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Patrick Edward Connor, Shown After His Promotion to General, Established Camp Douglas in 1862 and Commanded the Soldiers Who Participated in the Bear River Massacre

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Patrick Edward Connor, Shown After His Promotion to General, Established Camp Douglas in 1862 and Commanded the Soldiers Who Participated in the Bear River Massacre Patrick Edward Connor, shown after his promotion to general, established Camp Douglas in 1862 and commanded the soldiers who participated in the Bear River Massacre. (Photo by Flaglor, Utah State Historical Society) CHAPTER 13 Harold Schindler THE BEAR RIVER MAssACRE New Historical Evidence ontroversy has dogged the Bear River Connor’s [p. 301] estimate, the camp CMassacre from the first. lay in a dry ravine about forty feet The event in question occurred when, on wide and was shielded by twelve-foot January 29, 1863, volunteer soldiers under embankments in which the Indians Colonel Patrick Edward Connor attacked had cut firing steps. a Shoshoni camp on the Bear River, killing When the soldiers appeared shortly nearly three hundred men, women, and after daybreak on January 27 [sic], children. The bloody encounter culminated the Shoshonis were waiting in their years of increasing tension between whites defenses. and the Shoshonis, who, faced with dwin- About two-thirds of the command dling lands and food sources, had resorted succeeded in fording ice-choked Bear to theft in order to survive. By the time of River. While Connor tarried to hasten the battle, confrontations between the once- the crossing, Major [Edward] McGarry friendly Indians and the settlers and emi- dismounted his troops and launched grants were common. a frontal attack. It was repulsed with So it was that “in deep snow and bitter cold” heavy loss. Connor assumed control Connor set forth from Fort Doug- and shifted tactics, sending flanking las with nearly three hundred men, parties to where the ravine issued from mostly cavalry, late in January 1863. some hills. While detachments sealed Intelligence reports had correctly off the head and mouth of the ravine, located Bear Hunter’s village on Bear others swept down both rims, pour- River about 140 miles north of Salt ing a murderous enfilading fire into Lake City, near present Preston, Idaho. the lodges below. Escape blocked, the Mustering three hundred warriors by Shoshonis fought desperately in their 228 HAROLD SCHINDLER positions until slain, often in hand- At the onset of his expedition against the to-hand combat. Of those who broke Bear River band, he announced that he was free, many were shot while swimming satisfied that these Indians were among those the icy river. By mid- who had been murdering morning the fighting emigrants on the Overland had ended. Mail Route for the previ- On the battlefield ous fifteen years. Because the troops counted of their apparent role as 224 bod ies, including “principal actors and lead- that of Bear Hunter, ers in the horrid massacres and knew that the toll of the past summer, I deter- was actually higher. mined . to chastise them They destroyed 70 if possible.” He told U.S. lodges and quanti- marshal Isaac L. Gibbs that ties of provisions, Gibbs could accompany the seized 175 Indian troops with his federal war- A young Shoshoni brave. Shoshonis bore horses, and captured the brunt of the January 1863 attack. rants if he wanted, but “it 160 women and (Photo by William H. Jackson, Utah State [p. 302] was not intended Historical Society) children, who were to have any prisoners.”3 left in the wrecked village with a store However—and this is another ­controversy— of food. The Californians had been there have been many who have questioned hurt, too: 14 dead, 4 officers and 49 whether Connor’s soldiers actually tangled men wounded (of whom 1 officer and with the guilty Indians. 6 men died later), and 75 men with Recently discovered evidence, while frostbitten feet. Even so, it had been it resolves neither of those debates, does a signal victory, winning Connor the address a more fundamental aspect of the fulsome praise of the War Department encounter that ultimately claimed the lives of and prompt promotion to brigadier twenty-three soldiers and nearly three hun- general.1 dred American Indians: that is, Bear River began as a battle, but it most certainly degen- Controversies over the battle have tainted erated into a massacre. We have that informa- it ever since. For one thing, Chief Justice tion from a participant, Sergeant William L. John F. Kinney of the Utah Supreme Court Beach of Company K, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, had issued warrants for the arrest of several California Volunteers, who wrote an account Shoshoni chiefs for the murder of a miner. But and sketched a map just sixteen days after the critics have questioned whether the warrants engagement, while he was recuperating from could legally be served, since the chiefs were the effects of frozen feet. no longer within the court’s jurisdiction.2 The The sergeant specifically describes a cru- legality of the federal writs was irrelevant, cial moment in the four-hour struggle: the however, to Colonel Connor, commander of point at which the soldiers broke through the California Volunteers at Camp Douglas. the Shoshoni fortifications and rushed “into THE BEAR RIVER MAssACRE 229 Battle action superimposed on a picture of the battlefield. (Utah State Historical Society) their very midst when the work of death and located the Indian camp and its defenders commenced in real earnest.” Having seen a on a map of the battlefield. He also charted the dozen or so of his comrades shot down in course of the river at the time of the engage- the initial attack, Beach watched as the tide ment and pinpointed the soldiers’ ford across of battle fluctuated until a desperate enemy the Bear. From his map, historians learn for finally sought to surrender. the first time that some of the Shoshonis broke from the fortified ravine on horseback.4 Beach Midst the roar of guns and sharp traced the warriors’ retreat on the map with a report of Pistols could be herd the cry series of lowercase “i” symbols. for quarters but their was no quarters The manuscript and map came to light that day. The fight lasted more in February 1997 after Jack Irvine of Eureka, than four hours and appeared more California, read an Associated Press story in like a frollick than a fight the wounded the San Francisco Chronicle about Brigham D. cracking jokes with the frozen some Madsen, University of Utah emeritus profes- frozen so bad that they could not load sor of history, and learned that Madsen had their guns used them as clubs. written The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River The “cry for quarters” fell upon deaf ears Massacre.5 Irvine, a collector of Northwest doc- as the bloody work continued. uments and photographs, telephoned Madsen In his account, the cavalry sergeant also that night and told him that he had collected provided valuable insights concerning the Sergeant Beach’s narrative and map. He sent movement of troops as the attack took shape; the historian a photocopy and so opened he carefully recorded the position of each unit a sporadic correspondence and telephone 230 HAROLD SCHINDLER and rancher. Harville had an abiding interest in local history and was a founding member of the Humboldt County Historical Society. He also owned a large col- lection of California memo- rabilia, which was put up for sale after his death in 1996. Irvine found the narra- tive and map folded in an envelope and was intrigued because the documents referred to Bear River, which he at first took to be the Bear of Humboldt County. When he found that it was not the Northern California stream, he briefly researched the Connor expedition. Although he determined that Joseph Russ had been alive when the regiment was organized in 1861, he could find no connection between the pioneer and the soldier to indicate how the manuscript had come into Russ’s possession. Map drawn by Sergeant William L. Beach shortly after the Bear River Massacre in 1863. After his research, Irvine (Courtesy of Harold Schindler family, University of Utah Press) put the document away and thought no more of it until dialogue that would continue over the span of he saw the Chronicle article a year later. some eighteen months. Both Irvine and Madsen agreed that The manuscript has an interesting, if not the document should be made available to sketchy, pedigree. According to Irvine, he scholars and researchers, preferably those in obtained the four pages from the estate of Utah. The only obstacle was in determining a Richard Harville, a prominent Californian and fair exchange for the four-page manuscript.6 a descendant of Joseph Russ, an early 1850s When Irvine suggested a trade for Northwest overland pioneer to Humboldt County who documents or photos, Madsen contacted became fabulously wealthy as a landowner Gregory C. Thompson of the University of THE BEAR RIVER MAssACRE 231 Looking along the line of the old riverbank where Indians were camped the morning of the massacre. (Utah State Historical Society) Utah’s Marriott Library Special Collections. confirms the magnitude of the massacre He also contacted me. Special Collections had when he cites the enemy loss at “two hundred nothing that fell within Irvine’s sphere of inter- and eighty Kiled.” This number would not est, but after some months of dickering, Irvine include those individuals shot while attempt- and I were able to reach a mutually acceptable ing to escape across the river, whose bodies agreement.7 Beach’s narrative and map would were swept away and could not be counted.8 return to Utah. While the fight itself has been occasionally Madsen feels that the Beach papers are very treated in books and periodicals, Sergeant important in resolving some of the issues sur- Beach’s narrative and map are singularly rounding the encounter.
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