Bannock Creek runs north out of Arbon Valley and on through the Fort Hall Reservation, and the reservation families along the creek had a school of their own. In 1948 they learned that it was changing hands. For the 1948–49 school year, the Fort Hall agency said, the American Falls public schools would take over the day school on the creek. The news came in the invitations to a meeting at the school on Tuesday, August 31, 1948, and the Pocatello Tribune printed the report from American Falls on September 3. The paper placed the school in Arbon Valley.
The invitations went out over the name of L. P. Towle, then the agency's acting superintendent, and every resident of Bannock Creek was on the list. Seventy-five people came from the reservation. Plenty of them were dressed in tribal regalia, and the tribal council's chairman, LaSalle Pocatello, was there too. Some listeners wanted the proceedings in a language other than English, and Willie Edmo translated for them; the paper did not say which language. The visitors from American Falls brought along 500 pounds of watermelon, and it was eaten during the meeting.
The details of the change were Ralph Grinnell's to present. Grinnell, the agency's chief clerk, walked the crowd through what the Indian Service had decided. The first, second and third grades would stay in the Bannock Creek building, taught by the American Falls district, which the paper called Class A District No. 381. Older pupils, fourth grade and above, would be bused into American Falls for school. The Tribune wrote that the whole point was to put the Bannock Creek families, the agency and the new school people on good terms with one another.
The building may well have dated from the 1930s. According to the Living New Deal, which documents New Deal public works, the Public Works Administration set aside $10,000 in 1933 for three small schools on the reservation, and they were finished in 1935. A 1936 article in the Indian Service magazine Indians at Work, cited there, named the three new buildings: one at Lincoln Creek, one at Ross Fork and one on Bannock Creek. None of the 1948 reports says the school was that building, but no other school on Bannock Creek is named.
The school was used for a community gathering later that year. That December, ahead of the holiday, the building hosted a Christmas party for Fort Hall Indian people, put on by the Mutual of the West Pocatello Stake, the young people's organization of the Latter-day Saint stake; this time the Tribune located the school at Arbon. A front-page photograph on December 24 carried a caption putting the attendance at 104. Maude Minor directed the program, which told the Nativity story; Wilson Jack spoke on what Christmas meant for the Indian guests; and everyone got presents and something to eat.
Bannock Creek people later went before the American Falls school board. The District No. 381 trustees, meeting on Monday, March 14, 1949, heard from a committee that came up from Bannock Creek on behalf of the families who used the school, with school business to raise. The Tribune did not say what those questions were.
Much is not known. The reports give no enrollment and no teachers' names, and they do not say who had taught at the school before 1948 or how long the American Falls district kept it. Nor did the paper record what the people of Bannock Creek thought of the change.
On this site: the Fort Hall lands on lower Bannock Creek appear in When the Bannock Creek lands were allotted, 1911–1922 and Arbon's wheat road across the reservation, 1934–1939; the creek's tribal names are in Pasakwa Huude and other names on Bannock Creek; and the valley's own schools are on the Schools page.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, September 3, 1948, page 5. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
On Tuesday, August 31, 1948, a Fort Hall agency official told a gathering at the Bannock Creek school how the American Falls public school district would be running the Indian day school there during the 1948–49 year.
Word of the change had first gone out in the agency's invitations to the meeting. L. P. Towle, the acting superintendent, was the sender, and the paper quoted their address line: "to all Bannock creek residents." The Tribune located the school in Arbon Valley.
The agency's chief clerk, Ralph Grinnell, gave the crowd the particulars. Under the Indian Service's plan, the American Falls district, which the paper called Class A District No. 381, would teach the youngest pupils, grades one through three, in the Bannock Creek building. Fourth graders and up would be bused to town for classes in American Falls.
By the paper's count, seventy-five reservation residents came, a good number of them dressed in tribal regalia. The tribal council's chairman, LaSalle Pocatello, was one of them. Willie Edmo was on hand as interpreter, putting the talk into the listeners' own language when they asked for it.
The crowd went through 500 pounds of watermelon, a gift from the American Falls visitors. In the reporter's telling, the get-together was a chance for the families, the agency staff and the new district officials to get to know each other better.
The report carried an American Falls dateline.