Utah author Rod Miller hopes his new book will renew interest in the Bear River Massacre.

On January 29, 1863, the U.S. Army attacked a Shoshone village near the Idaho-Utah border. Initial reports described the incident as a battle but it was later discovered that it was a near complete massacre of as many as 500 men, women and children.

"[I]t set a standard for butchery, mutilation, infanticide, rape, slaughter of noncombatants, and cold-blooded savagery that others would imitate in the Indian wars of the West, but no one would equal. Yet many have never heard of it," Miller writes in Massacre at Bear River: First, Worst, Forgotten.

Miller said the Army and Mormon settlers downplayed the massacre for more than a century. Only recently, with the resurgence of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, has the true nature of the incident come to light.

Get the Story:
SLC author: Army, Mormon settlers tried to hide Bear River Massacre (The Salt Lake Tribune 7/7)

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