Bear River Massacre Site Idaho

A history of the Bear River Massacre by the current Chief of the Northwestern Shoshone Band.

Excerpt from Final Special Resource Study, Environmental Assessment: Bear River Massacre Site, Idaho The purpose of this study is to provide the United States Congress with a professional analysis of whether the nationally significant resources of the Bear River massacre site in Idaho are suitable and feasible to be added to the national park system (the site was designated a national historic landmark in and to examine viable alternatives for the protection and public use of the site. One of the responsibilities of the National Park Service is to identify nationally significant natural, cultural, and recreational resources and assist in their preservation both inside and outside the national park system. The areas managed by the National Park Service are only one part of a national inventory of special and protected areas managed by innumerable federal, state, and local agencies and the private sector. Consequently, addition to the national park system is only one of several alternatives for ensuring the preservation of significant national resources for public enjoyment and benefit. Five alternative approaches are presented in the study for consideration. The no-action alternative retains the present situation at the massacre site. No further boundary designations would be proposed other than the current national historic landmark status. No protection of the massacre field or public access to the site would be established under this alternative other than those voluntarily provided by individual private landowners. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Although it has been largely ignored by historians, it was the war waged against the Shoshoni tribe that opened the book on Indian massacres in the West. The Shoshoni were victims of a bloodbath more extreme than that at Wounded Knee, and more deadly than the more famous slaughter at Sand Creek.

At dawn on January 29, 1863, Union-affiliated troops under the command of Col. Patrick Connor were brought by Mormon guides to the banks of the Bear River, where, with the tacit approval of Abraham Lincoln, they attacked and slaughtered nearly three hundred Northwestern Shoshoni men, women, and children. Evidence suggests that, in the hours after the attack, the troops raped the surviving women—an act still denied by some historians and Shoshoni elders. In exploring why a seminal act of genocide is still virtually unknown to the U.S. public, Kass Fleisher chronicles the massacre itself, and investigates the National Park Service's proposal to create a National Historic Site to commemorate the massacre—but not the rape. When she finds herself arguing with a Shoshoni woman elder about whether the rape actually occurred, Fleisher is forced to confront her own role as a maker of this conflicted history, and to examine the legacy of white women "busybodies."