Bear River Massacre -Native American Indian Tribes - Over 2,000 articles on native american indians, their culture & traditions.

TNB->Shoshone Indian: Bear River Massacre

Posted on Monday, January 28 @ 02:20:26 PST

AUTHOR: Rebecca Fawn Cochran

Four miles north of Preston, Idaho, the Bear River quietly ambles through green valleys and sagebrush covered mountains. It is quiet now, with only a few cattle grazing nearby on well-kept farms.

Today, the tall willows which once provided cool respite for the Northwestern band of Shoshone who camped there to escape the summer's glaring heat have all but vanished.

Something happened on this site that is little known to U.S. history. But it is seared forever into the memory of the Shoshone.

On January 29, 1863, the militia of the U.S. Army's Third California Volunteers, under the command of Colonel Patrick E. Connor, rode down the frozen bluff and massacred some 300 Northwestern Shoshone Indians - the largest slaughter of Native Americans in the history of the country.

Stumble It!

Outlier the
Buy This Art Print At AllPosters.com
Find out how you can use this image for FREE.

It was a clash of two diverse cultures trying to share the same land, and the Shoshone lost. The Shoshone, comprising several bands, had close contact with the white settlers moving in the ever-growing tide of westward expansion.

They found themselves in the unenviable position of being precisely where immigrants would pass on their way to the Pacific. That, combined with the critical perception people had of Native Americans at the time, resulted in a recipe for disaster.

The Shoshone were a starving people that winter, and the sometimes friendly offerings of food by nearby residents had dwindled as the Shoshone were blamed for skirmishes and the atrocities to other groups nearby.

Soon after the founding of Salt Lake, Peter Skene Ogden wrote, "What will be the reward of these poor wretches in the next world I cannot pretend to say, but surely they cannot be in a more wretched state than this." It was a commonly held notion at the time.

Native Americans were viewed as poor, starving beggars who didn't understand the concept and benefits of a Manifest Destiny, or, as Col. Patrick E. Connor believed, violent savages who needed to be destroyed at all costs.

Skirmishes had broken out all along the Utah frontier leading to the Utah War, and the overland mail routes had been under attack. Individual murders had been taking place and the local constituency were at their wits end.

Utah Governor Frank Fuller and various other officials asked the Secretary of War to come in with a temporary regiment of mounted rangers. Brigham Young interpreted that as an attempt to bypass the Utah militia who "were ready and able to take care ... of all the Indians and ... protect the mail line if called upon to do so."

It seems that the few people doing most of the talking did not understand the Northwestern Shoshone, and did not distinguish that particular band of the tribe from the others.

There were troublemaking bands that took a few horses and cattle, were involved in an altercation with settlers (two Indians and two white settlers were killed), and ate the stolen cattle because of hunger. None of these bands, however, were of the Northwestern Shoshone, but all were tarred with the same brush.

It was in this environment that Col. Connor and his California Volunteers rode toward the area of the Bear River.

It was so cold that winter that merely exhaling caused men's mustaches to freeze. Before setting out for Bear River in southern Idaho, nearly 75 of Connor's 275 men were left behind in Utah's Brigham City due to frozen feet before the remainder of the regiment made the hard ride north.

Along the river banks on the icy morning of January 29, 1863, Chief Sagwitch rose early. A white friend of the Shoshone had come to tell them that Col. Connor was at last coming to the camp to "get the guilty parties."

Chief Sagwitch had expected a visit for just that purpose and on that January morning, as he realized the steam drifting from the mountains was getting lower, he realized too that the soldiers were at last there.

As he called to the others who were still asleep, men tumbled from their tepees and grabbed their weapons. In the frenzy, Sagwitch yelled for the men not to be the first to shoot.

As his granddaughter Mae Parry recounts in her story Massacre at Boa Ogoi, "He thought that perhaps this military man was a wise and just man. He thought the Colonel would ask for the guilty men, whom he would immediately have handed over."

The encounter did not happen the way that Chief Sagwitch thought it would. The Colonel asked no questions. The regiment commenced firing, and the Indians were being "slaughtered like wild rabbits."

Seeing themselves vastly outnumbered, the Shoshone began jumping into the freezing river in an attempt to escape. No one was spared: men, women and children, whose names are known only to historians of the tribe.

One survivor was Anzee Chee. She was chased by soldiers, but was able to hide under a bank that overhung the river. She suffered wounds in the shoulder and chest and the loss of her baby, who was tossed into the icy water to be drowned.

Chief Bear Hunter was known as a leader by the soldiers. He was kicked and tortured, and finally, because he would not cry out, had a rifle bayonet run through his ears. It proved to be painfully true that arrows were no match for rifles.

There were close to 450 men, women and children in the camp that day. If Connor had arrived a few weeks earlier, during the Shoshone's Warm Dance, the death toll could have been higher.

The traditional Warm Dance, to bring back warm weather and drive out the cold, brought many bands together to play games and to socialize. Colonel Connor, who prided himself on knowing the ways of the Indian, was unaware of the Warm Dance tradition.

Throughout the battle, the wounded urged their chief to escape. After surviving two of his horses in battle, Sagwitch finally escaped on a third. Another Shoshone escaped with him by grasping the horse's tail as they rode across a frozen section of the river.

One incident that has been recounted many times by the Timbimboo family tells of Yeager Timbimboo (or Da boo zee, meaning cottontail rabbit), who was the son of Chief Sagwitch.

Only twelve years old, Yeager was caught up in the bloodshed, looking for shelter as bullets whizzed past him. He spied a grass teepee so full of people that it was actually moving. He entered the teepee and there he found his grandmother.

She was afraid that soon the teepee would go up in flames, but she had a plan. She and the boy would go out among the dead and be very still, not making a sound or, as she instructed him, "not even open your eyes."

Surrounded by the dead, they remained still on the intensely cold ground all day until Yeager, whose curiosity got the best of him, raised his head and looked down the gun barrel of a soldier who saw that he was still alive.

Yeager told later that the soldier raised his gun and lowered it two times while looking into his eyes. The soldier finally lowered the gun and, perhaps weary from the blood spilled there, walked away.

Another of the chief's sons escaped with a girlfriend. She rode behind him on his horse as they raced for the surrounding hills. He made it, but she died from the bullets that found their mark.

Tale after tale of that day's intimate sorrow, rage and courage became the saddest chapters of the Northwestern Shoshone history. Scenes of desperation, the courage to survive, and the loss of the dream that they would find justice at the hands of their perpetrators also fell upon them that day.

Today, the killing field is marked with a small stone monument with a plaque. Surrounding the tiny parking area are farms and a few homes that are well-kept and quiet.

Though designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990 by the National Park Service, you can easily drive past this stone monument, a silent testimony to those who lost their lives in the largest massacre of Indians in the history of the United States, and never know what happened.

Since its designation as a landmark, the National Park Service has had public discussions with tribal members and local residents; petitions have been signed and letters have been written in the hope that it will be designated a National Historic Site.

All sides are being taken into account before any final decisions are rendered. If this happens, the National Park Service will have to spend an estimated $14.4 million dollars to purchase more than 160 acres of land in the area; build a visitors and cultural center and a network of trails; and maintain the site. The Park Service would do this on a willing buyer, willing seller basis.

One-hundred-forty-four acres would encompass the massacre field itself. The current landowners, who have differing opinions on the matter, would retain any existing use of their land within guidelines established by the Park Service.

Some landowners (not Shoshone) have farmed their land for many years and, though they readily admit that what happened to the Shoshone was an atrocity, they don't want to suffer a loss if the tax valuation for the land is not equal to the asking price.

For the Shoshone, though, there is the urgent desire to see this all come to fruition. Says Patty Timbimboo Madsen, office manager for the tribe in Brigham City, Utah, "We hear the National Park Service wants to come up with more meetings now. Much of this is up to Congress, we have written letters to our Senators in Idaho and Utah, and we have tried to find how far this has progressed through those channels and yet often we can get little help in seeing exactly what will happen next."

This is a classic case of an historical area with deep significance to one cultural group being resided upon by another. Matters such as how to do archaeological research would have to be addressed according to current laws (such as the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, should that apply) and cultural sensitivities on both sides.

It is taking dry history to a current reality because this is not a situation where the direct descendants cannot be traced, as in the case of delving into the land use areas of thousands of years past.

Amy Timbimboo still survives as a 104-year-old direct relation. There are many others as well who wish the voices of their ancestors to be heard and not just be a mournful memory.

No one can dispute that it is a vital part of the history of the area, though it has been little known. However, there are families residing there now who are making new history.

Some say they are willing to consider selling their land if the price is right, and there are others who are not quite sure. The land proposal involves no more than a few families whose property abuts the area.

It will have to be, as always, a delicate balance. While it is important that the integrity and honor of the dead be recognized and that their story never die as visitors make their way to the proposed site, efforts must be reconciled with those who are carving out lives today on what the Northwestern Shoshone consider sacred ground.

For many Shoshone, the wooden sign and the little monument of stones not more than eight feet high is not a proper testimony to the hundreds who were brutally killed there that January day.

Mark Carter, a local resident, while pointing to the ford where the California Volunteers came down, said "It wasn't a battle, it was a massacre and I remember hearing about it all my life. I'm in my seventies now and I recall at the age of 14 seeing the stones being piled here as this monument. These people have to be remembered."

About the Author:

Rebecca Fawn Cochran, who lives in Pittsburgh, is a nationally published journalist, with a main focus on Native American themes, events and issues. Racially mixed, her Native American heritage is Blackfoot / Cherokee.

Further Reading:

The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (Utah Centennial Series, Vol 1)
Brigham D. Madsen (Editor), Charles S. Peterson

The Northern Shoshone
Brigham D. Madsen

Historian Brigham D. Madsen has devoted much of his career to telling the story of the Shoshoni. The tribe once occupied a huge region that includes portions of Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming and Montana.

Madsen examines four distinct groups which comprise the Northern Shoshoni, including a related band of Northern Paiute, the Bannock. He tells the story of these proud people and their struggle to adapt to the massive cultural changes that have occurred during the past 150 years.

The Lemhi: Sacajawea's People
Brigham D. Madsen

When Meriwether Lewis led his Corps of Discovery Expedition across the Continental Divide and down into the Salmon River Country, the Mountain Shoshoni, or Salmon Eaters, who met the Americans were overjoyed to be reunited with Sacajawea, sister of their Chief, Ca-me-ah-wait, and for long a captive of tribes east of the mountains.

From this initial meeting with whites these 1800 or so Northern Shoshoni soon came to know other bearded strangers, including British fur trappers, Latter-day Saint missionaries who left their book of Mormon name, Lemhi, attached to a branch of the Salmon River, and gold miners and farmers who crowded into the Indian homeland.

The new settlers soon began to exploit the wild game and fish which had formed Shoshoni subsistence, forcing the Indians to travel ever farther afield into the buffalo plains of Montana in search of food. Montana Territory officials were faced with the difficult task of trying to care for these wandering natives from neighboring Idaho Territory and were finally able to secure a small reservation for the tribe on the Lemhi River.

Recognizing the impracticality of trying to subsist the Lemhi people and to teach them to farm on such a tiny reserve, the Bureau of Indian Affairs attempted to move them to the larger Fort Hall Reservation but met with the implacable resistance of Chief Tendoy who refused to leave his ancestral home. This impasse continued from 1880 until 1907 during which the Lemhi struggled to maintain themselves with too little land and not much help from the Government.

Capitulating, finally, to pressure from Washington, D.C., and from the bleak prospects of their miniscule allotment of land, they moved, in 1907 to Fort Hall where their fortunes have since been joined to those of the other Northern Shoshoni and the Bannock who reside there.

The Bannock of Idaho (Idaho Yesterdays)
Brigham D. Madsen

Brigham Madsen provides an extensive history of the Bannock nation. His focus/speculation is on how they became seperate from the Snake Nation and on their continued existance as buffalo hunters.

Sagwitch : Shoshone Chieftain, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887
Scott R. Christensen, Brigham D. Madsen

Sagwitch, a leader of the Northwestern Shoshone, grew up at a time when European Americans began arriving in his homeland west of the Rocky Mountians. As the stream of emigrants began to grow, the Shoshone felt the strain on their resources and tensions mounted. Confrontations between the settlers and the Shoshone became more frequent culminating in the 1863 Bear River Massacre--the worst Native American massacre in U.S. history. Sagwitch lost his wife and two adopted sons.

Though wounded, Sagwitch lived to lead the desperate surviors. Believing their best hope lay in joining the people who occupied their homeland, Sagwitch and his band were baptized as Mormon. That enduring relationship led to the founding of the Washakie Indian colony in northern Utah.

This is the long awaited story of this courgeous leader and his people who endured near annihilation.

...More Books about Shoshone Indians

Note: Of the six major Indian massacres in the Far West, from Bear River in 1863 to Wounded Knee in 1890, the Bear River affair resulted in the most victims, an event which today deserves greater attention than the mere sign presently at the site.

Over 2,000 articles about native americans of the US and Canada First Nations.