Bannock

ETHNONYMS: Banac, Nimi, Punnush

The Bannock are a Northern Paiute-speaking minority population among the Northern Shoshone, both of whom in the past lived in southern Idaho south of the Salmon River and extending eastward into northwestern Wyoming and southwestern Montana. Most now live with the Northern Shoshone on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation near Pocatello, Idaho. They apparently lived originally in northEastern Oregon, but migrated into the general region of the Snake River where they lived among the Shoshone speakers in peaceful cooperation. In the nineteenth century they were loosely organized in seminomadic bands. They had band chiefs who inherited office through the male line subject to community approval. They shared most of their culture traits with the Northern Shoshone. Their culture was basically Basin Shoshonean with an admixture of Plateau Indian and Plains Indian traits, such as the use of the horse and of bison-hunting parties. There were about 2,500 Bannock and Shoshone Indians living on the Fort Hall Reservation in 1980. It is not known what the population breakdown is.

See also Northern Shoshone

Bibliography

Madsen, Brigham D. (1958). The Bannock of Idaho. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers.

Murphy, Robert F., and Yolanda Murphy (1986). "Northern Shoshone and Bannock." In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 11, Great Basin, edited by Warren L. d'Azevedo, 284-307. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.