The Reservation was established by the Treaty of July 2, 1863, at Fort Bridger, Utah. A later treaty of July 30, 1883, defined the reservation further as the land area bordered on the East by the Portneuf Mountains and on the West by Raft River. An Executive Order, July 14, 1867, set apart the Reservation for the Boise and Bruneau Bands of the Shoshone and Bannock Indian Tribes. The original 1,800,000 acres were reduced to 1,336,000 acres in 1869, and in 1900 additional land was ceded to the government leaving the existing 540,764 acres within the Reservation. The aboriginal lands included large areas of Idaho and surrounding states. Included were the Salmon and Snake River country spanning into what is now southern Idaho. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Constitution and By-laws were adopted by the Tribes and approved by the Secretary of the Interior on April 30, 1936. The Fort Hall Business Council is the official governing body of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Inc. The terms of office are two years. Each year the council elects its own chairman, vice-chair, and sergeant-at-arms.
It is located in southeastern Idaho on the Snake River plain north of Pocatello and comprises 544,000 acres over four counties: Bingham, Power, Bannock and Caribou. The Reservation is divided into five districts: Fort Hall, Lincoln Creek, Ross Fork, Gibson, and Bannock Creek. Currently, 97% of the Reservation lands are owned by the Tribes and individual Indian ownership. The tribal government offices and most tribal business enterprises are located eight miles north of Pocatello in Fort Hall.The Town of Fort Hall is small and unincorporated with an elevation of 4,754 ft. It was one of the first permanent Europe-American settlements in Idaho, established in 1834 as a trading post. Military post started in 1849. The original Fort was on the bank of the Snake River 11 miles west of the present site. It is a few miles north of Pocatello (Population 45,000). Tribal office is on the Fort Hall campus east of the townsite.
The Tribes’ ancestral hunting range extends east throughout the nearby Grand Teton and Yellowstone Basin.
Principal dialects of Shoshoni include Western Shoshoni in Nevada, Gosiute in western Utah, Northern Shoshoni in southern Idaho and northern Utah, and Eastern Shoshoni in Wyoming.
Presently, dictionaries in both the Bannock and Shoshone languages are being developed and will be an ongoing project as many words especially in the Bannock language is being discovered since very few people speak this language.
A pronunciation system is being developed that will be easy for tribal members to understand, comprehend and relate to. There is presently an International Phonetic Alphabet based system used that is hard for the general population untrained in the use of this system to understand, so changes will be made to accommodate tribal members. The language still remains one of America’s healthier indigenous languages because children are acquiring it as their first language and the Shoshone Nation is involved in keeping the language alive by teaching it in schools on the Wind River Reservation and using technology to preserve it for the future.
A recent economic impact study found that the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes government, businesses, support agencies and lands generate more than 4,000 jobs and add $330 million annually to the eastern Idaho economy. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Inc. became a federally chartered corporation under the Indian Re-organization Act on April 17, 1937.
Through its self-governing rights afforded under the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868 and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Tribes manages its own schools, post office, grocery store, waste disposal, agriculture and commercial businesses, rural transits, casinos, and more.
The Fort Hall Indian Reservation is a Federally-recognized Tribal reservation of the Shoshone & Bannock People. The Tribes are composed of several Shoshone and Bannock bands that were forced to the Fort Hall Reservation, which eventually became the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. There are approximately 5,681 enrolled tribal members with a majority living on or near the Fort Hall Reservation. Through its self-governing rights afforded under the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868 and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Tribes manages its own schools, post office, grocery store, waste disposal, agriculture and commercial businesses, rural transits, casinos, and more. The Fort Hall Business Council is the official governing body of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Inc. The terms of office are two years. Each year the council elects its own chairman, vice-chair, and sergeant-at-arms.
As of August 2015, there were 5,859 enrolled Shoshone-Bannock tribal members: of the tribal membership 4,038 reside on the Fort Hall Reservation. There are 5,762 people living on the Fort Hall Reservation. Of those 1,826 identify themselves as Non-Indian. There are a total of 1,779 households on the Fort Hall Reservation. The median age of reservation residents is 29.
Total area 546,500 acres
Tribally owned 251,890 acres
Individually owned (BIA realty, 2004) 243,480 acres
Federal trust (BIA realty, 2004) 32,632.88 acres
Population (2010 census) 5,767
Tribal Enrollment (Tribal Enrollment Department, Aug 2015) 5,859
Total labor force (2009-2013 ACS) 2,527
High school graduate or higher, (2009-2013 ACS) 7777.6%
Bachelor’s degree or higher (2009-2013 ACS) 11.5%
Unemployment rate (2009-2013 ACS) 17.6%
Per capita income (2009-2013 ACS) $16,276
he staff positions are tribal and federal hires (IHS). The total population is 6,000.
