arrived at the mouth of Colter
Creek, in present-day Potlatch, Idaho. Again they
stayed with the Nez Perce for brief period before
departing Idaho on the Lolo Trail in June 1806.
Idaho provided a number of "firsts" for Lewis and
Clark; they became the first white men to set foot
in Idaho, they were the first to cross the Lemhi
and Lolo passes and the Bitterroot Valley, and the
first to contact the Shoshone and Nez Perce in their
homelands. The Lewis and Clark expedition became
the first of many journeys through Idaho during
the early 19th century.
The
burgeoning fur trading business in the west was
responsible for bringing other white people into
Idaho during the early 19th century. The first
fur trader to enter Idaho was David Thompson.
He arrived in Idaho just two years after Lewis
and Clark, and built the first house used by white
men in 1809. He surveyed and mapped the region
and made contact with the Pend d'Oreille, and
Kootenai tribes. Thompson continued to travel
through northern Idaho along Lake Pend d'Oreille,
Sandpoint, and Coeur d'Alene, and created the
first map of Idaho. The second fur trading post
in Idaho was built on the Snake River in 1810,
marking the beginning of the fur trade in southern
Idaho. During the next year, an agent of John
Jacob Astor's American Fur Trading Company, Wilson
Price Hunt, led a fur trapping expedition into
Idaho. Frenchmen in his group named the Teton
Mountains in southeastern Idaho.(3)
During the 1820s many fur traders traveled through
and trapped in Idaho, including the infamous mountain-man
Jedediah Smith. Many of these trappers and traders
met at the annual rendezvous in southern Idaho
to trade fur and information.
Missionaries
joined the early explorers and fur trappers in
Idaho beginning in the 1830s. The Northwest Company
sent Christianized Iroquois to introduce Idaho
tribes to Christianity. The Nez Perce, impressed
with the reading and writing skills offered at
a British mission school in Spokane, asked the
Americans to send teachers. Americans in St. Louis
misinterpreted the request and thought that they
wanted to convert. This led to the assignment
of two New England Methodists, Jason and Daniel
Lee, to the Nez Perce in 1834. Jason Lee became
the first American to conduct church service in
Idaho. The following year, two Presbyterian couples,
the Whitmans and the Spaldings, were sent to the
west by the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions. The Whitmans went to Oregon
and the Spaldings went to Idaho to set up a mission
for the Nez Perce, settling near Lewiston at Lapwai.
The Spaldings taught the Nez Perce how to read
and write in their own language and how to farm.
Catholic missionaries also came to Idaho in hopes
of converting the Indians. Pierre Jean De Smet,
of Belgium, was sent by the Jesuit order to the
Flathead country of Montana. De Smet established
St. Mary's Mission in the Bitterroot Valley in
1841, which was the first Catholic mission in
the Pacific Northwest. De Smet went on to establish
three more missions, one of which was in Idaho.
Father Nicolas Point, co-founder of St. Mary's,
established the Mission of the Sacred Heart on
the north bank of the St. Joe River in order to
convert the Coeur d'Alene Indians. The Catholics
proved much more successful in converting and
retaining Native Americans. By 1873, the Catholics
had retained 107,000 Pacific Northwest Indians;
the Protestants only 15,000.(4)
Next
Page >>
(1) Leonard J. Arrington, History
of Idaho, Volume 1, (Moscow: University of Idaho
Press, 1994), 26.
(2) Arrington, 37.
(3) Arrington, 91.
(4) Arrington, 134.
By
Rickie Lazzerini
Historian
BA History
University of California, Santa Barbara
Index
of Historical Reviews
© 2006 Rickie Lazzerini,
All Rights Reserved
This page may be freely linked to but may not
be reproduced
in any form without prior written consent from
the author.
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