Pocatello (chief)

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Chief Pocatello, sculpture by JD Adcox

Chief Pocatello ( Shoshoni Tondzaosha ; * 1815 ; † 1884 ) was a chief of the Shoshone , an Indian tribe in western North America .

Initially, it led to attacks against Native Americans and settlers at a time of heightened aggression before making peace with the United States . After the peace agreement, he and his followers moved to the reservation in Idaho , where the tribe still lives today. In the following years, too, in the struggle for survival in the reservation, he served the Shoshone as chief.

The city of Pocatello was named after him.

Life

Pocatello was born in 1815. By the late 1840s, at a time when the United States was turning its attention to the west and increasing its presence in Utah, Pocatello was already chief of the Shoshone. Against these newly arriving settlers, he led several attacks in the Utah Territory and along the Oregon Trail . Pocatello and Brigham Young , the leaders of the Mormons , with whom Pocatello was held in high regard, made various attempts at reconciliation, but these were torpedoed by the arrival of the US Army in the Utah Territory in 1858. The tensions between settlers and indigenous peoples grew noticeably.

In January 1863 Pocatello received news of the advance of US troops from Fort Douglas under Colonel Patrick Edward Connor , who was on a penal campaign against the Shoshone. Although Pocatello managed to bring most of his people to safety , he was unable to prevent the Bear River massacre . Connor had over 350 Indians slaughtered in this battle. After being hunted down mercilessly by the US Army, Pocatello ultimately pleaded for peace for his people to prevent further bloodshed. He agreed to stop the attacks on Oregon Trail settlers and those from southeast Idaho, provided the government pays compensation for the annexed hunting and grazing grounds. In the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868, the chief sealed the relocation of his tribe to the Fort Hall reservation along the Snake River . Although the US government had promised annual support payments of $ 5,000, these payments were irregular and incomplete, so that disputes within the Shoshone over the scarce resources arose. To alleviate hunger, Pocatello had stagecoach stations raided and food stolen, for which he was briefly imprisoned, but released again immediately to prevent a war.

In 1875, in the face of famine, Pocatello led his people to the George Hill Mormon mission farm in Corinne , Utah , in the hope that a mass conversion to Mormonism would alleviate the suffering of his people. Although the missionaries readily baptized the Shoshone, including Pocatello himself, the Indians were not welcome among the non-Mormon white population. At the instigation of the residents, the US Army forced the Shoshone to return to their reservation.

In the late 1870s, Pocatello granted Jay Gould a right of way to extend the Utah and Northern Railway through the Fort Hall reservation . That expansion was fueled by the increasing flood of settlers into Idaho Territory that followed the gold rush. The town of Pocatello , which was founded on the railway line at that time, was named after the chief.

Pocatello died in 1884, presumably of old age. His body was interred in a deep well in Idaho along with his clothing, weapons, and hunting equipment. 18 horses were killed in his honor and also buried in the spring.

The name Pocatello

In 1918, John Rees published a list of Idaho places, the Idaho Nomenclature . He derived his translation of the word Pokatello from “po” street , “ka” not , and “tello” follow , which translates as he does not follow the street . According to Rees, this refers to the chief's "stealthy habits and thieving raids". An earlier reference is to Pocataro and is from 1859, when FW Lander, US Overland Wagon Road director, met Chief Pocatello and arranged for him to be released from US Army custody. Linguist Sven Liljeblad believed that Lander's encounter with Pocatello was the first reference to the name. Liljeblad denied John Rees' syllable derivation. He claims that Rees strung together incoherently words from the Shoshone language. Chief Pocatello's daughter, Jeanette Lewis, confirmed that the name had no meaning in the Shoshone language and that the chief spoke of himself as Tondzaosha, which means something like buffalo dress .

Modern covers

Pocatello is the playable leader of the Shoshone tribe in Sid Meier's Civilization V.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brigham D. Madsen: Chief Pocatello  (= Idaho yesterdays). University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho 1999, ISBN 089301222X .
  2. ↑ John Rees: Idaho Chronology, Nomenclature, Bibliography . WB Conkey Company, Chicago 1918, p. 102.
  3. ^ Brigham D. Madsen: The Northern Shoshoni . The Caxton Printers, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho 1980, p. 34.
  4. ↑ Reference Series: Pocatello's (Shoshoni) Band . Idaho State Historical Society. Archived from the original on July 2, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 10, 2013.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.history.idaho.gov
  5. ^ Civilization V Brave New World Online Manual , p. 21, Accessed April 22, 2015.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pocatello
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chief Pocatello
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chief of the Shoshone
DATE OF BIRTH 1815
DATE OF DEATH 1884