They called themselves the So-So-Goi.
In English, So-So-Goi translates to The People Who Traveled On Foot. You might know them better as the Shoshone.
This is the story of the last days of the Northwestern Band of Shoshones. They still have living descendants but most of their people were massacred on 29 January 1863.
This is both the largest massacre of Native Americans on what would become the Contentinental US and also probably the least well known. It got little press in part because it occurred during the American Civil War.
Their territory included parts of modern day Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho and Utah. Shoshone records of the incident call it Boa Ogoi.
The year 1825 marked the insidious beginning of the end. They ran into White trappers in the area and likely thought not much of it.
The trappers seemed to live much like they did and functioned much like they did. The So-So-Goi tolerated them and were happy to trade with them for valuable items, like Western knives.
The So-So-Goi wintered in an area they called Boa Ogoi ("Big River"). The trappers called the same place Cache Valley.
It is a place just north of the current day Idaho-Utah border. There are warmer places in Utah, but there are hot springs here that provide protection from the winter storms.
Every year, the So-So-Goi provisioned Boa Ogoi to help them survive the harsh winters on mostly stored goods. The trappers related to the area in a similar fashion, using it to stash goods accumulated while they hunted.
The local Natives saw the similarities between their lives and the activities of the trappers. They had no way of knowing this was a first wave and that later influxes of Europeans would relate to their lands in a wholly alien fashion, one inherently desctructive to the Native way of life.
Friction between the Natives and Whites began in the 1840s as settlers began to arrive and claim parcels of land for themselves. They fenced off land they had decided was "theirs" and saw anyone who set foot on it as trespassers, including the Natives who had long lived there part-time as one of the places part of their nomadic lives.
The settlers claimed the richest plots of land first and then began to kill wild game to protect their crops from them. The combination of staking claim to the most fertile plots of land, killing the local game animals and treating Natives as trespassers quickly began to impoverish the Natives.
The White settlers likely didn't fully realize that they were actually the trespassers and they were taking the lands of these people. The lifestyles and mental models of these two different cultures were so different that the settlers generally perceived the lands of the mobile Native peoples as "unoccupied" rather than seasonally occupied.
In less than twenty years, the presence of White settlers had such a terribly impoverishing impact on the local Natives that Jacob Forney, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory of Utah, wrote in 1859 "The Indians...have become impoverished by the introduction of a white population" and he recommended that the federal government should set aside lands in Cache Valley as an Indian Reservation for the Shoshone.
His proposal was never enacted. The failure to act to protect the economic welfare of the Natives set the stage for the ugly events of January 29, 1863.
As the So-So-Goi became increasingly desperate and began to outright starve, they began to attack farms and ranches as their only means to acquire food for themselves and their families. Ironically, the White settlers who had taken the lands of the Shoshone framed the Natives as thieves and beggars committing crimes against peaceful, law-abiding farmers and ranchers.
The Whites made no recognition of the fact that the lands the farmers and ranchers called their own had been the hunting grounds of the So-So-Goi until Whites came and claimed them as their own without ever asking the Natives nor compensating them in any way.
The American Civil War began in 1861. Then, on July 28, 1862, gold was discovered by John White on Grasshopper Creek in the mountains of southwestern Montana.
The miners created a migration and supply trail that ran between their mining camp and the nearest significant trading post of Salt Lake City. This trail ran smack through the middle of Cache Valley.
This fact directly caused friction between Natives and Whites to increase. Then, in spite of a White man testifying on his behalf, the son of a Shoshone chief was railroaded and hanged for a horse theft he did not commit. Consequently, his tribe killed a couple of Whites as retribution.
There were multiple incidents of this ilk during the summer and fall of 1862. Ultimately, these deadly altercations lead to the attack on the So-So-Goi the following January.
Whites made no distinction between different tribes. They held all Natives equally guilty for any incidents in which Whites perished.
Meanwhile they also had no concept of the Natives as having any human rights similar to what they expected for Whites. This put the Natives in a no-win situation where they were taken advantage of and any attempt to defend themselves merely escalated the friction between the Natives and the Whites who viewed themselves as innocent victims and the Natives as the bad guys.
On the morning of January 29, 1863, Chief Sagwitch was up before the sun. The day before, he had been informed that the White army was coming, but he had been told that they were coming to "get the guilty parties."
He understood this to mean they were there to retrieve certain specific individuals. He likely had no idea that this phrase could mean they were coming after the entire tribe.
The events of the day suggest he certainly did not realize they had already decided that all members of the tribe were equally guilty.
Army Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, the man in charge of the White soldiers, had informed his men prior to leaving Camp Douglas that he intended to "take no prisoners." In other words, this was already planned from the outset as a massacre.
It was unusually cold that day, even for the dead of winter for this area. Estimates place the temperature at probably minus 20 degrees.
Anecdotally, the white soldiers had been given a ration of whiskey in their canteens, likely as protection against the cold. As they traveled to the site of the massacre, the whiskey had frozen solid overnight.
The chief saw a steam cloud off in the distance and correctly surmised it was the White soldiers, but he was expecting them to come talk to him and ask him to hand over specific individuals. He was not expecting his people to be set upon in a vicious attack intended to wipe them out, so he did nothing to evacuate the women and children nor to prepare for battle.
The seventy-some-odd teepees were set up along a narrow strip of land between the bluffs and the river. Intending to make sure no one escaped, the army set up troops at one end of the canyon to catch anyone trying to flee.
When Natives in desperation tried to flee across the freezing cold river, most of them were simply cut down, whether they were men, women or children.
Chief Sagwitch's 12 year old son, Yeager Timbimboo, and his grandmother survived the massacre by laying still all day amidst the dead, pretending to also be dead for many hours on this incredibly cold day in which laying on the cold ground could have also been the death of them.
Yeager Timbimboo's older brother managed to successfully flee across the river on a horse. His girlfriend went with him, but she was shot as they fled and ultimately died of her wounds.
Although estimates of the number of Natives who died that day vary substantially, with some sources saying it was as low as 250 dead, the most reliable count appears to be from the 1911 autobiography of a Danish emigrant named Hans Jasperson. He claims to have been there and to have counted the bodies twice, arriving at 493 dead both times.
In contrast, a mere 24 White soldiers died. Seventeen of them died that same day during the massacre and the others died later of their wounds.
There are three monuments on the site. They each frame the incident differently.
The earliest paints a picture of heroic White soldiers being attacked by the Natives, who were framed as criminals harassing the local peaceful settlers. Later monuments paint a picture more in line with the reality that the Natives were the victims of a massacre.
This is the story of the last days of the Northwestern Band of Shoshones. They still have living descendants but most of their people were massacred on 29 January 1863.
This is both the largest massacre of Native Americans on what would become the Contentinental US and also probably the least well known. It got little press in part because it occurred during the American Civil War.
Their territory included parts of modern day Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho and Utah. Shoshone records of the incident call it Boa Ogoi.
The year 1825 marked the insidious beginning of the end. They ran into White trappers in the area and likely thought not much of it.
The trappers seemed to live much like they did and functioned much like they did. The So-So-Goi tolerated them and were happy to trade with them for valuable items, like Western knives.
The So-So-Goi wintered in an area they called Boa Ogoi ("Big River"). The trappers called the same place Cache Valley.
It is a place just north of the current day Idaho-Utah border. There are warmer places in Utah, but there are hot springs here that provide protection from the winter storms.
Every year, the So-So-Goi provisioned Boa Ogoi to help them survive the harsh winters on mostly stored goods. The trappers related to the area in a similar fashion, using it to stash goods accumulated while they hunted.
The local Natives saw the similarities between their lives and the activities of the trappers. They had no way of knowing this was a first wave and that later influxes of Europeans would relate to their lands in a wholly alien fashion, one inherently desctructive to the Native way of life.
Friction between the Natives and Whites began in the 1840s as settlers began to arrive and claim parcels of land for themselves. They fenced off land they had decided was "theirs" and saw anyone who set foot on it as trespassers, including the Natives who had long lived there part-time as one of the places part of their nomadic lives.
The settlers claimed the richest plots of land first and then began to kill wild game to protect their crops from them. The combination of staking claim to the most fertile plots of land, killing the local game animals and treating Natives as trespassers quickly began to impoverish the Natives.
The White settlers likely didn't fully realize that they were actually the trespassers and they were taking the lands of these people. The lifestyles and mental models of these two different cultures were so different that the settlers generally perceived the lands of the mobile Native peoples as "unoccupied" rather than seasonally occupied.
In less than twenty years, the presence of White settlers had such a terribly impoverishing impact on the local Natives that Jacob Forney, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory of Utah, wrote in 1859 "The Indians...have become impoverished by the introduction of a white population" and he recommended that the federal government should set aside lands in Cache Valley as an Indian Reservation for the Shoshone.
His proposal was never enacted. The failure to act to protect the economic welfare of the Natives set the stage for the ugly events of January 29, 1863.
As the So-So-Goi became increasingly desperate and began to outright starve, they began to attack farms and ranches as their only means to acquire food for themselves and their families. Ironically, the White settlers who had taken the lands of the Shoshone framed the Natives as thieves and beggars committing crimes against peaceful, law-abiding farmers and ranchers.
The Whites made no recognition of the fact that the lands the farmers and ranchers called their own had been the hunting grounds of the So-So-Goi until Whites came and claimed them as their own without ever asking the Natives nor compensating them in any way.
The American Civil War began in 1861. Then, on July 28, 1862, gold was discovered by John White on Grasshopper Creek in the mountains of southwestern Montana.
The miners created a migration and supply trail that ran between their mining camp and the nearest significant trading post of Salt Lake City. This trail ran smack through the middle of Cache Valley.
This fact directly caused friction between Natives and Whites to increase. Then, in spite of a White man testifying on his behalf, the son of a Shoshone chief was railroaded and hanged for a horse theft he did not commit. Consequently, his tribe killed a couple of Whites as retribution.
There were multiple incidents of this ilk during the summer and fall of 1862. Ultimately, these deadly altercations lead to the attack on the So-So-Goi the following January.
Whites made no distinction between different tribes. They held all Natives equally guilty for any incidents in which Whites perished.
Meanwhile they also had no concept of the Natives as having any human rights similar to what they expected for Whites. This put the Natives in a no-win situation where they were taken advantage of and any attempt to defend themselves merely escalated the friction between the Natives and the Whites who viewed themselves as innocent victims and the Natives as the bad guys.
On the morning of January 29, 1863, Chief Sagwitch was up before the sun. The day before, he had been informed that the White army was coming, but he had been told that they were coming to "get the guilty parties."
He understood this to mean they were there to retrieve certain specific individuals. He likely had no idea that this phrase could mean they were coming after the entire tribe.
The events of the day suggest he certainly did not realize they had already decided that all members of the tribe were equally guilty.
Army Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, the man in charge of the White soldiers, had informed his men prior to leaving Camp Douglas that he intended to "take no prisoners." In other words, this was already planned from the outset as a massacre.
It was unusually cold that day, even for the dead of winter for this area. Estimates place the temperature at probably minus 20 degrees.
Anecdotally, the white soldiers had been given a ration of whiskey in their canteens, likely as protection against the cold. As they traveled to the site of the massacre, the whiskey had frozen solid overnight.
The chief saw a steam cloud off in the distance and correctly surmised it was the White soldiers, but he was expecting them to come talk to him and ask him to hand over specific individuals. He was not expecting his people to be set upon in a vicious attack intended to wipe them out, so he did nothing to evacuate the women and children nor to prepare for battle.
The seventy-some-odd teepees were set up along a narrow strip of land between the bluffs and the river. Intending to make sure no one escaped, the army set up troops at one end of the canyon to catch anyone trying to flee.
When Natives in desperation tried to flee across the freezing cold river, most of them were simply cut down, whether they were men, women or children.
Chief Sagwitch's 12 year old son, Yeager Timbimboo, and his grandmother survived the massacre by laying still all day amidst the dead, pretending to also be dead for many hours on this incredibly cold day in which laying on the cold ground could have also been the death of them.
Yeager Timbimboo's older brother managed to successfully flee across the river on a horse. His girlfriend went with him, but she was shot as they fled and ultimately died of her wounds.
Although estimates of the number of Natives who died that day vary substantially, with some sources saying it was as low as 250 dead, the most reliable count appears to be from the 1911 autobiography of a Danish emigrant named Hans Jasperson. He claims to have been there and to have counted the bodies twice, arriving at 493 dead both times.
In contrast, a mere 24 White soldiers died. Seventeen of them died that same day during the massacre and the others died later of their wounds.
There are three monuments on the site. They each frame the incident differently.
The earliest paints a picture of heroic White soldiers being attacked by the Natives, who were framed as criminals harassing the local peaceful settlers. Later monuments paint a picture more in line with the reality that the Natives were the victims of a massacre.
Sources:
The above is an edited version of something I originally wrote and posted elsewhere August 9, 2017. Below are the sources I used at that time. Unsrurpisingly, some of the links are now dead.- The Forgotten Idaho Indian Massacre
- The Most Fascinating Site in Idaho, According to a Historian
- In Remember of the Bear River Massacre
- Massacre at Boa Ogoi - 29 Jan 1863
- American Battlefields: Bear River
- Bear River Massacre Monument
- Wikipedia: Bear River Massacre
- 10 Images to Help Remember the Bear River Massacre
- Utah History To Go: Bear River Massacre
- Reexamining the Bear River Massacre