1878
Bannock War
The setting
Camas Prairie and surrounding Idaho and Oregon country
High plains, camas root grounds, river valleys, and broken lava-and-sage uplands
Reveal the outcome
Recorded sideUnited States Army
Recorded resultVictory
A Native defeat. Bannock and Northern Paiute bands rose over the destruction of their camas root grounds and worsening reservation conditions; U.S. columns under Gen. O.O. Howard ran them down over the summer of 1878, and forced removals followed.
How the atlas explains it
The rising was driven by hunger and broken faith - settlers' hogs were rooting up the camas grounds the Bannock depended on, and reservation rations were failing. It was a desperate uprising, not a planned campaign, and it could not withstand the coordinated pursuit of multiple Army columns across open country. Sarah Winnemucca, a Northern Paiute, served as interpreter, scout, and advocate, moving between the two worlds and even helping extract Paiute noncombatants.
What followed
One of the last major uprisings of the Great Basin peoples. Its defeat brought forced removals - including of Paiutes who had not fought - and made Sarah Winnemucca a national voice for her people, lecturing and writing to expose how broken treaties and hunger drove her nation to war.