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History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

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632<br />

PROGRESS OF EVENTS.<br />

this deed, it would pass into history as a butchery or<br />

a massacre.<br />

Of Connor's command, which consisted <strong>of</strong> 300 volunteers,<br />

but <strong>of</strong> whom not more than two thirds were<br />

engaged, 75 fourteen were killed and forty-nine wounded.<br />

A number <strong>of</strong> rifles and nearly 200 horses were captured,<br />

and more than seventy lodges, together with a<br />

large quantity <strong>of</strong> provisions, destroyed. This defeat<br />

completely broke the power and spirit <strong>of</strong> the Indians,<br />

and the result was immediately felt throughout Northern<br />

<strong>Utah</strong>, especially in Cache county, where flocks<br />

and herds were now comparatively safe, and where<br />

settlements could be made on new and favorable sites<br />

hitherto considered insecure. 76<br />

During the spring <strong>of</strong> this year an outbreak occurred<br />

among the <strong>Utah</strong>s in the neighborhood <strong>of</strong> the Spanish<br />

Fork reservation. A party <strong>of</strong> volunteers, under Colonel<br />

G. S. Evans, defeated them in two engagements. 77<br />

In April 1865 an Indian war broke out in Sanpete<br />

county, spreading to adjacent districts, and lasting<br />

without intermission until the close <strong>of</strong> 1867, under<br />

the leadership <strong>of</strong> a chieftain named Blackhawk.<br />

Although the militia <strong>of</strong> the southern counties were<br />

constantly in the field, and reinforcements were sent<br />

from Salt Lake City under General Wells, the California<br />

volunteers being then disbanded, more than<br />

fifty <strong>of</strong> the Mormon settlers were massacred, an immense<br />

quantity <strong>of</strong> live-stock captured, 78 and so wide-<br />

75 Seventy-six were disabled by frozen feet. Letter <strong>of</strong> General Halleck in<br />

Id., 287.<br />

76 In addition to the <strong>of</strong>ficial despatches <strong>of</strong> Col Connor and Gen. Halleck,<br />

Tullidge gives in his Hist. S. L. City, 289-90, two other accounts <strong>of</strong> the battle<br />

at Bear River, one copied from a historical note in the Logan Branch records,<br />

and the other from Col Martineau's sketch <strong>of</strong> the military history <strong>of</strong> Cache<br />

co. Both differ from the <strong>of</strong>ficial reports as to the number killed, the former<br />

placing it at 200, and a great many wounded, the latter stating that the dead,<br />

as counted by an eye-witness from Franklin, amounted to 368, besides the<br />

wounded who afterward died, and that about 90 <strong>of</strong> the slain were women and<br />

children. For other versions, see Hayes' Scraps, Indians, v. 214-17.<br />

77 The volunteers numbered 140. Among the killed was Lieut F. A. Teale.<br />

Sloan's <strong>Utah</strong> Gazetteer, 1884, 29.<br />

78 Accounts <strong>of</strong> the various massacres and depredations will be found in<br />

Wells' Xarr., MS.; Smith's Rise, Progress, and Travels, 29-30; <strong>Utah</strong> Sketches,<br />

MS., 13-14, 43, 136-4S, 153-7; see also Robinson's Sinners and Saints, 102-5;

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