History Corner

History is an interesting thing. I’ve read pretty much every book, every article, every newspaper and every scrap of information I could find about local history, and to be honest, some of what passes for history is just nonsense. Some of it stems from the tendency of early settlers to have a vision of themselves and their roll in history that seems to have been influenced by dime novels and whatever else the popular culture of the day promulgated. The very name of the town of Council is based on such nonsense.

The name “Council” begins with a misunderstanding of Native American / Indian culture that was so deep, and so impossible to reconcile, that it’s almost impossible to overstate. But it worked both ways; Indians could not comprehend Euro-American society either.

The town’s name came from early prospectors coming through the valley on their way to gold fields north of here – maybe in the late 1860s, or more likely in the early 1870s – and seeing hundreds of Indian tee pees and thousands of horses spread out across the valley just north of the present town. One of those witnesses to this gathering was Perry Clark – a member of the Idaho Territorial Legislature and later an Indian Valley school teacher. Wrongly assuming that the Indians were holding “council meetings,” he named the place the “Council Valley.”

If any of the Indians were holding anything like a council meeting, it would have been incidental to the reason they were gathered here. The council meeting assumption was based on European ideas of how groups of people organize and deal with each other, and they shoe-horned their ignorance of Northwest native culture into this council meeting idea. The Indians met here to trade and party and harvest salmon.

This huge gathering of natives was a transplanted version of a trade gathering that had occurred for many years in the general area south of here where five major rivers join the Snake River: the Boise, Payette and Weiser Rivers from the east and north, and the Owyhee and Malheur Rivers from the west and south. Historian Spike Erikson called this area the “Six River” area. In the Shoshoni language, that area was known as “Sehewoki’i.” (It would be interesting to know exactly how that was pronounced.) In English the term means something like “willows standing in rows like running water.”

Historian, Sven Liljeblad, said that after the acquisition of horses (around 1750), the Sehewoki’i “became the most important center of inter-tribal horse trade west of the Rockies.” He said it started early in the summer when that area was one of the earliest locations of salmon runs. He said the Nez Perce came with their famous horses to trade. The eastern Shoshoni, who hunted buffalo, came “loaded with supplies of dried meat.” The Paiute brought “neatly flaked arrowheads from the famous Glass Butte,” about 60 miles west of Burns, Oregon. Liljeblad said these gatherings occurred in connection with salmon fishing and harvesting camas, and added, “For a month or two, peaceful and busy trading alternated with ceremonial dancing, gambling, and merrymaking.” No mention of council meetings.

This big trade rendezvous was moved to the Council Valley after the Six Rivers area started to become settled and conflicts arose between the races.

The main tribes that then gathered in the Council Valley were the various branches and relatives of the Shoshoni tribe (Bannock, Lemhi, etc.), Nez Perce and those from the Umatilla Reservation (northeastern Oregon), but a number of other tribes also participated at various times. Over 2,000 Indians would meet here, sometimes coming from hundreds of miles away. Observers noted that the vast horse herds outnumbered the people at the campsites.

One of the most ludicrous bits of nonsense recorded as “history” was this: “No tribe ever hunted this valley or fished the streams until Council Time, when the forests and streams were called on to yield their food supply for the common good of all the tribes present. Tribal wars were halted at Council time as no hostilities were permitted here, the war would be resumed later unless as was often the case the war was settled by the ‘Chiefs’ under the Council Tree.”

It’s a little hard to even know where to start to unravel that. First, local natives harvested salmon and camas and any other resource here whenever the proper season came around.

Next, whether there was a Council Tree or Trees, is a question I will address in another column.

Lastly, it only makes sense that people gathered for trade and a good time were not fighting each other, other than a few personal squabbles that resulted from arguments over whose horse was faster or who won the last gambling game. Of course if alcohol was involved, all bets were off.

The statement that tribal “wars” were halted may contain some very small grain of truth, as there is at least one account of Nez Perce and Bannock delegations at the Council Valley gathering in 1872 making some kind of agreement of peace and to have the “right to visit the other.” But to call these gatherings council meetings, just really misses the point.

More next week.