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Dissertation Information for John William Heaton

NAME:
- John William Heaton

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Arizona State University (USA) (1999)

ADVISORS:
- Peter Iverson
- Albert L. Hurtado

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Robert A. Trennert Jr.

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Power and identity: The emergence of a Shoshone-Bannock community at Fort Hall, 1867-1939

Abstract: In 1867, the federal government created Fort Hall Reservation in southeast Idaho for Shoshones and Bannocks of Idaho and Utah. For centuries, the Indians of this region had developed a complex culture and subsistence patterns in response to a rugged environment. The ability to adjust to the haphazard conditions of their territory proved crucial to their survival as a distinct social group. Horses and firearms, obtained as a result of contact with whites, provided new opportunities for Shoshone-Bannock adaptation. Shoshone-Bannocks increased their material wealth, military strength, and territorial limits. During this process, however, they also grew increasingly dependent on Americans for supplies and technology. The decline of the fur trade in the 1830s and the subsequent seizure of Indian lands by Americans placed the Shoshone-Bannocks in a difficult situation. They were forced to accept confinement at Fort Hall and government supervision.

Shoshone-Bannock history, however, did not end in the 1870s. Using Fort Hall agency records, journals, interviews, and ethnographies, this dissertation analyzes the Shoshone-Bannock response to the allotment era. Between the 1870s and 1940s, the Indians of Fort Hall faced an aggressive assault on their culture in the form of a government assimilation campaign that brought hardship, deprivation, and despair. Shoshone-Bannocks did not concede defeat. Although this period in Indian history has been viewed as the Indian nadir, the Shoshone-Bannocks established an infrastructure for a revitalized tribal identity, culture, and economy. They developed new strategies to protect their interests, found ways to circumvent destructive and divisive aspects of government policy, and transformed their economic and political institutions in response to the industrialization of American society. By the mid 1930s, the Shoshone-Bannocks recovered a remarkable degree of sovereignty and home rule, took advantage of their natural resources to develop a modern cattle industry, and united the various bands and factions of the reservation community under a new tribal government. The Shoshone-Bannock experience transcends the boundaries of Fort Hall, adding to the patterns of local, regional, and national history of the twentieth century.


MPACT Scores for John William Heaton

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TA = 0
calculated 2008-05-05 18:35:55

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Students under John William Heaton

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None