User talk:Driscokn

Kevin- Where are your reference works?Docjay57 (talk) 23:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey Kevin!

Solid start to the article. I thought your background section was great because it really set up the war, and explained why the natives and U.S. came into conflict. Unlike my article, yours actually seems to be getting some traffic, so I'm sure it has been tough to make your own edits and insights without stepping on anybody's toes. I'm excited to see how you integrate the old article into the new, and I think your background section really blows the other one out of the water.

I just have a few suggestions for you to improve the article as a whole.

There are some grammatical mistakes, mostly with missing punctuation or sentence fragments. I noted a few here:

• "Prosperous participating in the twenty year Rocky Mountain Fur Trade” should be “Prosperous participation in the twenty-year…”

• The semi-colon in “and quickly opened trade with Americans for firearms and horses; a practice they had done” should be a comma, since the clause after it is not a complete thought

• “The camps lack of sufficient resources forced the inhabitants to depend…” should be “The camp’s lack of sufficient…”

• “The Fort Hall reservation…on the rivers southeastern banks.” Should be “river’s southeastern banks”. This phrase is also not a complete sentence.

• “The population was very dense for the land, numbered 1,037…” should be “numbering 1,037”

• You left out a “7” in the sentence “during the winters of 1874-1875 and 1876-187”

• This sentence “The Bannock War of 1878 was the result of…” seems a little out of place at the end of that paragraph. I would either reword it or relocate it within the article. You might be able to write, “these were just a few of the contributing factors of…”, that way it becomes more of a summary of what you said above.

• Reword this sentence: “In response to the crackdown…Alexander Rhodan”. Try “In response to the crack down, Nampe-yo-go, a friend of Pe-tope’s, killed Alexander Rhodan, a beef contractor for the reservation.”

Sorry I was nit-picky! All in all, just be careful and comb over the final draft before you put it up!

I think the biggest thing you can do for this article is better define your terms. You use a lot of different names, and I think it would be useful to define each one of them throughout your article. You use both Shoshone-Bannock or Bannock-Shoshone, but I would simply select one and use it throughout. Did they ever switch to one name or did they refer to themselves as “Shoshone-Bannock”? You also refer to the Bannock-Pauite, and simply the Bannock. Make sure you keep your terms consistent throughout your article, or define why you are switching from name to name. When you hit the section on battles, you start off by saying “Bannock-Paiute”, but the rest of the article you use Shoshone-Bannock or Bannock-Shoshone or just Bannock. If the Paiute became known as the Bannocks, as you suggested in the background, is there a need to refer to them as Bannock-Paiute? Did more Paiute migrate down and join the conflict? I noticed you make the distinction when the Bannock and Pauite forces divide under Chief Egan, but for the rest of the article, I assumed the Bannock and Pauite were just one unit under the umbrella “Bannock”. If there are more Paiute heading into the reservation that have not become "Bannock", make sure to mention that. You also say that the Shoshone-Bannock exodus caused the Bannock War, but in the battles section you never mention the Shoshone. Were they at all involved in the conflict? Then, by the end of the article, you begin to refer to the natives as the “Fort Hall Indians”. Does this designation mean all three (Shoshone, Bannock, Paiute tribes), a combination of two, or just simply one tribe? Just be careful to define your terms throughout your article, and redefine them as necessary. I understand it's confusing (my head is spinning just trying to keep track of them all), but if you make define exactly what you mean by each term, then explicitly state why you are using each term, then I think the article as a whole will flow better and will be easier to understand.

I just have a few other points I wanted to add:

• Introduce Governor Lyon better (or at least give him his first name) if you think he's a major player in this conflict. I’m assuming he’s the governor of Idaho, but perhaps give him his full name and say a word or two about him. Does he summon the army to the area, do settlers ask him to, or is the army simply already there?

• What’s Agent Danilson’s first name? Include it if you can find it.

• What convinced the natives to eventually leave their land and settle on the reservation? Was there anything else besides the lack of resources? You mention the complex and controversial deliberation and you give a bunch of great reasons why they should stay. Was it just the lack of resources that pushed them to leave the territory or was there another factor?

• You mention that the Shoshone and Bannock come into conflict on the reservation. Did they officially split, and no longer call themselves (or historians no longer call them) the Bannock-Shoshone? If so, you should take the time to say they formally split, and I wouldn’t use “Shoshone-Bannock” after that point. If they did officially not split, then I would also note that. If the conflict within their tribe is noteworthy, but not large enough to divide the entire group. You wrote that the exodus of the Shoshone-Bannock people is one of the causes of the war, so they can't have seriously been divided by internal conflict. Or were they, and they migrated from the reservation as separate people? That would explain why the Shoshone aren't mentioned in the battle section. I know it's probably not a merger in the sense that we think of the word, but inter-marriage definitely created alliances and helped integrate cultures, as you mentioned in the article. Just make sure the reader knows the type of 'alliance' or 'coalition' or whatever relationship they actually have.

• When starting the Battle section of you article, you might want to take the first sentence or two and define the major players before you go into the conflicts and deaths of those same major players. Just move that stuff a sentence up so that the reader has some idea of what to look for in the coming section. It might also be a good idea to do add a little bit of information on Chief Buffalo Horn, Chief Egan, and General Oliver Howard in the background section of the article, if any information on them exists.

• Was the army already in Camp Harvey protecting settlers or did the governor call them in? Did the settlers request their presence?

• The Umatilla tribe comes into play rather suddenly. I might mention in the sentence before it that when the Bannock and Paiute were driven out of Birch Creek, they were driven onto Umatilla lands. I think this is an especially intriguing point you make, because it's no longer just natives vs. whites, it's now natives vs. natives.

• I noticed your battle section and the sections after were a little short, but then I read your comments on waiting for other books. I would definitely encourage you to get other books on the background information as well, since that will allow you to vary your sources and fill in the gaps of the story.

• As far as aftermath and legacy, are you waiting for books on those too? I'd be interested to see how this conflict connects with the Bannock War of 1895. Also, it doesn't seem to me like much of a war. What I mean is that the natives seem to be on the defensive the whole time, and it seems more like an extermination effort. Did the government classify this as a war? Did the newspapers and people at the time claim it was a war? I only say this because for the Mendocino War, after a lengthy investigation both the people and the government said it was really genocide as opposed to a war. Also think about the war's place in the larger context of the Indian Wars.

• Last point: Don’t be afraid to link to other wiki pages! Things like the Shoshone tribe, the Bannock People, Fort Hall Reservation, or Governor (first name?) Lyon might have another Wikipedia page for you to connect with. Any of those other really key places/players would make a great link. Some other ideas of ‘links’ to make are ideas or complicated terms like “subsistence farming”. Also don't be afraid to find an image or two!

Sparknotes version of my critique: comb through for any grammatical errors, define your terms, add images/'links' to your page, flesh out the battle/aftermath/legacy sections, and vary up your sources. Nice job so far can't wait to see how it turns out! Good luck man!

3/5

Bellitan (talk) 04:54, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Help us improve the Wikipedia Education Program

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