The massacre that never happened

On Jan. 29, 1863, Patrick Connor and the California Volunteers brutally attacked a village of Shoshone along the Bear River. Afterward, the soldiers burned the teepee poles for firewood, took everything of value from horses to kitchen utensils and dumped the villagers’ food in the snow while the few survivors looked on. Connor lost 21 men and carried his dead over 100 miles back to Utah for burial, but the corpses of more than 240 Shoshone men, women and children were left exposed as a graphic lesson to the “savages” of the power of the California Volunteers. Ironically, part of Connor’s justification for the attack was a massacre, now commemorated at an Idaho state park, that never happened.

In 1862, the United States was in the midst of a civil war, the outcome of which was still very much in doubt. Oregon Territory had only been admitted into the Union four years earlier and what would be Idaho was still part of Washington Territory with a veritable stampede of miners racing to the gold fields. Emigrant roads through southern Idaho criss-crossed the countryside, and the massive yearly emigration decimated forage and wild game. By 1862 the Shoshone and Bannock bands in southern Idaho and northern Nevada were starving.

Worse, the criminally corrupt Indian agent system had largely ignored the bands of Shoshone and Bannock in the region. While Washakie to the east often received “presents” and had signed a treaty with the United States, the Shoshone bands to the west were forced to go to Utah to beg for assistance. Shoshone leaders repeatedly attempted to explain the problem to representatives from the U.S. government, but Washington made no effort to rectify the situation.

Settlers in Utah led the Shoshone to believe that the Union would lose the Civil War. So, faced with the choice between reclaiming sovereignty or starvation, some decided to stand against the continued invasion of their lands. In 1862, the region between Fort Hall and Goose Creek became the locus of violence. Chief Pocatello was attempting a blockade of the emigrant trails.

In August, the Shoshone military action began in earnest with skirmishes at City of Rocks along the California Trail. A group of packers, a train from Warren County and an Iowa train were all attacked. Six white men were killed, but others escaped.

On Aug. 9, another wagon train was attacked approximately eight miles from American Falls and a bit east of a volcanic feature known as Devil’s Gate.

Two white men died in the two hours of fighting. Another white man died a bit further east when he was discovered traveling apart from his train. On Aug. 10, another series of attacks and counter attacks resulted in two more white men killed and two more reported missing and presumed killed. On Aug. 11, a white woman died from wounds sustained in the fighting two days prior. Over three days, only eight emigrants died near the Devil’s Gate.

However, in one of the counter attacks by the emigrants, 35 men went after the Indians to regain their lost livestock. Eye witness Robert Scott described it: “Out about 9 miles in the hills the Indians were guarding the horses in a canyon. When they saw us they began riding around the stock stolen, in a circle and shooting arrows under the horses neck, hanging on the opposite side from us. There were about 75 to 100 Indians. We stood our ground and after we dropped about 20 Indians they became scattered.”

So by Aug. 11, eight white people and “about 20 Indians” had died in the fighting. Even including the other six men killed at City of Rocks 40 miles away and ignoring the likelihood that more Shoshone men were killed in the fighting, the tally still favored the emigrants. However, the attacks were quickly called a “massacre” and newspapers demanded the government do something about it. There was no room for outrage over starving Shoshone children nor calls for the “great white father” to resolve the questions over tribal rights along the Snake River. There was only outrage at the “impertinent” Indians who dared shoot at white travelers and commit “depredations.” Two months, later the California Volunteers arrived at Salt Lake City, and Connor’s men began a series of military actions that culminated in the horrific January attack at Bear River.

As years passed, newspaper editorials turned into history that turned into thrilling stories that turned into exaggerated legends. The “Devil’s Gate” became synonymous with the attacks of 1862 and the stories of “Indian outrages” blended together near and far events. In 1912, a newspaperman promoted rebranding the Devil’s Gate as “Massacre Rocks” to draw tourists and capitalize on the dramatic legends of massacred emigrants.

Fifteen years later, the Sons of Idaho placed a somber marker at the site reading, “Massacre Rocks of Old Oregon Trail. In this defile, on August 10, 1862, a band of Shoshone Indians ambushed an immigrant train bound for Oregon killing nine white men and wounding six.” A band played the National Anthem while the American Legion presented the Red White and Blue. Five hundred people were in attendance to hear speeches and bow their heads during the benediction. The granddaughter of a captain of one of the wagon trains unveiled the monument. It was a deeply moving ceremony even though the monument got the location wrong, the number killed wrong and conflated all the events into one event on one day. None of the facts mattered anymore. Legend had become heritage.

In 1967, the monument received official sanction as the area was declared a state park. Tourists visited it in the following decades and heard the harrowing tales of the “war-like” Shoshone and Bannock attacking the emigrants at the Devil’s Gate because it was a choke point where Indians could easily hide high in the rocks. The problem is that there was never a massacre at Massacre Rocks. Far from being a massacre of emigrants, the Shoshone lost more men and gained little advantage. Nor was the fighting even at Devil’s Gate. It largely occurred to the east because the Shoshone preferred to attack from horseback against the better-armed emigrants. Those same emigrants only used the rocks later as a defensive position while they buried five of their dead.

Still, legends die hard, particularly when they sound like a 1950s John Wayne movie. For those who believe the Indians were just savages preying on helpless emigrants, it was a cold-hearted slaughter of seven innocent men and one white woman. For the Shoshone, fighting to free their land and feed their children, it was a costly series of skirmishes. Either way, there was no massacre at Idaho’s Massacre Rocks State Park.

The Idaho State Historical Society has gathered a number of first-person accounts of the fighting during August 1862. You can find them here: bit.ly/31q6D49.