City of Rocks Historic Resources Study

There was reason to hurry. Although Indian danger along the overland trail has been greatly exaggerated (many more emigrants succumbed to drowning, disease, and accident; reminiscences of overland travel are much more likely to contain accounts of massacres than daily diaries), the Northern Shoshone and Bannock Indians between Fort Hall and the Humboldt were "considered among the most troublesome of the entire trail." Ninety percent of all armed conflict took place west of South Pass. [97]

The California and Oregon trails passed through the center of the tribal country of the Bannock (a branch of the Northern Paiute) and of the Northern Shoshone. Until approximately 1851, their interaction with emigrants was friendly, if cautious. In 1850, Hugh Skinner, reported that Shoshone Indians directed his party to water. Throughout the 1840s, emigrants hired the Western Shoshone to cut and carry grass and to watch and herd emigrant stock during overnight encampments. [98] In 1851, Caroline Richardson reported that "we are continually hearing of the depredations of the Indians but we have not seen one yet." [99]

As emigrant numbers increased through the early 1850s, the drain on the tribes' traditional grazing resources intensified, leaving Indian lands impoverished. Increased emigrant numbers also spelled increased white/American Indian contact: emigrants reported a dramatic increase in the number of stock stolen, while the Indians complained of unprovoked attacks, and federal Indian agents complained of the unethical behavior of white traders "who plied the natives with whiskey and sold them guns and ammunition." [100] Bannock and Shoshone hostility was further fanned by federal overtures to other tribes. In 1858 Indian Agent C. H. Miller argued that the government owed the Bannock just compensation for the destruction of their traditional winter range and the depletion of their hunting grounds. Without such payments, Miller and the "mountaineers" with whom he had consulted believed that the Indians would attack the first trains out of Fort Hall in 1859, in a desperate bid to prevent the destruction of those resources upon which they depended absolutely. Furthermore, "it has been in the most manly and direct manner that these Indians have said that if emigrants, as has usually been the case, shoot members of their tribes, they will kill them when they can." The federal government failed to negotiate successfully with either the Bannock or the Northern tribe, and the attacks continued. [101]

Most emigrants died individually, in isolated incidents, yet it was the massacres that captured public attention. In 1852, 22 emigrants were killed in the Tule Lake Massacre, and 13 in the Lost River Massacre; in 1854, 19 died in the Ward Massacre, 25 miles east of Fort Boise; in 1861, 18 members of the Otter-Van Orman train were killed 50 miles west of Salmon Falls on the Snake River. [102] The massacres were generally attributed to the Bannock and Shoshone, although eyewitnesses, Indian agents, army personnel, and the Oregon legislature reported the participation of "out-cast whites" who "led on . . . bands of marauding and plundering savages." [103]

Although the threat of death was of greatest concern, many more emigrants would experience the loss of their livestock: "it was the art of stealing horses which, at least according to emigrant testimony, the Indians had absolutely mastered." [104] Such theft was a significant blow, depriving emigrants of a food source, a transportation source, and the oxen, mules, and horses that pulled their wagons. In 1860, while traveling along the Raft River, emigrant James Evans wrote,

Indians hostile through all this region; came around camp every night, but could not be seen during the day. They stole 50 horses from one company. We kept two men constantly with the cattle whenever they were loose, and every man who had horses kept them constantly under his eye during the day . . . Kept two men watching around the encampment during the night with double barrelled shot guns, and revolvers. [105]

Others in the City of Rocks region were not so vigilant — or so lucky. On September 7, 1860 "Indians" who spoke English well attacked a four-wagon train in the City of Rocks vicinity, stealing 139 cattle and six horses. A month later, the Deseret News reported an attack on a wagon train encamped near the City of Rocks: "except for hunger, thirst and terror there were no casualties... The emigrants did, however, lose nearly all of their possessions." [106] In September of 1862, the Deseret News reported that Indians were pasturing over 400 head of stolen emigrant cattle on land just east of the City of Rocks. [107] By October of 1862, the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise had warned that "every train that has passed over that portion of the route in the City of Rocks since the 1st of August has had trouble with the Indians." [108]

In 1860, California-bound emigrants successfully petitioned for Army protection. Lieutenant Colonel M. T. Howe and 150 soldiers from Salt Lake City's Camp Floyd assumed responsibility for the main overland trail and the Lander Cutoff. Howe established a depot at the Portneuf River from which he escorted trains along the road between Fort Hall and the Humboldt Sink, through the City of Rocks. [109]

In 1862, Major Edward McGarry's US Army expedition killed 24 Indians in the City of Rocks vicinity, in retaliation for the Indian attacks. [110] Two years later, as the Indian assaults continued, Brigadier-General Connor ordered the Second California Volunteer Cavalry to "take steps to capture or kill the male adults of five lodges of Snake Indians who have for years infested the roads in that vicinity, and who have of late been stealing from and attacking emigrants to Idaho." [111] The battle of Bear River, "the severest and most bloody of any which has occurred with the Indians west of the Mississippi" ensued on January 29, 1863. [112] Although all the chiefs involved in the battle were Shoshone, historian Brigham Madsen reports that "the significance to the Bannock [lay] . . . in the effective and merciless manner in which the troops of the United States could and did check the resistance of a hostile tribe." [113] In July of 1863, United States Indian agents and military personnel negotiated treaties with Chief Washakie and the Eastern Shoshoni and with Chief Pocatello of the Northwest Shoshoni. In October of that same year, treaties were signed with the Western Shoshoni at Ruby Valley and the Gosiute Shoshone of Tuilla Valley.

By August of 1863, four Bannock chiefs informed James D. Doty of the Utah Indian Superintendency that their people "were in a destitute condition and . . . desired peace with the whites and aid from the government." Chief Tosokwauberaht (Le Grand Coquin) and two sub-chiefs, Taghee and Matigund signed the treaty of Soda Springs on October 14, 1863. The treaty established an estimated total Bannock population of one thousand, to whom the United States government would pay five thousand dollars [114] a year in annuity goods in compensation "for damages done to their pasture lands and hunting grounds." Article III of the treaty "exacted a promise from the Bannock that they would not molest travelers along the Oregon and California trails and along the new roads between Salt Lake City and the mines near Boise City and Beaver Head." [115]