Agai'Dika, Tuku'Dika, Boshaun'Dika, Bannocks (Lemhi-Shoshone) seek Salmon land reinstatement
The next meeting will be in room 208
of the learning lab on Friday, March 28 at noon.
To register for the Run from Tendoy School to the top of Lemhi Pass - click here.
To view the calendar of events - please click here.
Sho-Ban News - 3/06/2008
Fort Hall - In 1875 President U.S. Grant established a 100 square mile (640,000 acres) reservation near Salmon (Idaho). In 1889 the United State Congress ceded the reservation back to the United States. In 1905 Chief Tendoy reluctantly agreed to move the tribe to the Fort Hall reservation. to live with the other bands Shoshone-Bannock. The (stripped of federal recognition and exiled) removal happened two years later in 1907.
Over 100 years later the people of the Agai'Dika, Tuki'Dika, Boshaun'Dika, and the Bannock band are looking to get their land reinstated. To return home to the land of their forefathers and raise their families in the place they call "home."
A meeting of the Fort Lemhi Indian Reservation Land and Restoration and Development Committee was held on Friday, Feb. 29 to discuss plans for reestablishment of the Lemhi reservation in the Salmon settlement area.
This isn't something new. back in the early 90's a committee tried to get the action for reestablishemnt off the ground but it deemed unsuccesful. The movement home has been a long time coming said Leo Ariwite. He hopes that this time the people will be able to unify and think of this as a tribal effort to work as one to make this dream a reality.
Many of the people have some sort of tie to the land. "We still have a link there. We are descendants and we have our history. We have family buried there. We go back for funerals, we hunt and fishe there, gather berries and plants. It's our home," continued Ariwite.
There is a lot of planning to be done and to start off, the committee is looking into meeting with Salmon BLM officials and others to determine where and if this effort would be a possibilty.
"This isn't something that will happen overnight," said tribal attorney Bill Bacon. "But if their was an ideal time to act, it would be now." (Due to cooperation with current Fort Hall Business Council Members)
Other factors taken into consideration are economic development. Ariwite said, "We don't want to go back as welfare recipients, we want to help contribute to the society of Salmon as we, as tribal people, have a lot to offer."
Once plans start to take effect he's hoping there will be grant money available to help in the matter.
This was something my father visioned and I hope to see it possibly come true one day, before we lose anymore of our elders," he said. The next meeting of the committee will be in room 208 of the learning lab on March 28 at noon. Bring your comments and ideas.
l 1907 - 2008
It has been 101 hundred years since Sacajawea's People the Lemhi-Shoshone were stripped of Federal Recognition and Exiled from the Lemhi Valley Indian Reservation 200 miles south to the Sho-Ban Reservation in Fort Hall (who later sold the Lemhi-Shoshone land for 7 cents an acre). This website was developed to inform the world about our struggle to return home and how life is today for Lemhi descendants living as refugees in Fort Hall, Idaho.
New Photos have been posted of Lemhi-Shoshone descendants, maps, our land, etc. Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3| Page 4
Without question, Sacajawea (Sacagawea) along with her people and their horses, were the key to the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the greatest exploration of the early American West ever undertaken by young and struggling country (United States of America). Captain Meriwether Lewis, the personal Secretary of President Jefferson wrote in his journals that Sacajawea was indispensable in their successful attempt to reach the Pacific Ocean and return.
The story of Sacajawea is so appealing that it adds the unique charm of bravery and motherhood to this early American epic journey of the Lewis and Clark.
The primary reason for the participation of Sacajawea as member of the Corps of Discovery was to facilitate the acquisition of horses (also known as spanish mustangs or the barb horse) from her people (the Lemhi-Shoshone) to cross the continental divide to the headwaters of the Pacific Ocean. More >>
The Lemhi Shoshone, living links to the teen-age girl who was instrumental in
leading the Corps of Discovery over the Continental Divide and into a chance ...
As of the census2 of 2000, there were 7,806 people residing in Lemhi county. The population density was 2 people per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 96.63% White, 0.60% Native American. In August 1805, the racial makeup was 100% Lemhi-Shoshone, just 200 years later there is almost no sign of the Salmon Eater and Sheep Eater Shoshone who occupied the Salmon River Valley for over 8,000 years.
Please Sign the Online Petition and Read the
Comments Other Vistors Have Left. Online petition.
Throughout the site you will find photos, articles, an online petition and other information about the history of the Lemhi-Shoshone and our efforts to return home to the Salmon River Valley, Idaho. If you have any comments or suggestions feel free to let us know by using our online form.
Lewis and Clark acquire horses and two guides from the Lemhi-Shoshone - Sacajawea nd Old Toby Many visitirs to the website have requested information about the horses that the Lemhi-Shoshone sold to Lewis and Clark - a new page has been created with information and photos about the horses and the guide used to cross the Bitteroot Mountain Range. More on Shoshone horses
On the evening of June 24, 2006 the NAVY launched the new Navy ship, USNS Sacagawea-T-AKE 2, which is named after the young Lemhi-Shoshone woman Sacajawea, who guided and saved the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806.
Several descendants of Sacagawea were on-hand (or otherwise represented) for the ceremony and actually christened the ship.
* Mrs. Lucy Honena Diaz, Sponsor
* Ms. Rachael Lynne Ariwite, Sponsor
* Ms. Amy Mossett, Honorary Maiden Of Honor
* Ms. Jeanette Wolfley, Maid Of Honor
* Ms. Candice Watson, Matron Of Honor
For more photos and information about the event click here.
Research conducted by Washington State University on the Lemhi-Shoshone Removal
(Excerpts from the book below "Sacajawea's People - By John W. Mann)
On February 12, 1875, President Grant established a 100 square mile executive order reservation for the Lemhi-Shoshone people in the Lemhi Valley. Known as the Lemhi Valley Indian Reservation, the executive order established the reserve for "the exclusive use of the mixed tribes of Salmon-Eater Shoshone, Sheep-Eater, and Northern Bannock Indians.
Almost from the outset, however, the government and local residents began efforts to rescind the executive order reservation. They ultimately succeeded in 1905, and in 1907 the Lemhi began what many have called the "Lemhi Trail of Tears," which saw their forced removal from their ancestral homelands to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, home of the much larger Shoshone-Bannock Indians (Snake River Shoshone). More >>
Banished from their homelands in 1907 and seeking to return ever since, the Lemhi-Shoshone people create a dilemma for the nation. As it prepares to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, the United States needs to reassess its commitment to the Lemhi people, to Sacajawea's people. The obligation the nation acknowledges toward wolf and salmon recovery efforts is dwarfed by the responsibility it faces in treating fairly the people who played such a crucial role in advancing the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The research conducted by WSU is now available in the book below called "Sacajawea's People." It is available online.
Sacajawea's People The Lemhi-Shoshones and the Salmon River Country By John W. W. Mann University of Nebraska Press
On October 20, 2001, a crowd gathered just east of Salmon, Idaho, to dedicate the site of the Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural, and Education Center, in preparation for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.
In a bitter instance of irony, the American Indian peoples conducting the ceremony dedicating the land to the tribe, the city of Salmon, and the nation the Lemhi Shoshones, Sacajawea's own people had been removed from their homeland nearly a hundred years earlier and had yet to regain official federal recognition as a tribe. John W. W. Mann's book at long last tells the remarkable and inspiring story of the Lemhi Shoshones, from their distant beginning to their present struggles.
"As the nation commemorates the Lewis and Clark bicentennial with seemingly inexhaustible tributes to her, her people are living as an obscure and repressed minority on a desert reservation nothing like the beautiful mountains of their homeland.
The woman who appears on the Sacajawea coin isn´t a Lemhi-Shoshone, and the tribe of the woman who contributed more than any other to the opening of the West isn´t recognized as a tribe by the federal government.
This is her story and theirs. The story of Sacajawea and her people - by her people." More >>
Lifeling Learning Online the Lewis & Clark Rediscovery Project - Explore the Past & Present The website content was developed at the University of Montana in Missoula.
On these pages you will be introduced to the world of the various bands of the Northern Shoshone and Bannock tribes, with a focus on those groups who now live on the Fort Hall Reservation and an emphasis on the peoples who came to be known as the Lemhi - Shoshone, have focused, instead, on the people whose ancestors and relations met Lewis and Clark in the summer of 1805. BEGIN HERE >>
Since 1998 Tag Richards has committed his life to creating a sculpture of Sacajawea. It is a nurturing, maternal pose that captures a quiet moment between Sacajawea and her nine-month old son in November of 1805. The sculpture will be a monumental bronze study of Sacajawea and Pomp. Its intended placement is Lake Sacajawea in Longview, Washington.
The 145th anniversary commemoration Wednesday (2008) at the site of the Bear River Massacre. U.S. soldiers attacked the Shoshones on Jan. 29, 1863, resulting in the deaths of more than 490 (Northwest Band) Shoshone men, women and children and 14 soldiers based at Fort Douglas (then Camp Douglas). The attack near Preston, Idaho, at the confluence of Bear River and Beaver Creek, is considered the largest single-incident massacre of Indians in the American West. It is often overlooked in history books because it occurred during the Civil War. More articles, photos on the Bear River Massacre >>
Dewey, along with 20 students from the U.S. history classes he teaches at InTech High School, were among the nearly 100 people who gathered Tuesday just off U.S. Highway 91 to commemorate the 145th anniversary of the Bear River Massacre. Those gathered braced against low temperatures and constant winds to remember an event often overlooked by historians and schools.
Though it is widely accepted as the worst Indian mass killing in U.S. history, the massacre — in which between 250 and 500 (Northwest Band) Shoshone men, women and children were killed by a U.S. volunteer militia — is largely unknown, Dewey said. That lack of attention comes partly because the massacre was overshadowed by the events of the Civil War, but also because the victims have long been an under-represented group.
SAN FRANCISCO - More than 500 years after Europeans invaded and colonized the ''New World,'' annihilating most of its original inhabitants and expropriating their resources, human rights violations and an institutionalized racism against indigenous peoples is alive and thriving in the United States, according to the Consolidated Indigenous Shadow Report. More >>
Don't Let Idaho Kill Endangered Wolves!
Hundreds of wolves are at risk in Idaho, where in 2001 legislators passed a measure calling for the elimination of wolves "by any means necessary." The State has recently asked for permission to kill up to 75% of the wolves...
Sho-Ban News - Fort Hall, Idaho TENDOY — A group of Shoshone-Bannock tribal members conducted a prayer ceremony Friday at the Chief Tendoy monument to bless all living things such as the sagebrush, berries and other living things.
Prayer leaders Lee Juan Tyler and Snookins Honena addressed their feelings about how disheartening it was to see historical markers (^above) giving territorial claim to a different tribe.
“We got to respect our territory, even with somebody else. We care about us and the animals,” said Tyler at the cemetery site. He talked about how the people learn from the beaver, ants, everything, the butterfly. And right now tribes are fighting over water.
Ted McDonough
Research by a Washington State University professor suggests a group of Idaho Indians were improperly stripped of formal tribal recognition by the United States government.
Associate history Professor Orlan Svingen hopes his work, coupled with the upcoming bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, will help the Lemhi people become one of a handful of American Indian groups to have restored federal recognition as a distinct tribe. Read more
\Sav"age\, n. 1. A human being in his native state of rudeness; one who is untaught, uncivilized, or without cultivation of mind or manners.
2. A man of extreme, unfeeling, brutal cruelty; a barbarian.
Read letters and responses from THE NATIONAL COALITION ON RACISM IN SPORTS AND MEDIA to the Salmon, Idaho school board, editor, newspaper articles, advertisements...
"We don't want you here, but we want your Sacajawea heritage."
"They have Sacajawea heritage days, they have Sacajawea arts and crafts, they have everything but the real Indians who are Sacajawea's people in the valley, said Ariwite, an Air Force veteran and high school principal who grew up in Salmon but now lives in Fort Hall, Idaho." The feeling we get is, "We don't want you here, but we want your Sacajawea heritage."
(For example: www.salmonbyway.com)
*Note: Published in the Lewis Clark Trivia - Clearwter Edition Vol.3 #8 Recent headlines trumpeted that federal recognition of the Columbia River's Chinook Indian tribe, mentioned many times in the expedition journals, was finally awarded in the last days of the Clinton administration, but later revoked by the Bush administration. Ironically, the intuition of Sacajawea's Lemhi-Shoshone people, upon meeting the expedition 200 years ago, was prophetic.
Distrustful of the Corps of Discovery, Lewis had to assure Chief Cameahwait, Sacajawea's brother, on August 15, 1805, "that among whitemen it was considered disgraceful to lie or entrap an enemy by falsehood."
How the Agaidikas (Salmon Eaters), and the Tukudikas (Sheep Eaters) became known as the Lemhi-Shoshone tribe:
Mormon missionaries who came to the Salmon River Valley in 1855 were the first non-Indians to establish a sustained relationship with the Salmon River Indian people. Approximately twenty-seven Mormon men left the Salt Lake Valley on May 18, 1855. The party reached Fort Lemhi on May 27, and they selected a permanent site for their mission on June 15, 1855. The mission, named Fort Lemhi, was located approximately two miles north of present-day Tendoy, Idaho.
The word "Lemhi" was associated with King Limhi who was one of the kings cited in the Book of Mormon. In Mormon scripture, King Limhi organized an expedition that lasted twenty- two days--the same duration it required the Mormon missionaries to reach the Salmon River Country.
Consequently, they named their mission after King Limhi, and, in time, Limhi became Lemhi. 7 The Mormon mission enjoyed some success, especially after the Lemhi leader, Snag, became a convert to Mormonism, and his acceptance of Mormon doctrine sparked as many as 100 baptisms among the Lemhi people.
"To domesticate and civilize wild Indians is a noble work, the accomplishment of which should be a crown of glory to a nation. But to allow them to drag along year after year and generation after generation, in their old superstitions, laziness and filth, when we have the power to elevate them in the scale of humanity, would be a lasting disgrace to our government." U.S.A.'s Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hiram Price, 1881
Who are the Lemhi-Shoshone and where is their home? Lemhis are Agaidikas (Salmoneaters), Tukudikas (Sheepeaters), and (Northern) Bannocks and their home is in the Lemhi Valley of Idaho in the Salmon River drainage.
Professor Orlan J. Svingen - Washington State University / Department of History:
Banished from their homelands in 1907 and seeking to return ever since, the Lemhi-Shoshone people create a dilemma for the nation. As it prepares to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, the United States needs to reassess its commitment to the Lemhi people, to Sacajawea's people. The obligation the nation acknowledges toward wolf and salmon recovery efforts is dwarfed by the responsibility it faces in treating fairly the people who played such a crucial role in advancing the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
From the Idaho Statesman
Lifeling Learning Online the Lewis & Clark Rediscovery Project - Explore the Past & Present
Followed By Lewis & Clark
Over 100 years later the people of the Agai'Dika, Tuki'Dika, Boshaun'Dika, and the Bannock band are looking to get their land reinstated. To return home to the land of their forefathers and raise their families in the place they call "home." 
How the Agaidikas (Salmon Eaters), and the Tukudikas (Sheep Eaters) became known as the Lemhi-Shoshone tribe: