But the base condition was often workable cooperation rather than constant hostility.

One group in the area, however, was persistently difficult.

Contemporary accounts refer to a group called the “Bad Snakes” who were in ongoing conflict with the trapping operation, harassing the camps and creating tensions that the main Shoshone community did not share.

The broader regional context included the Bannock people, who had their own territorial interests in the country through which the trapping party was operating.

The exact sequence of decisions and events that led to the January 1814 attacks is not fully reconstructed in the historical record.