Bannock
Member of a nomadic American Indian people who moved from the Great Basin (southern Idaho) to the Great Plains (Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Oregon) after acquiring horses in the 1700s. They are thought to stem from the northern Paiute and are related to the Shoshone. Their language is an Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan mix indigenous to the Great Basin. They adopted the buffalo-hunting lifestyle of the Plains Indians, but their numbers were severely reduced by smallpox in the 1800s and by the Plains Wars against US settlement in the 19th century. Today, many live on Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, where they number over 2,200 (1985).




