Bear River Massacre

Immigrant pressures causing Shoshone starvation

The establishment of the California and Oregon Trails, as well as the founding of Salt Lake City in 1847, brought the Shoshone people into regular contact with white colonists moving westward. By 1856, European Americans had established their first permanent settlements and farms in Cache Valley, starting at Wellsville, Utah, and gradually moving northward.

Brigham Young declared the policy that Mormon settlers should establish friendly relations with the surrounding American Indian tribes. He encouraged their helping to "feed them rather than fight them". Despite the policy, the settlers were consuming significant food resources and taking over areas that pushed the Shoshone increasingly into areas of marginal food production. David H. Burr, Surveyor General of the Territory of Utah, wrote in 1856 that the local Shoshone Indians reported that the Mormons used so much of the Cache Valley's resources that the once abundant game no longer appeared. Foraging and hunting by settlers traveling on the western migration trails took additional food sources away from the Shoshone. As early as 1859, Jacob Forney, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory of Utah, recognized the impact of migrants, writing, "The Indians...have become impoverished by the introduction of a white population". He recommended that an Indian Reservation be established in Cache Valley to protect essential resources for the Shoshone. His superiors at the United States Department of the Interior did not act on his proposal. Doty purchased supplies of food and slowly doled it out. He suggested furnishing the Shoshone with livestock to enable them to become herders instead of beggars.

On July 28, 1862, John White discovered gold on the Grasshopper Creek in the southwestern Montana mountains.

Outbreak of the Civil War

When the American Civil War began in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln was concerned that California, which had just recently become a state, would be cut off from the rest of the Union. He ordered several regiments to be raised from the population of California to help protect mail routes and the communications lines of the West. was put in command of the 3rd California Volunteer Infantry Regiment and ordered to move his men to Utah, to protect the Overland Mail Route and keep peace in the region.

Pugweenee

When a resident of Summit Creek (now Smithfield) found his horse missing, he accused a young Shoshone fishing in nearby Summit Creek of having stolen the animal. Robert Thornley, an English immigrant and first resident of Summit Creek, defended the young Indian and testified for him. Nonetheless, a jury of locals convicted him and hanged him for stealing the horse. Local history recorded the Shoshone's name as Pugweenee. The young Indian man was the son of the local Shoshone chief. Within a few days, the Shoshone retaliated by killing a couple of young men of the Merrill family gathering wood in the nearby canyon.

Massacre near Fort Hall

During the summer of 1859, a settler company of about 19 people from Michigan was traveling on the Oregon Trail near Fort Hall when they were attacked at night by people they assumed were local Shoshone. Several members of the company were killed by gunfire. The survivors took refuge along the Portneuf River, where they hid among the bullrushes and willow trees. Three days later, Lieutenant Livingston of Fort Walla Walla, leading a company of dragoons, met the survivors. He investigated the incident and documented what he called the brutality of the attack.

Reuben Van Ornum and the Battle of Providence

thumb|left|A picture of young Reuben Van Ornum seated in the middle: his uncle Zachias, is to his left

On September 9, 1860, Elijah Utter was leading migrants on the Oregon trail when they were attacked by a group of presumably Bannock and Boise Shoshone. Despite settlers' attempts to appease the Native Americans, the Indians killed nearly the entire migrant party and drove off their livestock. Alexis Van Ornum, his family, and about ten others hid in some nearby brush, only to be discovered and killed. Their bodies were discovered by a company of U.S. soldiers led by Captain Frederick T. Dent. Lieutenant Marcus A. Reno came across the mutilated bodies of six of the Van Ornums. The survivors reported that the attacking warriors took four Van Ornum children captive. As a direct result of this attack, the Army established a military fort near the present location of Boise, Idaho, along the migrant trail. Colonel George Wright requested $150,000 to establish a military post to sustain five troop companies. After the Indians opened fire, McGarry gave the order "to commence firing and to kill every Indian they could see." Kinney issued a warrant for the arrest of chiefs Bear Hunter, Sanpitch, and Sagwitch. He ordered the territorial marshal to seek assistance from Col. Connor for a military force to "effect the arrest of the guilty Indians."</blockquote>

Military action in Cache Valley

In many ways, the soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas were spoiling for a fight. In addition to discipline problems among the soldiers, there was a minor "mutiny" among the soldiers where a joint petition by most of the California Volunteers requested to withhold over $30,000 from their paychecks for the sole purpose of instead paying for naval passage to the eastern states, and to "serve their country in shooting traitors instead of eating rations and freezing to death around sage brush fires...". Furthermore, they said they would gladly pay this money "for the privilege (original emphasis) of going to the Potomac and getting shot." The War Department declined this request.</blockquote>

The first group to leave Fort Douglas was forty men of Company K, 3rd Regiment California Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Captain Samuel W. Hoyt, accompanied by 15 baggage wagons and two "mountain howitzers", totaling 80 soldiers. They left on January 22, 1863.

After temporarily retreating and regrouping, Connor sent McGarry and several other smaller groups into flanking maneuvers to attack the village from the sides and behind. He directed a line of infantry to block any attempt by the Shoshone to flee from the attack. After about two hours, the Shoshone had run out of ammunition. According to some later reports, some Shoshone were seen trying to cast lead ammunition during the middle of the battle and died with the molds in their hands. After the officers concluded the battle was over, they returned with the soldiers to their temporary encampment near Franklin. Franklin residents opened their homes to wounded soldiers that night. They brought blankets and hay to the church meetinghouse to protect the other soldiers from the cold. Connor hired several men to use sleighs to bring wounded men back to Salt Lake City. He reported capturing 175 horses and some arms, and destroying 70 lodges and a large quantity of stored wheat in winter supplies. He left a small quantity of wheat on the field for the 160 captured women and children. Chief Sagwitch gathered survivors to keep his community alive. Sagwitch was shot twice in the hand and tried to escape on horseback, only to have the horse shot out from under him. He went to the ravine and escaped into the Bear River near a hot spring, where he floated under some brush until nightfall. Sagwitch's son, Beshup Timbimboo, was shot seven times but survived and was rescued by family members. Other band members hid in the willow brush of the Bear River or tried to act as if they were dead. Sagwitch and other survivors retrieved the wounded and built a fire to warm the survivors. In his 1911 autobiography, Danish immigrant Hans Jasperson said he walked among the bodies and counted 493 dead Shoshone people.

In 1918, Sagwitch's son Be-shup, Frank Timbimboo Warner, said, "[H]alf of those present got away," and 156 were killed. He went on to say that two of his brothers and a sister-in-law "lived", as well as many who later lived at the Washakie, Utah, settlement, the Fort Hall reservation, in the Wind River country, and elsewhere. Historian Brigham D. Madsen estimated about 250 were killed in the massacre. Historian Madsen states that "Tacitly, if not overtly, the Mormons were accomplices" to the massacre. They are restoring the land by removing invasive plants and planting native plants.

The Smithsonian Institution repatriated two Shoshone human remains, that of a teenage man and a woman who was in her 20s when she was killed, back to the Shoshone people for burial. The remains were returned in 2013.

Little was known about the Bear River Massacre or the life and reputation of Patrick Edward Connor in his native County Kerry in Ireland. On Monday 7 August 2023 (August Bank Holiday Monday) local radio station, Radio Kerry, broadcast a 90-minute radio documentary entitled Gloryhunter, Kerry’s Indian Killer.

This documentary sets out a detailed account of the massacre and Connor’s role in the dispossession and killing of first nation Americans in modern day Utah, Idaho and Colorado. It features interviews with historians and authors, as well as representatives of the Shoshone nation. The full documentary is available to hear on Spotify.

Notes

References

External links

FranklinIdaho.org, An Early History of Franklin
OHS.org, Zacheas Van Ornum Petition for Indemnity
OHS.org News Article, Snake River Massacre Account by One of the Survivors
Everything2, Everything2.com, node about the Bear River Massacre