----Did you know that at one time or other, people from more than 40 different ethnic backgrounds have settled in Idaho, some in large enough numbers to form small communities?
People came from around the world, bringing with them their foods, dances, celebrations, holidays, religions, folklore, music and traditions, and imprinted them on an area already rich with the cultures of Idaho's Indian nations.
Idaho's ethnic groups may be smaller than in more populous states. But that doesn't mean Idaho has no ethnic diversity. It simply means it's different here. We do not have the large Polish settlements of Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania has no large Basque or Nez Perce populations, either.
People came and continue to come to Idaho for many reasons. Most came from nations with increasing populations, declining agricultural production, unavailable land and economic and social disruptions.
That was true during the late 1800s for immigrants from Japan, the British Isles and Western and Southern Europe. It continues to be true for recent immigrants from Asia and Central and South America.
People also left their homelands for reasons other than economic. Men left Germany and Russia to escape the draft. Eastern European Jews fled political and religious persecution. People from Southeast Asia, Central America and Eastern Europe continue to emigrate for the same reasons.
Idahoans reach out to help those who share a common heritage. Idaho's Jews help Jewish immigrants; the Czech community in the Buhl-Castleford area aided recent arrivals from Eastern Europe. Boise and Twin Falls refugee centers and the Idaho Voluntary Agency have provided help for Southeast Asian refugees in the past two decades.
Early immigrants came to make a living off Idaho's land, mineral and lumber resources the same reasons that inspired white and black Americans from the East, South and Midwest of this country to move to the West. Nearly everyone believed the West was a land of opportunity, where abundant resources and available land promised success.
Scots, French Canadians and Hawaiians came as fur traders. Names like Coeur d'Alene, Pend Oreille, Payette and Nez Perce remind us of early French Canadian influence. A small party of Hawaiian trappers disappeared in the rugged, uncharted mountains of southwestern Idaho. They are remembered in the names of Owyhee County, the Owyhee River and Owyhee Mountains.
Later, during the missionary era of the 1830s and '40s, Belgian and Italian Catholic priests like Father Cataldo and Father DeSmet, and Protestant missionaries like the Spaldings and Smiths of English heritage, looked to the Northwest as a place to find their own kind of success.
The gold rush of the 1860s transformed Idaho Territory. A miner claimed while standing on the streets of Lewiston he could rub elbows with someone from nearly every country in the world. Census records at Pierce alone show people from, among other places, Jamaica, the Sandwich Islands, Ireland, England, France, Germany and China.
The 1870 census showed one-fourth of the population of Idaho Territory was Chinese. Four Portuguese-Azorians were with the Grimes party that has been credited with discovering gold in the Boise Basin. Today a small but stable Azorian population lives in the Gooding area.
Black Americans, Jewish peddlers, Mexican packers and German merchants joined the gold rush. Artisans brought their skills from their European, Asian or Latin American homelands. French hotel proprietors made life a little more comfortable for the traveler. German brewers were in such demand that at one time in Idaho more than 65 percent of the breweries were German-owned. Basque, Scandinavian, German and Irish women ran boarding houses and restaurants.
The silver mining boom of the 1880s continued the growth at Boise and Coeur d'Alene. New mining towns of Kellogg, Wallace, Enaville and Wardner supported large congregations of miners from diverse backgrounds Finland, Yugoslavia, Italy, Mexico and Greece. Welsh and Cornish miners were especially in demand because of the skill and technology they learned while working the mines in England.
Small communities grew in agricultural areas. Land, available through numerous federal land acts, was one of the biggest attractions drawing people to Idaho.
Railroad promotions stimulated settlement and immigration during the 1880s, when railroad construction finally tied Idaho to outside states and territories. Railroad agents traveled throughout the British Isles, Western and Northern Europe to attract passengers, who would later become settlers. Labor contractors also actively recruited railroad construction crews from among Southern Europeans and Japanese.
Others were recruited by land development companies. A small group of Slovenes from the Austro-Hungarian Empire settled at Homedale in 1914, enticed by an Idaho irrigation company to leave the coal mines of Wyoming.
American foreign language newspapers which nearly every ethnic group had also ran letters extolling the virtues of life in the West. People often settled in ethnic groups because of a favorable report sent back to the native land.
For example, a man from Switzerland wrote home about the St. Joe River Valley. He proclaimed its beauty and how much it reminded him of his beloved homeland. Because of his enthusiasm, a small Swiss colony resulted in the St. Joe country.
Scandinavians, French Canadians and Yugoslavs often are associated with the lumber industry in Idaho. Many were employed by the lumber companies of the Midwest and came with the companies to Idaho and the Northwest. Swedes were so closely associated with logging that the crosscut saw became known as a ''Swede fiddle.''
Most Scandinavians made their homes in the northern sections of the state certainly a large percentage settled in Latah County. Scandinavian societies such as the Sons of Norway and Swedish American clubs kept alive the heritage of their people, and Scandinavian churches still dot the northern Idaho landscape.
Many immigrants worked as ranch hands, sheepherders, harvest hands and field laborers. Scots have long been associated with Idaho cattle business; Mexicans and blacks often worked as their cow hands. We customarily associate Basques with sheepherding and erroneously presume they are continuing an occupation from their native land. In fact, most Basques were farmers and fishermen at home, but became sheepherders in Idaho because that was the only employmnent available to them.
Japanese, Russian Germans and Mexicans constituted the largest percentage of work crews in the sugar beet and potato fields of southern Idaho. They also left that difficult, back-breaking work as soon as they could.
But during World War II, many Japanese found themselves back in the fields near the internment camp at Minidoka. If they were willing to work in the fields, at a time when agricultural workers were in short supply, they were released from the confinements of camp living.
It was also during that era when a Mexican/U.S. program led to the importation of Mexican nationals. These Mexican nationals joined Mexican-American migrant labor crews at work in the irrigated fields and orchards of Idaho.
Delaware Indians, originally from Pennsylvania, first came to Idaho as guides to fur traders and settlers. They made their homes in the Boise Valley and in later years worked as farm laborers. Today they are working for federal recognition and legal title to some land.
Dutch immigrant farmers settled near Grangeville, most moving from Iowa and Manhattan, Mont. An irrigation company near Twin Falls then recruited some members of the Grangeville Dutch community to clear and plant the newly reclaimed land there. The settlement they founded now the town of Amsterdam south of Twin Falls grew and thrived. As recently as the 1970s, a third Dutch colony of dairy farmers moved from California to the Jerome-Gooding area. All three colonies supported the Dutch Reformed Church.
Throughout Idaho, churches have been instrumental in bringing ethnic groups to a particular place and keeping alive the ethnic composition of the area. German Catholics from Illinois took out homesteads on the Camas Prairie, formed small communities and retained much of their German heritage through the influence of the church.
The same is true for German Lutherans who settled at Cameron and Leland, both farm communities near Kendrick. The Lutheran Church also has been an important part of northern Idaho's Swedish and Norwegian farming and logging populations.
Welsh, Danish and Swiss immigrants made their homes in southeastern Idaho, primarily because of the missionary efforts of the Mormon church. Jewish communities at Pocatello and Boise have remained comparatively large and active because of synagogues at each city.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church of Pocatello and St. Paul's Missionary Baptist Church at Boise were important social, spiritual and political centers for the black populations of those cities. Today, among the Hispanic populations of southern Idaho, there are Spanish-language Assembly of God churches as well as Mormon and Roman Catholic churches. The Catholic church of East Lewiston was an important part of the once-thriving Italian community.
Many of the Italians who first came to Idaho to work on the railroad remained in the state. They formed settlements at Priest River, where they made railroad ties and took out homesteads; at Lewiston, where they became vegetable and fruit growers on land now occupied by the Potlatch Corp. mill; and at Pocatello, where stable work in the railroad shops attracted a large Italian population.
Greeks also came to the state to work on the railroads, congregating most heavily at Pocatello. They continue to retain much of their heritage through the Greek Orthodox Church there.
Most of the Japanese who remained in Idaho made their homes in the Snake River Valley. Those who follow the Buddhist faith attend religious services at the Buddhist temple at Ontario, Ore.
Immigrants from Finland settled in the Silver Valley, where they worked as miners and loggers. Another group of Finns became farmers in Long Valley near McCall. Although the two groups came from the same nation, they drifted apart in their new land, separated by their work, by ideological differences and by the rugged mountains of central Idaho. A third Finnish settlement at Clarkston found common ground between the two groups.
Today ethnic groups such as the Basques, Hispanics and Indians are more numerous and concentrated, and are actively revitalizing their cultures. They have successfully preserved their languages, art and customs, and frequently share their rich traditions in festivals and programs.
Other evidences of Idaho's ethnic past are in the physical remains of a former Finnish lodge hall, German barn or Chinese rock shelter, or in town names like Naples, Geneva and Shoshone.
Other ethnic groups are less visible. Many no longer have the churches and halls that once marked their nationality. But they carry on some traditions at family reunions, annual community celebrations and in their foods.
Americans no longer hide their ethnic backgrounds. People across the country celebrate their Old World and native heritages in festivals, language and cooking classes, ethnic associations, music and dance groups. Idaho's many ethnic groups continue to enrich us all.
About the author: Carole Simon-Smolinski, a Clarkston historian, conducted research on the ethnic origins of Idahoans with Pullman historians Laurie Mercier and Mary Reed through an Idaho Centennial Commission ethnic heritage committee project and the Idaho State Historical Society.
