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This glossary contains words which are important in the understanding and appreciation of themes on this web page.

Bannock
A Native American group of Northern Paiute speakers who lived in the Snake River plain of the Great Basin. They were buffalo hunters who lived with the Shoshone speakers in peaceful cooperation. During 1867-1868, both groups were moved to the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho where they live today.
blanket Indian
A derogatory term used to describe a Native American who maintained his or her traditional lifestyle, thus resisting assimilation and acculturation.
Fort Hall Reservation
An area of land in southeastern Idaho created in 1867-1868 as the designated home for the Northern Shoshone and Bannock people.
glass plate negative
A reversed photographic image transferred onto a piece of glass, which can be developed into a print.
Lemhi
A group of Northern Shoshone Indians living in the Lemhi River valley and the upper Salmon River valley in the Great Basin, settled on the Fort Hall Reservation in 1907.
noble savage
A complex of ideas used to stereotype the American Indians as a "good, proud, independent" people living in harmony with nature. From the sixteenth century visual representations of the "noble savage" often depicted them in classical poses with "exotic" garb of buckskin, furs and feathers.
Pocatello
A town located in southeastern Idaho named after a Northern Shoshone chief; place where Benedicte Wrensted produced the majority of her photographs.
reservation
A tract of land recognized by the federal government as belonging to Native American groups.
Shoshone
(sha-sho'-ne) Great Basin Indians who share the Uto-Aztecan language group. There were three distinct groups of Shoshones: (1) Western Shoshones, in central and northeastern Nevada, southeastern California, and northwestern Utah; (2) Northern Shoshones, in southern Idaho; and (3) Eastern Shoshones, in western Wyoming.
stereotype
An image of, or attitude towards persons or groups that may be based on superficial observations and experiences which reflect preconceived ideas.
tribe
A political unit of Native Americans. Each tribe is united by common history, territory, culture and language. This term has been widely used in anthropology, but there is no general consensus as to its precise definition or appropriate application. Anthropological study shows that the colonial concept of the tribe as an ethnically, linguistically, culturally, and politically autonomous and self-conscious unit was a gross oversimplification of the complex panorama of inter-ethnic and regional social relations.

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