What the Hell is a Jarbidge?

The Jarbidge river flows from its headwaters in the Jarbidge mountains of Nevada into the southern desert of Idaho. This river is famous for its hoodoos and caves, rousing whitewater and springtime ground fireworks (wildflower eye-candy explosions). DON’T BRING FIREWORKS-they are natural, non-flammable and free of charge here in the spring. The Jarbidge is a tributary to the Bruneau River and the two become one on the Owyhee Desert Plateau. When paired together, you have a contiguous stretch of an incredibly remote and scenic, wilderness river trip.

Occasionally it is important to revisit etymology when traveling through wild landscapes -or truly any landscape, cultural or otherwise. The word Jarbidge makes it easy to get curious. In my eyes, and in this day and age, we all could use more curiosity to understand one another better. 

So, in parts of Idaho, or small niche places where kayakers and rafters dwell, you may see a bumper sticker that boldly asks, “What the hell is a Jarbidge?” It’s meant to be funny, of course, but upon deeper reflection and research, one will find a less funny origin story. 

The word Jarbidge has a lot of ambiguity in its evolution from a Shoshone word that described the legend of an evil spirit or monster ‘Tswhawbitts’ that inhabited the caves and canyons in the region. This word is reported to be pronounced “tuh-saw-haw-bits”. Historians believe the word Jarbidge was a bastardization of the Shoshone word that white gold miners heard as ‘ja-ha-bich’. These miners heard and ultimately wrote into history the word: Jarbidge. So there you have it, we have floated on for years and years without correcting the anglicized word, and gone on to name a mountain range, river and small town in its honor.

Supposedly, the legend goes, the Jarbidge mountains and canyon lands were the home to a cannibalistic giant. He would catch men in his basket and take them away to gobble them up. The “hills”, now known as the Jarbidge mountains, were a place the Shoshone avoided because of this evil haunting. It wasn’t until gold was found in the mountains, around 1908, that a mining settlement was established. This town is modern day Jarbidge, Nevada. When white miners interfaced with Shoshone Tribe members, the word Jarbidge was born.

For better or worse culturally, the name remains the gold miner version today-Jarbidge. I continue to be curious about the limited findable lore of this evil spirited giant that gobbles up humans. Why didn’t he make dinner out of the miners who threatened his home in the mountains? I wonder what it was like for the Shoshone people who changed their paths of travel accordingly, to keep away from the devil’s evil. Did they use him as a threat to their kids when they weren’t behaving? Did their kids misbehave? Was Tswhawbitts simply misunderstood and trying to survive?

When someone asks you “What the hell’s a Jarbidge?”, you know a limited version of the weathered etymology, and the remains of a Shoshone legend survived by the lands of the wicked Tswhawbitts. It’s important to remember anyone traveling through the Jarbidge-Bruneau lands is traveling on the ancestral homeland of the Shoshone, Bannock and Northern Paiute peoples.

Photos by, Dove Miller