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Pocatello can
The Great Basin people are called Shoshone. Their experience with settlers during leader Pocatello's generation (1815-84) did not benefit from concessions and appeasement. Theirs is one example of the inevitability of colonial relations. America's Treaty Period, Homestead Act and Gold Rush are similar to other European western land rushes in Africa, Eastern Europe, Australia and South East Asia in their treatment of indigenous people. The lessons, rules and execution of Federal and Native relations--including the Shoshone--are inherited by American leaders as they decide national policy from the continent's Manifest Destiny, to the hemisphere's Monroe Doctrine to global conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. America's treatment of the leaders and agreements with non-European people must be suspect in light of two hundred and fifty years of diplomatic history.
As Europeans first began to encroach on their land, Pocatello and the Shoshone raided the homesteaders, gold diggers and travelers along the developing California Trail, Salt Lake Road and Oregon Trail. Much of this population was passing through to the coast looking for wealth. The settlers were Mormons who viewed the Utah Territory (Deseret) as unpopulated by Americans that had antagonized them from Manchester to Clay County and Nauvoo. Perhaps because the indigenous Shoshone natives and exiled Mormons shared and enemy in the Americans, Pocatello and Brigham Young had an uneasy truce.
The nature of this alliance was tested by Mormon Nauvoo Legion during the Utah War (1857-8) and the Federal Johnston's Army. One historical narrative pits the home rule Mormons and Federalist bluecoats. The result of the conflict allowed Brigham Young to remain governor of the territory. In return, the federal army was allowed into Salt Lake City. Sedition and Treason charges against the Mormons were dropped and Manifest Destiny remained unchallenged by the church. The "Utah War" is a satisfying conflict narrative about the violence and politics of western state formation with similar dimensions to "Bleeding Kansas" and "The Alamo." But it excludes the Shoshone.
Following is a simplified timeline of Shoshone relations with Europeans during Pocatello's generation. Lewis and Clark encountered the Shoshone about ten years before Pocatello was born. Sacagawea was a Shoshone by birth. During Pocatello's lifetime, the Europeans he encountered began as transient explorers like Toussaint Charbonneau (Sacagawea's husband) and became a never ending wagon train of permanent settlers with claims on traditionally Shoshone land. These claims were based in both federal proclamations and religious prophecy. The Shoshone attacked the interlopers. The height of this guerrilla defense of Shoshone territory was between 1857-63.
The Mormons and Federales came to a truce in 1858 to end the Utah War. This was a disaster for the Shoshone. First, the massive number of Federal troops that had moved into the Great Basin to fight Mormons were redeployed in the Indian Wars. Second, now that the Mormons had established a quasi-theocratic state in Salt Lake City (within the federal rubric) the population of this religious colonizer was unbridled and it exploded in size. A third factor is the overt racism toward native peoples that is embedded in both Mormon theology (Natives are Lamanites that can regenerate into Whiteness if they convert) and the US Calvary esprit de corps (that still names helicopters after the natives it genocided).
With historical perspective, the escalation of violence employed by the Shoshone after contact was a bad idea. They miscalculated the sheer number of Europeans that would arrive. They also chose the wrong side in the Utah War. While the Mormon and Shoshone relations were okay--one condition to end the War was federalism. To keep Brigham Young as governor the Mormons agreed to Federal Indian policy that deemphasized religious conversion and emphasized Manifest Destiny through military domination, the treaty regime and permanent reservations. The Mormons, on the other hand, received full citizenship and self governance of their state. The goal of the Mormons was a state of their own in which they were treated like White Americans with freedom of religion. A second goal was to alter the Shoshone and convert them into whites like them through baptism. These are different than the goal of the Shoshone: an end to European incursion onto their territory, fair treaties and return to the status quo ante Utah War. With incongruous goals these allies were ill matched.
The Bear River Massacre of January 1863 is one of the terrors of Federal Indian policy. Not only is it numerically one of the largest slaughters of native people in American history, the conduct of the Americans is reported by the few survivors to have been inglorious--targeting women and children. The Federales were after Pocatello in this raid and wound up attacking starving Shoshone whose hunting land was claimed and altered by Manifest Destiny. The ethnic cleansing of prospective territory is a feature of settler colonialism that fits a type with Britain's claim on South Africa, Germany's annexation of Poland and Israel's conquest of Palestine. This is different than administrative colonies like Britain's India, Belgium's Congo or America's Korea--where the population remained but became subjects (and labor) through legal structures, enculturation and the implied threat of military violence. This later case is the deal that the Mormons struck: statehood within American federalism. This statehood model wasn't available to the Shoshone, not because Indian states like Oklahoma didn't exist, but because their mode of production, trade networks and political economy couldn't supply a population that could compete politically or militarily with the allied American and Deseret states.
After Bear River Pocatello sued for peace. This is another miscalculation made by countless other desperate and credulous tribes during the American Holocaust (a period defined by David Stannard). Treaties are used by Americans from Andrew Jackson to Kissinger to Pete Hegseth to "reload" rather than rebuild, relate or reconcile. They are not worth the paper they are written on. The modern fictionalized treaty regime of IMF and WB debt traps is the modern equivalent of Native American land grab treaties of the nineteenth century. Pan-Africans like Qaddafi and Sankara and Pan-Americans like Castro and Chavez are agreed that dealing with American government or banks is foolish nonsense. This was the case of the Shoshone's peace settlement. Pocatello's people were forced onto the Fort Hall Reservation and was promised $5,000 per year. When money didn't arrive and his people continued to starve they couldn't go to new hunting grounds or streams--they were stuck to the land.
Some proposed changes that could have altered Shoshone prospects follow. The first is to not be so welcoming. Maybe without Sacagawea (who was kidnapped as a child), Lewis and Clark get captured and flayed by the Sioux, Jefferson gets cold feet about Manifest Destiny, the nation deals with it's southern problem before westward expansion. In this interim maybe the natives organize with settlers who might not be Americans. Pan-Native organization is the second lesson. This worked, to a point, for the Iroquois Confederacy--but they then targeted historical enemies in the west rather than organizing them against the oncoming hegemon in the east. A confederacy of this type is the only way indigenous people can operate with in the Westphalian balance-of-power. Without it, different bands end up as mercenaries on both sides of every conflict and there is no legal or military recourse after each ane every native massacre. It is better to be a German than a Hessian. Alliances within the Pan-American realm--with Mexico and Britain are compounded when more Native Peoples are signatory. This requires long standing beefs to be squashed to survive Europeans armed with more than weapons and land hunger.
The Shoshone made another misstep after they moved to the reservation. They left Fort Hall (Idaho) and went to Corinne (Utah) where George Hill ran a missionary farm. Pocatello's people were baptized by the missionaries in May 1875. The Shoshone thought by becoming Mormons they could stay, work and be fed on the farm. They were wrong. This population was not welcomed by the Mormons, who asked the Federales to remove the converts back to Fort Hall. The disillusioned converts rejected Mormonism. The Deseret-American arrangement agreed on Indian removal as policy for at least two reasons. The Mormon settlers needed more land freed from Indian territory for their transplant population. The Americans needed people to fill the Great Basin lest it be claimed by competing leaders. The State of Utah, BYU, Salt Lake City and the LDS Tabernacle are the the manifestations of this Deseret-American arrangement to populate Shoshone land.
After rejecting Mormonism and succumbing to the Federal Reservation Policy Pocatello withdrew from public. He died in 1884, "[a]ccording to his instructions, his body, along with his clothing, guns, knives, and hunting equipment, were bound together and tossed into a deep spring in southern Idaho. Eighteen horses were also slaughtered and rolled into the spring on top of the chief." [1]
sources:
[1] The direct quote, basic outline and uncredited image (PD- public domain by date) and are from:
nativelady "Chief Pocatello, Shoshone" Blog: native-americans.com 13 October 2015 (145 views) [link].
The Shoshones only appear on once in Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971) pg. 288-9. During the "The War for the Black Hills" during the Sun Dance as "Sitting Bull danced, bled himself, and stared at the sun until he fell into a trance." The Shoshones were mercenary scouts at Rosebud Valley during the battle between Crazy Horse and the Bluecoats.