Bannock County, Idaho - Chapter 2: Some Natural History, 1915

Chapter 2: Some Natural History

Nature is the greatest of all historians. She is alike the most accurate and interesting. Her pen is the impress of time, and in characters more durable than the most lasting creations of man, she has written the story of the ages as they rolled slowly by. Impartial, unprejudiced, and in this respect omniscient, she has patiently and unerringly recorded a history more ancient than that of primeval man, more valuable than that of the proudest monarchy. And so, having in the previous chapter traced Bannock county from an unlocated spot in an unexplored desert to a settled and civilized community of fixed limits, let us now examine the scene of our story more closely, and try to read something of what Natur.; has written there.

The sheltered canyon mouth in which our city is built was once the bed of a huge lake, larger than many present day seas. Fish and prehistoric water animals, uncanny and awe-inspiring monsters, could we see them today, once sought their prey where now our houses raise their sheltering roofs. The benches that today are advertised as desirable building sites, were at one time the sloping shores of an inland sea. Could we but read the romance of rock and soil in all its detail, surely the most lurid fiction of man would pale by comparison.

The westernmost point of Bannock county is bounded by the Snake river, far-famed for the beauty of its valley and the rich gold deposits therein. The character of these deposits has puzzled prospectors and miners for many years, because unlike all other placer fields, it maintains a uniform fineness and coloring from mouth to source.

In the Engineering and Mining Journal for January 25, 1902, Mr. Robert Bell, a well known mining expert of this state, published an article entitled: "The Origin of the Fine Gold of Snake River." This article was reprinted in the Pocatello Tribune, February 15. 1902, from which we quote, in part :

"One of the most plausible theories that have been suggested touching the origin of this extensive distribution of the precious metal was advanced by Captain N. L. Turner, a West Point man, who spent considerable time investigating the problem in the early eighties. Captain Turner advanced the theory that the gold was originally held in solution by the waters of a great inland sea or lake that occupied the Snake river valley subsequent to the Miocene period and that the gradual and repeated evaporation of -this great body of water by subsequent lava flows resulted in the precipitation of its metallic contents, generally and evenly over its basin area. This theory would seem to account for the uniform size and quality of the golden colors so generally disseminated throughout the enormous acreage of fine gravel beds through which the Snake river now courses.

"The geological record of the rocks left along the borders of this stream offer conclusive evidence of a landlocked body of water. This great body of water, which might aptly be called Lake Idaho, was created by the closing of the lower valley by a great dam of brown Columbia lava, 6,500 feet high, now plainly exposed by erosion."

The highest level of this lake was about 6,000 feet, and its extent 500 miles in length from "Weiser to the foot of the Rocky Mountain range, and 150 miles in width. Its deepest point was over 4,000 feet.

Mr. Bell goes on to say: "This lake suffered numerous and extensive variations of level during the Tertiary period. Some of the more recent horizons are still exposed at Pocatello, where on either side of the Portneuf estuary, in plain sight from the depot, well defined benches or terraces of shore-line gravel are left exposed one hundred feet above the town; and a succession of low stepterraces of lake-shore gravel, cut by the main track of the Oregon Short Line railroad between Pocatello and American Falls, plainly indicate the rapid recession of the lake levels of this period, and its final drainage and complete obliteration by the erosion of the Shake river channel to its present level.

"Prior to the inception of the great floods of black lava that have filled the upper valley (near Pocatello)), the shore lines and basin area of Lake Idaho were almost all composed of granite and Palaeozie formation. These formations were rich in placer and quartz gold."

But gold is not the only valuable mineral deposit in Bannock county. Situated at the mouth of Sulphur canyon, five miles east of the town of Soda Springs, is a group of soda springs with associated deposits of native sulphur. These mines were worked in the late nineties and in the years 1901 and 1902 a considerable amount of sulphur was taken from them, but the enterprise was finally abandoned. The United States Geo-

"The failure of an apparently well backed attempt to develop these deposits will render improbable any further attempts in the immediate future. It is extremely doubtful if the deposits can be profitably worked * * in competition with the relatively high-grade deposits of Wyoming and Utah."

The same bureau, in Part I of its publications for 1909, speaks more hopefully of the salt deposits in Bannock county. In an article on this subject, Carpel L. Breger says:

"Valuable areas of salt-bearing land lie along the "Wyoming-Idaho border in Bannock county, Idaho. In the old days, before the advent of railroads in the west, relatively large amounts of salt were boiled from the brine springs in this region and were hauled by ox team to supply Idaho and Montana mining camps. The emigrants to the northwest along the Lander route also drew upon this region for their salt. Indeed, some forty years ago, in the reports of the Hayden survey, this area was briefly described as containing the finest salt works west of the Mississippi. In those days as much as 200,000 pounds of salt was boiled per month, selling

Col. Lander, mentioned above, after whom a street in Poeatello has been named, led a government expedition through these parts in 1863, and F. V. Hayden, whose name has been given to Hayden street, Poeatello, conducted a United States geological and geographic survey in this country in 1872.

".Since then, however, the area has decreased in importance. The railroads have passed it by; other salt works - those of the Great Salt Lake region - have taken its markets on account of easier railroad connection.

"Interest in these salt deposits has recently been revived, owing to the discovery of rock salt beneath some brine springs. James Splawn and H. Hokanson, in deepening these springs in 1902, encountered a formation of rock salt six feet below the surface and this has been penetrated for a thickness of twenty-six feet without reaching the bottom. The exceptional purity of the salt, its cheapness of production, and the probability of railroad connections in the near future, lend interest to the deposits of the entire district.

"As to quality, salt can be easily obtained here which is above the average in chemical purity. This salt could be produced most cheaply and (28)

"At present the market for the salt of the area described is limited to the immediate vicinity. It could, however, command the markets of eastern Idaho, western Wyoming, and much of Montana.

The vicinity adjacent to Pocatello is rich in mineral deposits, but most of them lie on the Indian reservation upon which white men are not allowed to trespass. In his "History of Idaho," Mr. Hiram T. French speaks as follows of the mining resources of Bannock county:

"Many outeroppings in the mountains near Pocatello give promise of most fabulous richness. Many assays from the rock have been made, and they run up into the thousands. The agent in charge of the reservation, however, has been strict in enforcing the treaty laws. In the summer of 1893 a company of Pocatello men discovered a copper ledge of marvelous promise, on Belle Marsh creek, on the reservation, and made a determined effort to work it. They put a force of men to work there and uncovered a ledge for a distance of a hundred feet, finding a well-defined ledge of wonderfully rich copper ore. They worked it until twice warned off by the Indian agent, and quit only when they were finally threatened with ar- rest. During the same summer a strong company of capitalists of Pocatello, Butte and Salt Lake City organized and made an effort to secure a lease of the mineral lands on the reservation; but other men in Pocatello, who had been watching prospects and opportunity for years, entered a protest and the interior department at Washington refused to grant the lease. The same year a Pocatello organization made an attempt to obtain permission to develop mines on this reservation, but failure likewise attended this only when they were finally threatened with arrest. In 1891 some very rich galena was discovered about two miles east of Pocatello, and this created a veritable stampede of miners who began digging vigorously. The signs were most encouraging, but the Indian agent again came to the front and drove the men from the reservation. According to the testimony of all the old timers in this region there are many rich deposits of the respective valuable minerals in nearly all the mountains of Bannock county. Apparently there is enough of coal and asbestos deposit here to make a whole community rich."

Pocatello 's railroad and ranching interests alone insure the development of a prosperous and fair-sized city, and in the immediate attention demanded by these activities, the mining possibilities of the neighborhood seem for the time to have fallen into the background. The day will come, however, when the Indian reservation will be thrown open, and when that day does come, a new source of wealth will be released which might easily place Pocatello well in the front rank of western cities.

In the southeastern counties of Idaho there lies an extensive shoreline of middle carboniferous limestones and shales, which has been outlined by the United States Geological Survey, and a very large portion of which is contained in Bannock county. This in its entirety composes the largest phosphate field in the world, the rock phosphate of the deposit being seventy per cent pure, in beds of from three to eight feet thick. In December, 1908, the secretary of the interior withdrew from all kinds of entry 4,541,300 acres of land, part of which extends over the Utah line, pending an examination of their phosphate resources. During the summer of 1909, the United States Geological Survey conducted field work on this area, which resulted in the restoration of some of these lands and the withdrawal of others. The total area now withheld is 2,551,399 acres.

Bannock county are original sedimentary formations made when this part of the earth was still under water. Since then other rock-forming sediments have accumulated, so that thousands of feet of subsequent strata have overlain them. Deformation of the earth's surface has broken these strata, which originally lay flat. Hence these rock-phosphate deposits resemble coal and limestone, rather than ore deposits, such as veins or lodes. No entirely satisfactory explanation of their source or manner of accumulation has yet been given.

The value of these deposits will be more readily understood when it is known that prior to their discovery the total known supply in the United States was barely sufficient to last forty years. In addition to this, most of the deposits were in the control of European investors, which threatened to put the American farmer at the mercy of foreign speculators.

In his book entitled, "The Conservation of Natui'al Resources of the United States," Professor Van Hise, of the University of Wisconsin, says: "The most fundamental of the resources of this nation is the soil, which produces our food and clothing, and one of the most precious of the natural resources of America, having a value inestimably greater than might be supposed from the

Phosphoric acid is essentially a soil fertilizer. It is really nothing1 else than a rich manure, as the odoriferous smell given off when two pieces are rubbed together amply testifies. The enormous deposits of this powerful fertilizer practically insure the agricultural future of Idaho. The secretary of the interior, in a recent report, said: "The present crop yields of the virgin fields of the west under irrigation cannot be expected to be maintained by irrigation water alone, and the intensive methods of that region will within a few years have to figure on artificial fertilizers to maintain their great yield."

The agricultural soil of the county is composed largely of disintegrated lava and volcanic ash, which, when irrigated, is very fertile. The principal waterways are the Portneuf, the Snake, and the Belle Marsh, which are fed by many mountain tributaries.

in our second examined the nature of the country and what resources it contains, we will in the third chapter turn our attention to its first inhabitants, and consider the case of our brother, "the noble Indian."

Chapter Hi The Indians

Some years ago, when life was young and all the world one luring and beckoning field of adventure, the writer of this modest history spent five dollars to hear Dan Beard, Ernest Seton Thompson and others, lecture on "Woodcraft and Indians." They 6poke of the "noble red man," and pictured a romantic and heroic being of high ideals and chivalrous life, whose adventures were clean and admirable, whose domestic life was happy and blameless. At least one member of the audience went home from those lectures and shed bitter tears of remorse and shame because it was his sad lot to be a cowardly pale-face. "We mention the incident because it serves to illustrate the nonsense that is published broadcast for mercenary reasons, by people who really know the truth.

This chapter does not pretend to be a scholarly dissertation on the American Indian, but is rather intended to preserve the first impressions made by the Indians on an interested and uninitiated observer. For the salient and noticeable traits of these people are more likely to

The Arabs of the Sahara desert, like our own Bannock Indians, wrap themselves closely in camels-hair blankets during the hottest weather, which as everyone knows, is extreme in North Africa. They also wrap their heads in turbans, and explain the custom by saying that it protects them from the scorching rays of the eun. Otherwise their skin would blister and dry up with the reflected heat of the desert. This is probably true, and it is no doubt for some similar reason that the Indians wear blankets all through the summer. It has been said that the Indians use a powder of vegetable or mineral character with which they rub the inside of their blankets, thereby rendering them impervious to heat rays. Certain it is that an Indian, clad in a blanket, is seldom seen to perspire, even in the hottest weather, while his civilized brother drips just as profusely as a white man.

In like manner all strange and seemingly fantastic and heathen customs have their birth in reason, if we can only detect it. The Indian, for instance, paints his face as a protection from the dry and arid western winds, which make some artificial application of grease necessary. Let

Some people maintain that the Indian is equal in intelligence to the white man. Common sense tells us that this is not true. No race mentally equal to the Caucasian would remain for centuries in baibarism and turn from civilization even when it is thrust upon them. It is sometimes said that an Indian is a white man's equal because he can pass the intelligence test of a twelve year old white boy, this modicum of intelligence being scientifically sufficient to rescue a white man from the ranks of the mentally deficient. A man might almost as well be insane as to escape insanity by a hair's breadth. And so, also, of his intellect.

An Episcopalian missionary to the Indians on the Fort Hall reservation, said in this connection: "I noticed when I first began to work among these Indians that I could establish no footing of equality between myself and the bucks, although the latter seemed to be on the most familiar terms with my twelve-year-old boy. This puzzled me for some time, and I began to watch the intercourse between my boy and the Indians. Then I discovered the secret. The mentality of my boy and of the Indians was on a par. The red men, although

For this reason and because of the results so far attained, it seems very questionable whether it is wise to attempt to civilize these people, in the ordinary meaning of the term. Christianize them by all means. But two men practicing the principles of Christianity can live as happily in a wig-wam as in a palace - perhaps more so, and there is no reason why we should want the squaws to wear split-skirts because our own women wear them. There is but little choice, and perhaps the squaw has the best of it at that. The South Sea islander does not want us to wear rings in our noses because he does, and it seems hardly fair that we should wish to throttle the poor Indian with the shackle that civilization calls a collar, just because we are foolish enough to wear collars. Christianity alone will bring these people as much civilization as they need for both their happiness and salvation, and that is more than many of our own boastful race possess. For the rest, the Indian, to his honor, be it said, is a child of nature, who loves his sagebrush and desert freedom, and it is no kindness to tear him from the life he loves so well. No wonder he hates the white man. Most of us would hate people who insisted upon making canary-birds, guaranteed to sing in the parlor, out of us, when we wanted to be eagles. Perhaps it is some such reason as this that leads the Indians on the reservation to despise those who live among the whites. The average Indian who hangs around Pocatello is certainly inferior to his brother in the sage brush.

Although the Indian is a lazy man, who makes his squaw do most of the work, he is not without some strain of generosity. The squaw usually follows along some ten paces behind her husband, and it is no uncommon thing to see the buck eating a bag of apples or other delicacies and throwing the cores to his faithful squaw, who devours them with relish.

The Bannocks, in common with all other Indians, have a decided sense of beauty, - a trait that is seldom noticed, although one of the best possessed by the red-men. This artistic instinct finds play in the basket and bead work done by these people. Many of their designs combine great beauty with great simplicity, and display a taste that is far from uncultured. In their names, too, the Indians show a love of the beautiful. Where in the whole wide world can more beautiful names be found than

Wyoming and Arizona, Idaho and Oregon, Nevada and Oklahoma? Resonant and poetical names they are, suggestive of a bigness quite commensurate with the vastness of the states they name. It has been said that the west, inspired by the beauty of her Indian names, will some day produce a new school of poetry, made possible only by the poetry of the wild, free red-men.

As in all frontier communities, many amusing incidents have transpired between the Indians and whites. Probably everyone in Pocatello knows "''Stonewall" Johnson and probably no one in Pocatello knows horseflesh better than he. One day Mr. Johnson bought a horse from an Indian. The animal had seven diseases - all fatal - but Mr. Johnson, with infinite skill and patience, gradually cured him of them all. He nursed the dying beast back to health and made a valuable horse of him. Prom time to time the Indian dropped around to inspect the animal. One fine day, when the cure was fully effected, the Indian deliberately entered the field where the horse was grazing in care of Mr. Johnson's little boy, mounted and rode away, leaving the youngster to carry the news home. Mr. Johnson has never seen either horse or Indian since. It is said that the only way to bind a bargain with the Indians is by a deed of sale. On the other hand, the missionary previously mentioned, says that he would rather lend money to an Indian than to a white man, as the former never fails to repay the loan.

We have spoken of the Indian's sense of beauty. He is also cruel, and his cruelty is written on his face. Imagine, then, the dismay and terror of a missionary's wife, who, with her husband, alighted one dark night at a little way station just north of Pocatello. the depot was. locked, and while the missionary went to look for a night's lodging, his wife disposed herself comfortably on a soft and well-filled gunnysack lying or« the station platform. Presently the gunnysack moved, stretched a pair of moccasined legs, and said "Woof!" The lady eventually recovered, bu* whether the Indian did, the story does not tell.

While possessing much innate nobility, the Indian sometimes appears in a ridiculous light. It is said that when a part of the reservation was thrown open a few years ago, and the red-men reimbursed in cash, many of them invested their money in vehicles. They bought every old wagon for miles around, and when the supply ran low, took what they could get. So it happened that one buck bought an old hearse. In the body of this he was wont to carry his numerous papooses, who gazed at the passing throng with their squat faces pressed flat against the windows, while the proud parents occupied the driver's box.

These people have a strange aversion to the camera, probably as to something uncanny and not understood. They believe that to be photographed saps the strength. At the last sun dance held in the Bottoms near Pocatello, it was necessary to pay one old centenarian five dollars to induce him to pose for one snapshot.

Among the common-places of former days that are fast passing away are the wild horses. These animals Btill roam the plains of Bannock county, but they are becoming more scarce every year. They travel in bands of fifteen or twenty and are very bold. They will approach within close range of a human being and feed unconcernedly under his gaze, but at the sound of the human voice they become terror-stricken and stampede away in great confusion. Some daring men rope these animals during the summer months and break them in for saddle use, but their wild blood is never really tamed. It is necessary to break their spirit with cruelty before they are of any use, and then they are apt to relapse at any time. When one escapes from captivity it is said that he will travel hundreds of miles with enerring instinct back to the plains whence he was taken.

The fact that a large portion of the land included in Bannock county was set apart for and inhabited by Indians retarded its settlement for many years. The Indians were hostile to the white men, few of whom settled in the vicinity, except employes of the stage lines runing from Salt Lake to Butte, government agents, etc.

The Shoshone - in the Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1913, this name is spelt Shoshoni - and Bannock Indians now living on the Fort Hall reservation are types of the great Lemhi family. The Shoshone, or Snake Indians, are fairly honest, intelligent and peaceable, although all the Indians west of the Rocky Mountains are inferior to those living to the east. The Bannocks are more cunning, sly, and restless than the Shoshones. The Shoshone family, of which the Bannock is a branch, are thought to have come originally from California. While the name Shoshone is commonly supposed to mean "snake," some authorities hold that it means "inland." These Indians are more pretentious in dress and ornamentation than those living farther south, and possess no mean skill in the art of pottery. Ross, an authority on Indian affairs, says: "The Snakes have been considered as a rather dull and degraded people, weak in intellect and wanting in courage. And this opinion is very probable to casual observer, at first sight or when they are seen in small numbers, for their apparent timidity, grave and reserved habits, give them an air of stupidity. An intimate knowledge of the Snake character will, however, place them on an equal footing with that of other kindred nations, both in respect to their mental faculties and moral attributes."

The different tribes or families of these Indians speak different dialects, but have a sign language that is understood by all. Although stolid and silent in their intercourse with white men, they are vivacious and even garrulous among themselves. The play of their hands when they talk with signs resembles the conversation of deaf mutes.

Another writer says: "The Bannocks of Idaho are highly intelligent and lively, the most virtuous and unsophisticated of all the Indians in the United States."

These Indians were at least intelligent enough to devise a system of hieroglyphics, examples of which are still to be seen on the lava rocks to (44) the west and south of Pocatello, although the Indians of today seem to have lost the art of reading them, and their contents remain a mystery. They are recent enough in execution to have survived the wear of wind and weather, but how interesting it would be if we could read the crude romance they tell - some memorable page of barbarous history or some forgotten tragedy of desert life !

There are in the neighborhood of Pocatello also some old Indian forts - crude constructions of dug-outs and mountain boulders, interesting only on account of their origin. The curious may find one about two miles out of Pocatello, to the left of the road that winds back from West Sublette street. It probably differs in no way from those built by the Indians of this vicinity two thousand years ago, and were they to construct another today it would be impossible except by age, to tell the new from the old. Civilization rolls on apace, and today's triumph of mechanism is the scrap heap of tomorrow, but the stolid Indian, imperturbable and uninterested, remains much the same, yesterday, today and apparently forever.