bear water massacre in 1863
On the day of 29 January 1863 Colonel Patrick Edward cullen Connor and about 200 Cal Volunteers assaulted a Northwestern Shoshoni wintertime village located at the confluence of Beaver Creek and Bear Water, twelve mls west and north from the village of Franklin in Cache Area and just a shorter distance north of the present Utah-Idaho boundary line. This group of 450 Shoshoni below war chief Bear Seeker had watched warily since Mormon farmers had moved into the Indian home of Cache Valley in the planting season of 1860 and now, 36 months later, acquired appropriated every one of the land and water in the verdant mountain valley. The young men from the tribe got struck back at the white-colored settlers, this kind of prompted Ut territorial officials to contact Connors soldiers to discipline the Northwestern band. Prior to commander led his guys from Camp Douglas by Salt Pond City north to Bear Riv, he had announced that he meant to not take prisoners.
While the troopers were progressing to the Indian camp in the morning darkness in 6: 00 a. m., they discovered the Shoshoni warriors entrenched behind the ten-foot eastern embankment of Beaver Creek (later named Battle Creek). The Volunteers suffered almost all of their twenty three casualties inside their first fee across the open plain before the Shoshoni village. Colonel Connor soon improved tactics, which resulted in an entire envelopment with the Shoshoni camp by the military who started firing around the Indian guys, women, and children indiscriminately. By 8: 00 a. m., the Indian guys were out of ammo, and the last two hours from the battle became a bataille as the soldiers used their revolvers to capture down all of the Indians they could find inside the dense willows of the camp.
Around 250 Shoshoni were killed, including 90 women and kids. After the bloodbath ended, a number of the uncontrolled troops went through the Indian community raping ladies and using responsable to party in the heads of women and children who were already declining of wounds. Chief Carry Hunter was killed along with sub-chief, Lehi. The troops burned up the seventy-five Indian lodges, recovered you, 000 bushels of wheat or grain and flour, and appropriated 175 Shoshoni horses. Even though the troops looked after their wounded and took their useless back to Camp Douglas to get burial, the Indians body were left on the field for the wolves and crows. Even though the Mormon settlers in Refuge Valley expressed their gratitude for the movement of Col. Connor as an intervention of the Almighty within their behalf, the Bear Lake Massacre has been overlooked inside the history of the American Western world chiefly since it occurred through the Civil War when a more important struggle was taking place inside the East. With the six main Indian massacres in the Far West, coming from Bear River in 1863 to Injured Knee in 1890, the Bear Riv affair resulted in the most patients, an event which in turn today warrants greater focus than the straightforward sign at this time at the web page.
