Bear River Massacre
Encyclopedia : B : BE : BEA : Bear River Massacre
| Expedition from Camp Douglas, Utah, to Cache Valley, Idaho |
|---|
| Bear River |
The incident began when a resident of Summit Creek found his horse missing and accused a young Indian who was fishing in Summit Creek of having stolen the animal. Robert Thornley, an English immigrant and first resident of Summit Creek (now Smithfield) defended the young Indian by pointing out that he still had live fish strung on a willow immersed in the creek, so he would have had no time to steal a horse, hide it away, and return to his fishing. But a jury of locals hung the young Indian anyway. The name of the young man has come down in local history as Pugweenee. Later information reveals that Pugweenee is the Shoshone word for "fish," so it is probable that the young man was merely saying "look at my fish," or "I was just fishing."
It turned out that the young Indian was the son of the local Shoshone Chief and within a few days the Indians took revenge by killing a couple of young men of the Merrill family who were gathering wood in the nearby canyon.
This tipped the balance in what had theretofore been a quite harmonious relationship between the whites and the Indians and the support of the US Army was solicited to drive the Indians out of Cache Valley, their ancestral home. (see Timmins, Brighton, Thornley Family History; copy on deposit in the library of Utah State University, gan, Utah)
Shoshone raids in Washington Territory during the winter of 1862 prompted the U.S. to retaliate. Connor's troops traveled from Fort Douglas, Utah, to Chief Bear Hunter's camp 120 miles north in early January.
At dawn, Connor's troops started to cross Bear River. Before everyone had crossed, some of the men made a frontal assault on the Shoshone which failed. Connor took control of the men and the troops forced the Shoshone into a ravine. The troops high on the hills shot at the warriors down below. This caused many of the Shoshone to die or run. The ones that ran were either killed or captured. The battle ended by mid-morning with a U.S. victory.
The U.S. lost 27 soldiers including five officers. The Shoshone bands lost between 200 and 400, including scores of women and children, with the official U.S. Army report listing 272 dead.
Witin a decade, Settler/Indian relations returned to some semblance of harmony, as Territorial Governor Brigham Young convinced Mormon settlers that it was cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them. Indeed, many Indians became acccustomed to leaving their younger children with White settlers to overwinter, some of these effectively becoming members of some Mormon families, appearing in early Cache Valley photographs together with other family members.
The battle site is located near U.S. Route 91. It has been proposed that it be developed as a picnic/rest area/historic site.
References
- [The American Battlefield Protection Program]
- [An Early History of Franklin.]
- [Historic Marker at the site]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.