Founding
capital city of the U.S. state of Idaho and seat of Ada County
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Boise ( also ) is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Idaho. It is the county seat of Ada County. The population of the city was 235,685 at the 2020 census. The Boise metropolitan area, located in the Treasure Valley, includes five counties of Idaho with an estimated population of 846,000, the most populous metropolitan area in Idaho and 95th-most populous in the United States.
Located on the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is 41 miles (66 km) east of the Oregon border and 110 miles (177 km) north of the Nevada border. Downtown Boise's elevation is 2,704 feet (824 m) above sea level.
Boise is home to major employers in the technology, manufacturing, and service sectors, including companies such as Micron Technology and Hewlett-Packard. The city is home to the Boise Art Museum, Idaho State Capitol, the annual Treefort Music Fest, and the Basque Block.
The origin of the name is uncertain. One account credits Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville of the U.S. Army as its source. After trekking for weeks through dry and rough terrain, his exploration party reached an overlook with a view of the Boise River Valley. The place where they stood is called Bonneville Point, located on the Oregon Trail east of the city. According to the story, a French-speaking guide, overwhelmed by the sight of the verdant river, yelled "Les bois! Les bois!" ("The woods! The woods!")—and the name stuck.
The name may also derive from earlier mountain men who named the river that flows through the city. In the 1820s, French Canadian fur trappers associated with the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company set trap lines in the vicinity. Set in a high-desert area, the tree-lined valley of the Boise River became a distinct landmark, an oasis dominated by cottonwood trees. This led the French trappers to call the area "la rivière boisée" ("the wooded river").
Most local and longtime residents use the pronunciation /ˈbɔɪsiː/ (BOY-see), as given on the city's website. The pronunciation is sometimes used as a shibboleth, as those from elsewhere tend to pronounce the city's name as /ˈbɔɪziː/ (BOY-zee). In French, the name of the city is pronounced /ˈbwaz/ (Bwaz).
The Boise Valley is the traditional homeland of several indigenous groups, including the Northern Shoshone and Bannock tribes. The valley had been a gathering place for trade and winter settlement. The Bannock tribe in the valley belonged to the "tuuˀagaidɨkaˀa" (black trout eaters). The Northern Shoshone belonged to the "Yahandeka" (groundhog eaters) grouping and had their main hunting lands along the lower Boise River and Payette River.
In 1811, Wilson Hunt, employed as an agent in the fur trade under John Jacob Astor, organized and led the greater part of a group of about 60 men on an overland expedition to establish a fur trading outpost at the mouth of the Columbia River. This expedition passed through the Boise valley, and was the first ever time a white American has entered the region. The War of 1812 delayed use of the trade route, and the Boise Valley initially drew little attention while the rest of the Oregon Country came to be dominated by the British Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). The company established a fort in the region, the Old Fort Boise, 40 miles (64 km) west, near Parma, down the Boise River near its confluence with the Snake River at the Oregon border. The HBC was present at the fort until 1844, and afterward handed it over to the United States Army.
Starting in the early 1840s, developments further west, in modern Oregon, meant significant changes to the region of Boise. At this time, HBC and the British started moving their operations further North into British Columbia, while there was a slow and steady rise in the number of settlers in Oregon Country, who demanded annexation. These developments eventually culminated in the Oregon Treaty, in which the British gave the region up to the US, thus ending the era of "Joint occupation". This meant that Boise Valley and much of Snake Country was claimed as Oregon Territory.
With the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the passage of Donation Land Claim Act, the settler incursions increased exponentially. The increased settler incursions through Shoshone and Bannock territories, and their increased exploitation of the valley's game and resources on their trip, resulted in an increasing sense of frustration among the Indigenous bands along the entire Oregon Trail. Thus, starting in the early 1850s, to deter settler caravans from using the route and trespassing on their lands, Native peoples along the entire length of the trail, from modern Eastern Idaho to modern Central Oregon started staging low-intensity attacks against passing caravans.
One such attack, referred to as the "Ward Massacre", was in Boise Valley, about 20 miles west of modern Boise. On August 20, 1854, Alexander Ward's five-wagon caravan of 20 emigrants was passing through, when a group of Shoshone and Bannock warriors ambushed the caravan. The goal of the ambush was initially to take away the horses of the caravan. However, the shooting of one of the Shoshone warriors with a revolver, resulted in the killing of everyone except for two of Alexander Ward's children by the Shoshone warriors. In response, the United States Army launched the Winnas Expedition, which involved raids on Native encampments for a period of several months during the summer of 1855. In the period between 1846 and 1856, 700 white settlers were killed along the entire length of the Oregon Trail due to attacks and raids by Native warriors on their caravans while intruding native land. American military intrusion and retaliation only further angered the native tribes and escalated the conflict, which forced the United States Army to abandon Old Fort Boise. Intensified attacks against passing caravans made travel impossible for settlers except with US Army escort, which started in 1858.
The decline of the California gold rush prompted white settlers to search for gold elsewhere, including much of Idaho. The 1860 discovery of gold in Nez Perce territory near Pierce, Idaho and the resultant arrival of settlers raised tensions significantly. In September of that year, the Utter Party Massacre happened about 100 miles Southeast of Boise, where 29 out of a group of 44 settlers were either killed or captured in an intense and organized ambush.
The discovery of gold around the Boise Valley in 1863, together with ongoing fighting, prompted the US Military to establish a new Fort Boise, where Boise is located today. The new location was selected because it was near the intersection of the Oregon Trail with a major road connecting the Boise Basin (Idaho City) and the Owyhee (Silver City) mining areas, both of which were booming. That year, the United States established Idaho Territory, whose boundaries included this region. After a year, with the creation of Montana Territory, Boise was made the territorial capital of a much reduced Idaho in a controversial decision that overturned a district court ruling by a one-vote majority in the territorial supreme court along geographic lines in 1866. There was no treaty and no agreement with any of the native tribes up to this point, and the violent resistance against incursion and settlement onto their territory along the Oregon Trail and at the newly found gold mines continued unabated. In order to resolve the matter of ownership and sovereignty over land, Caleb Lyon, the second governor of Idaho, negotiated with the Boise Valley Shoshone Tribe, and concluded the "Treaty of Fort Boise" on October 10, 1864. This treaty stipulated that the tribe will give up lands to 30 miles on each side of Boise River, land upon which Boise is located, while allowing an equal right to fishing in the river to both the Shoshone and the settlers. The treaty has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate to this date, and the tribe hasn't ever received any treaty payments.
Backlash from the perceived friendliness of Caleb Lyon in his dealings with the tribes led to an escalation of pressure and agitation among the White Settlers in Boise and the print media in the city, in demanding either genocide or removal of the tribes. Settler violence against Boise Valley native tribes increased considerably, with some going as far as introducing bounties to murder any native. Idaho Statesman, the daily newspaper of Boise, which started publishing in 1864, reflected many such incitements and demands:
...that the military should continue killing Indians 'until the last Indian in the Territories was either on his reservation or enriched the sagebrush with his decaying carcass.' ...if the Indians refused to move there, 'they will be killed or put on the reservation by force, and certainly shot if they don't stay there.' Furthermore, the editor continues, 'The idea that the Indians have any right to the soil is ridiculous. ...They have no more rights to the soil of the Territories of the United States than wolves or coyotes...'
— David B. Madsen's quotation of the opinion column in Idaho Statesman on July 29, 1867,
This would be our plan of establishing friendship upon an eternal basis with our Indians: Let all the hostile bands of Idaho Territory be called in (they will not be caught in any other manner) to attend a grand treaty; plenty of blankets and nice little trinkets distributed among them; plenty of grub on hand; have a real jolly time with them; then just before the big feast put strychnine in their meat and poison to death the last mother's son of them.
— A "Letter to the editor" that was printed in the Idaho Statesman newspaper on October 6, 1867,
At the same time, native warriors around the valley, under the leadership of Howluck, also known as "Bigfoot" among white settlers, among others, waged an escalating and intensified guerrilla campaign of harassment of passerby caravans along the Oregon Trail. The United States Army also escalated and intensified "punitive expeditions" against formations of warriors and against civilian communities as well. This marked the start of the "unofficial" Snake War in 1866. This war lasted until 1868 and is statistically the deadliest of the Indian Wars in the West in terms of casualties. In the end, 1,762 men were counted as casualties of this war from both sides.
In 1868, Fort Hall Indian Reservation was established in Southeastern Idaho, about 220 miles upstream, according to the terms of Fort Bridger Treaty. The Boise Valley Shoshone and Bannock Tribes were not party to this treaty. Nevertheless, in April 1869, the United States Military embarked on a campaign of "Removal, rounding up of natives in the region including in and around Boise, and expelling them with cavalry escort to Fort Hall Indian Reservation. This period is known among the Shoshone and Bannock people as Idaho's Trail of Tears. Some of the natives managed to escape, and they ran to either Duck Valley or Fort McDermitt in Nevada.
Boise's early growth was significantly driven by its role in supplying the nearby gold towns that sprung up in the 1860s northeast and then southwest of the town. Miners sometimes wintered in Boise, and a number of early prominent businessmen were miners who settled in town in the years after the gold rush waned. By 1864 substantial agricultural production was underway on easily irrigated lands near the river and three canal companies had been incorporated. Early transportation improvements were largely a result of toll road franchises awarded by the territorial legislature starting in the 1860s. These first ran from Fort Boise to the mining centers in the Boise Basin and east to Rocky Bar and to Rattlesnake Station where they connected to the Oregon Trail.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Boise, Idaho”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.