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JANUARY 27:

January 27, 1863:  General Patrick Connor, and almost 300 California volunteers will fight Bear Hunter's Northern Shoshone on Bear River, north of the Idaho-Utah boundary. The soldiers will report 224 of the warriors will be killed in the fighting, including Bear Hunter. Other sources will put the number nearer to 400, including many women and children. Connor is called "Star Chief" by the Indians. This will be called the "Battle of Bear River" by the Army.

1959: 1st American corn is found (5600 b.c.) 

BACKGROUND:
(Ed's Note:  There seems to be some disagreement as to whether this battle took place on January 27 or 29.  I have seen it referenced to on both dates, but post it according to the date on Phil's website.)
 

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>From http://www.archaeologytoday.net/0199toc/da_forum.shtml
 

Bear River Massacre
By 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.

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 now 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." 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.

By Rebecca Fawn Cochran
 

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>From http://www.onlineutah.com/shoshonehistory.shtml
 

Shoshoni Indians
(Northwestern Bands)

At the time of major white penetration of the Great Basin and the Snake River areas in the 1840s, there were seven distinct Shoshoni groups. The Eastern Shoshoni, numbering about 2,000 under their famous Chief Washakie, occupied the region from the Wind River Mountains to Fort Bridger and astride the Oregon Trail. Their descendants today live on the Wind River Reservation. Two other divisions having similar cultures were the Goshute Shoshoni and the Western Shoshoni. The former, about 900 in number, lived in the valleys and mountains west and southwest of Great Salt Lake, with the remnants of their bands located in and around the small settlement of Ibapah, Utah, today. A much more numerous people, perhaps 8,000 strong, the Western Shoshoni occupied what is today northern and western Nevada. There were as many as eleven major bands distributed from the present Utah-Nevada border to Winnemucca on the west. Their descendants today live on the Duck Valley Reservation or scattered around the towns of northern Nevada from Wells to Winnemucca.

The four remaining groups of Shoshoni are usually listed under the general name of the "Northern Shoshoni." One of these groups, the Fort Hall Shoshoni of about 1,000 people, lived together with a band of about 800 Northern Paiute known in history as the Bannock at the confluence of the Portneuf and Snake rivers. A second division, the Lemhi, numbering some 1,800 people, ranged from the Beaverhead country in southwestern Montana westward to the Salmon River area, which was their main homeland. In western Idaho, along the Boise and Bruneau rivers, a third section of about 600 Shoshoni followed a life centered around salmon as their basic food. Finally, the fourth and final division of 1,500 people, the Northwestern Shoshoni, resided in the valleys of northern Utah--especially Weber Valley and Cache Valley--and along the eastern and northern shores of Great Salt Lake.

There were three major bands of Northwestern Shoshoni at the time the first Mormon pioneers began settling northern Utah. Chief Little Soldier headed the misnamed "Weber Ute" group of about 400, who occupied Weber Valley down to its entry into the Great Salt Lake. Chief Pocatello commanded a similar number of Shoshoni, who ranged from Grouse Creek in northwestern Utah eastward along the northern shore of Great Salt Lake to the Bear River. The third division of about 450 people, under Chief Bear Hunter, resided in Cache Valley and along the lower reaches of the Bear River. Bear Hunter was regarded as the principal leader of the Northwestern Shoshoni, being designated by Mormon settlers as the war chief who held equal status with Washakie when the Eastern and Northwestern groups met in their annual get-together each summer in Round Valley, just north of Bear Lake.

By the 1840s, the Northwestern Shoshoni had adopted most of the Plains Culture, using the horse for mobility and the hunting of game. Chief Pocatello especially led his band on numerous hunts for buffalo in the Wyoming area. Pocatello also gained notoriety as a reckless and fearless marauder along the Oregon and California trails. The Wasatch Mountains provided small game for the Northwestern bands, but of even greater importance were the grass seeds and plant roots which grew in abundance in the valleys and along the hillsides of northern Utah before the cattle and sheep of the white man denuded these rich areas and left many of the Shoshoni tribes in a starving condition and to suffer under the ignominy of being called "Digger Indians." Before white penetration, the Great Basin and Snake River Shoshoni had been among the most ecologically efficient and well-adapted Indians of the American West.

The tragic transformation for the Northwestern Shoshoni to a life of privation and want came with the occupation by Mormon farmers of their traditional homeland. The white pioneers slowly moved northward along the eastern shores of Great Salt Lake until by 1862 they had taken over Cache Valley, home of Bear Hunter's band. In addition, California-bound emigrants had wasted Indian food supplies as the travelers followed the Salt Lake Road around the lake and across the salt desert to Pilot Peak. The discovery of gold in Montana in 1862 further added to the traffic along the route. The young men of Bear Hunter's tribe began to strike back in late 1862, raiding Mormon cattle herds and attacking mining parties traveling to and from Montana.

The Indian aggression came to an end on 29 January 1863. On the morning of that day, Colonel Patrick Edward Connor and about 200 California Volunteers from Camp Douglas in Salt Lake City assaulted the winter camp of Bear Hunter's Northwestern group of 450 men, women, and children on Beaver Creek at its confluence with the Bear River, some twelve miles west of the Mormon village of Franklin in Cache Valley. As a result of the four-hour carnage that ensued, twenty-three soldiers lost their lives and at least 250 Shoshoni were slaughtered by the troops, including ninety women and children in what is now called the Bear River Massacre. Bear Hunter was killed, and the remnants of his tribe under Sagwitch and the chiefs of nine other Northwestern bands signed the Treaty of Box Elder at Brigham City, Utah, on 30 July 1863, bringing peace to this Shoshoni region.

After the signing of the Box Elder agreement, government officials attempted to get all of the Northwestern Shoshoni to move to the newly founded Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho. After several years of receiving their government annuities at Corinne, Utah, near the mouth of the Bear River, the Indians bands finally gave up their homelands in Utah and settled at Fort Hall, where their descendants live today. As a result of their move to Idaho, the Northwestern Shoshoni have been lost to Utah history although for centuries they had lived in northern Utah. It is time for Utah historians to make the Shoshoni a prominent part of the state's history along with the Navajo, Paiute, and Ute tribes.
 

See: Brigham D. Madsen, The Northern Shoshoni (1980), The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (1985), and Chief Pocatello: The White Plume (1986).