Bannock people

The Bannock or Banate are a Native American tribe from the Shoshone branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. They speak the same dialect as the Northern Paiute, of which they have split off. They even called themselves Nimi Pan a'kwati, Bana'kwut or Panaiti ( "Water People "). The neighboring Shoshone Bannock also referred to as the Panaiti.

The Bannock lived with their sub- tribes, the Shohopanaiti ( " Cottonwood Bannock " - Cotton Tree Bannock or poplar - Bannock ), Yambadika ( Yap - root - eaters ), Waradika (rye - grass seed - eaters ), Penointikara (honey - eaters ) and Kutshundika ( buffalo eaters ) in the Snake River Plain in the south of present-day U.S. state of Idaho, and in adjacent parts of western Wyoming, eastern Montana and eastern Oregon. The same territory inhabited the Northern Shoshone, who were culturally almost identical. Due to the strong connection between the two peoples is also a very similar story developed.

They felt their neighboring tribes culturally and particularly superior in the war and were therefore sometimes known among whites as a pirates Indians.

The culture of the Bannock was very much like the Plain cultures. Seasonal walks in summer they led west to the Shoshonefällen to catch salmon to hunt small game and gather berries, and fall to the northeast in the Yellowstone area of Wyoming and Montana to hunt buffalo. The hunt for buffalo required a good cooperation with the Shoshone, with whom they shared a common enemy in the dreaded Blackfoot, which controlled the buffalo hunting grounds in Montana.

Before 1853 a smallpox epidemic decimated the Bannock. In 1867 they were beaten by the U.S. Army in 1869 and relocated to the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho, from which they but soon went out in the Rocky Mountains due to the high mortality. The Bannock were not numerous, they probably never reached more than 2,000 tribesmen, but they had considerable influence on their more peaceful neighbors who incited riots and raids against the whites. Hunger, frustration over the disappearance of the buffalo and the insensitive reserve policy of the U.S. government led to the 1878 Bannock War, which ended with a massacre of 140 Bannock men, women and children at Charles Ford in Wyoming.

The original culture of the Bannock did not survive the limitations of the reserve life. By 1900 there were only about 500 Bannock many of whom were married to Shoshone. Today the Bannock life back together with the Northern Shoshone in the Fort Hall Reservation. From about 6000 Bannock talking 1999 or 1631 their mother tongue.