"The People"

Native Americans once traveled through this canyon from camps on the bluffs, where they prepared grass seeds for flour, and at the Snake River's Salmon Falls about one-half mile away they fished with traps, hooks, and projectiles. They called themselves "the people" and often distinguished groups by staple foods, such as "Akai Tekka," meaning "salmon eater." Emigrant mispronunciation led to the peoples of this region being called Shoshone, Bannock, and Paiute. The Indians here were peaceful and at first helped emigrants, but as increasing numbers of travelers made game scarce and fouled water holes and camps, tensions rose and violence followed. Journal entries do not report Indians attacking anyone here, but they do indicate that some Indians were killed by emigrants. One account recalled talkative Indians, plentiful fish, and fishermen enduring intense cold with little clothing beyond jackrabbit skins, while John Steele wrote of seeing an old Indian dead from a gunshot, a man fighting on his own soil for what he considered a just and holy cause.

Hagerman, Idaho · United States