Tribal Chairman Dennis Alex addresses a large crowd that attended the 161st Anniversary Memeorial Ceremony of the BearRiver Massacre on Monday Jan. 29, 2024.
PRESTON – Dennis Alex, Chairman of the Northwest Band of Shoshone Nation, welcomed over 1,000 people gathered for the 161st anniversary of the Bear River Massacre. The memorial was held on Monday, Jan. 29.
Long stretches of cars lined both sides of Highway 91 near the daughters of Utah Pioneers Monument where the ceremony was held. The temperature was near 40 degrees warmer than the description of one of the largest massacres of Native Americans in the history of this country.
The annual service brings members of the Shoshone tribe and others to memorialize the January 29, 1863, anniversary of when General Patrick Edward Connor and his soldiers from Camp Douglas attacked a sleeping Shoshone camp. The camp was a place where the Shoshone people wintered by hot springs just to the south along the Bear River not far from the site of the DUP monument.
Shoshone records show the soldiers shot, raped, bludgeoned, and bayoneted between 270 and 400 Shoshone to their death. The Shoshone fought back with the limited weapons they had, but the band was all but annihilated. Entire families were lost and with them the records of their very existence.
Wayde Warner, from the Pocatello tribe and a Viet Nam War veteran, was a member of the color guard who carried the American Flag during the posting of the colors. Instead of the National Anthem the colors were posted by the beat of Shoshone drums and ceremonial chanting. The tribe tries to use Shoshone tribal members to post the colors but they are getting older so they may have members of Preston’s Veterans of Foreign Wars help.
Idaho Governor Brad Little sent Anthony Parry, the Historic Sites Administrator at Idaho State Historical Society, to present a framed proclamation from his office. Vice Chairman Brad Lee Parry recounted the morning of the attack and updated the progress of restoring the interpretive site. Parry is the natural resource director of the tribe and works for the U.S. Department of Reclamation.
This year the beaded artwork the Shoshone are known for was on display on gloves, necklaces and other clothing.
Daken Barnes, a student of Utah State University, took part by reading nearly 40 names of recorded casualties while hundreds of the band were unnamed but were left in in the field just west of the DUP Monument.
The benediction was given by Rios Pacheo, a member of the NWBSN staff who oversees the childcare and cultural specialist.
The Bear River Massacre is well documented in books. One by Shoshone author Brigham D. Madsen, who wrote The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985); another source are columns written by A.J. Simmons in the Logan Herald Journal entitled In God’s Lap: Cache Valley History.