History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

632
PROGRESS OF EVENTS.
this deed, it would pass into history as a butchery or
a massacre.
Of Connor's command, which consisted of 300 volunteers,
but of whom not more than two thirds were
engaged, 75 fourteen were killed and forty-nine wounded.
A number of rifles and nearly 200 horses were captured,
and more than seventy lodges, together with a
large quantity of provisions, destroyed. This defeat
completely broke the power and spirit of the Indians,
and the result was immediately felt throughout Northern
Utah, especially in Cache county, where flocks
and herds were now comparatively safe, and where
settlements could be made on new and favorable sites
hitherto considered insecure. 76
During the spring of this year an outbreak occurred
among the Utahs in the neighborhood of the Spanish
Fork reservation. A party of volunteers, under Colonel
G. S. Evans, defeated them in two engagements. 77
In April 1865 an Indian war broke out in Sanpete
county, spreading to adjacent districts, and lasting
without intermission until the close of 1867, under
the leadership of a chieftain named Blackhawk.
Although the militia of the southern counties were
constantly in the field, and reinforcements were sent
from Salt Lake City under General Wells, the California
volunteers being then disbanded, more than
fifty of the Mormon settlers were massacred, an immense
quantity of live-stock captured, 78 and so wide-
75 Seventy-six were disabled by frozen feet. Letter of General Halleck in
Id., 287.
76 In addition to the official despatches of Col Connor and Gen. Halleck,
Tullidge gives in his Hist. S. L. City, 289-90, two other accounts of the battle
at Bear River, one copied from a historical note in the Logan Branch records,
and the other from Col Martineau's sketch of the military history of Cache
co. Both differ from the official reports as to the number killed, the former
placing it at 200, and a great many wounded, the latter stating that the dead,
as counted by an eye-witness from Franklin, amounted to 368, besides the
wounded who afterward died, and that about 90 of the slain were women and
children. For other versions, see Hayes' Scraps, Indians, v. 214-17.
77 The volunteers numbered 140. Among the killed was Lieut F. A. Teale.
Sloan's Utah Gazetteer, 1884, 29.
78 Accounts of the various massacres and depredations will be found in
Wells' Xarr., MS.; Smith's Rise, Progress, and Travels, 29-30; Utah Sketches,
MS., 13-14, 43, 136-4S, 153-7; see also Robinson's Sinners and Saints, 102-5;