Bear River Massacre

Overview

The Bear River Massacre was a United States military attack that killed an estimated 250 to 493 children, women, and men at a Shoshone winter encampment on January 29, 1863. Some sources describe it as the largest mass murder of Native Americans by the US military and the largest single episode of genocide in US history. It took place in present-day Franklin County, Idaho near the present-day city of Preston on January 29, 1863. After years of skirmishes and food raids on farms and ranches, and settlers displacing Shoshone from their ancestral lands, the United States Army attacked a large Shoshone community at the confluence of the Bear River and Battle Creek in what was then southeastern Washington Territory.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Bear River Massacre of January 29, 1863 was a United States Army attack on a Shoshone winter encampment at the confluence of the Bear River and Battle Creek in what was then southeastern Washington Territory, in present-day Franklin County, Idaho. The attack killed an estimated 250 to 493 Shoshone — children, women, and men — making it among the deadliest single engagements of the American Indian Wars. Some sources characterize it as the largest mass killing of Native Americans by the US military and the largest single episode of genocide in US history. The attack came after years of skirmishes and food raids on farms and ranches, rooted in the displacement of the Shoshone from their ancestral lands by settler expansion. Within the broader arc of the American Indian Wars, the massacre represents an extreme expression of the military campaigns undertaken against Native communities resisting or responding to that displacement, and its scale has made it a central reference point in the history of US government violence against Indigenous peoples.

Commanders (2)