This year marks 100 years since Craters of the Moon was first designated a national monument and preserve by the federal government. But long before that designation, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes lived and stewarded the land, and shared many tales of its origin.
At a ceremony — dedicated to a new interpretive trail honoring the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes at Craters of the Moon — with the National Park Service last month, Rose Ann Abrahamson, a member of the tribes and descendant of Sacajawea, shared the tribes’ oral history behind the volcanic monument.
Among the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, it was said that long ago on salmon eater lands there lived a “doe-gwo’ah pah-do-up,” a snake-like reptile that nested in southern Idaho, Abrahamson said. One day, the creature moved and curled itself around a small mountain.
During a storm one day, the creature awoke to lightning strikes near it.
“His coils started to tighten around that mountain, and he started squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until molten rock came from underneath the ground and around him,” she told the crowd. “The old people said it caused this place that you see here today, Craters of the Moon.”