In mid-July 1959 the Bannock Creek district of the Fort Hall Reservation lost two of its older men within days of each other. Bannock Creek rises at the head of Arbon Valley and runs north past Arbon and Pauline, then on through the reservation. The Idaho State Journal reported both deaths, on July 14 and July 15.
Frank Bell
Frank Bell, 61, was found dead in Bannock Creek, not far from his house, on Saturday, July 11. By the estimate of H. L. Davis, the Power County coroner, he had been in the water for three or four days. As the coroner pieced it together, Bell had been riding with some friends. After he left their car he started over the footbridge to his house, seemingly lost his footing and went into the creek. In the coroner's view, willows then trapped his feet and held him there. The paper did not say what evening he went home or whether anyone had been looking for him.
His parents were Mr. and Mrs. Sam Bell, and he had been born in 1898. Two sisters outlived him, Ella Bell Shay and Lucy Pezedoga. The Manning Funeral Home handled his funeral, which took place on Tuesday, July 14. The report does not say where he was buried.
A year earlier Bell's name had been in the paper for a different reason. A UPI dispatch from Boise, carried in the Journal on July 4, 1958, reported a federal court suit brought by Lucy Shay Antelope and Frank Bell, both reservation residents, along with Bert T. Shay, who lived off the reservation. The three wanted a court order keeping the government from running a highway over their Power County property. Their complaint said federal agents had already pulled out some of their fence and meant to plow up ground there, and that a road would hurt irrigation on land they counted as good farm ground. The report did not name the highway, and we have not found how the suit ended. The plaintiff was probably the same Frank Bell, since both men lived on the reservation in Power County, but the 1958 report gives nothing more to confirm it. No paper read for this post says whether Lucy Shay Antelope or Bert Shay were related to Bell's sister Ella Bell Shay.
William Lipps
On the morning of Tuesday, July 14, the day of Bell's funeral, William Lipps died at the Valley View Rest Home in Lava Hot Springs. His obituary put his death down to old age. It called him 88 and a lifelong resident of Bannock Creek, but it also gave his birth as January 1, 1870, at Fort Washakie on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. That date would have made him 89, and the obituary does not say when he came to Bannock Creek.
Lipps was Shoshone. The obituary named his father as We-he-dimb-be-chee, a Shoshone name it rendered in English as "Knife in Mouth." In the Bannock Creek Cattlemen's Association he had taken an active part, serving as a committeeman and at one time as its president. In September 1957 the Idaho Sunday Journal ran a feature on one of the association's roundups and noted that its members included both Indian and white cattlemen. Its writer, Merle Meyers, a Pocatello real estate man raised at Crystal, was then living in a rented house beside Bannock Creek on the reservation. That feature does not mention Lipps.
Alice Preacher, whom he had wed in 1950, outlived him. None of his children from two earlier marriages was still living. The Weiser and Son Mortuary arranged a graveside funeral for 3 p.m. on Friday, July 17, at the Bannock Creek Cemetery, to be led by Ruth and Ginger Speece, missionaries of the Assembly of God. The family would receive friends at their Bannock Creek home from 10 a.m. Thursday.
Two earlier records may refer to him. On August 19, 1947, the Pocatello Tribune printed a letter from Mrs. Carl Wrensted of Crystal. She wrote that Jeanette Pocatello had just come back from a trip to the Teton country with Mr. and Mrs. William Lipps. Then there are the federal land records gathered for this site. They list a William P. Lipps among the Bannock Creek allottees of May 23, 1916, with 180 acres in a reservation township north of Pauline, near several other allottees named Lipps. Neither record says enough to be sure it is the same man, and the papers read here do not say how he was related to the other Lippses.
On this site: the creek's course and its tribal names are in Pasakwa Huude and other names on Bannock Creek; the allotting of the Bannock Creek lands is in When the Bannock Creek lands were allotted, 1911–1922; the valley's road across the reservation is in the Arbon wheat road across the reservation; and the reservation's earlier history beside the valley is in The reservation next door.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, July 14, 1959, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Funeral services were held on Tuesday, July 14, for Frank Bell, 61, of the Bannock Creek district of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, whose body had been recovered from the creek a short way from his house. The Journal carried the story that afternoon.
The discovery came on Saturday, July 11. H. L. Davis, the Power County coroner, judged that Bell had been dead in the water for three or four days by then, which put his death early in the week before.
Davis gave the likely cause as a fall. Bell had parted from a group of friends and left their car, and the footbridge to his house lay ahead of him. The coroner believed he slipped from that bridge into the creek, where willows held his feet fast and he was not able to get clear.
Bell was born in 1898 to Sam Bell and his wife. His sisters, Ella Bell Shay and Lucy Pezedoga, were his survivors named in the report, and the Manning Funeral Home conducted the service.
The headline called him a Fort Hall man. The report did not give the day he was last seen, say whether anyone had searched for him, or say where he would be buried.