The wagon and handcart trail from the Mid-West was by now well established and Latter-day Saints from Europe and the east were still crossing the plains. But gold had been discovered in California and the Willamette Valley in Oregon was attracting emigrants from the east. These non-Mormons, or gentiles, as the Mormons called them, were using the Mormon to Utah, then they headed north, following the Wasatch mountains then into Idaho territory, with the Oregon Trail forking at Soda Springs, Idaho, leading west to Ft. Hall, near present day Pocatello, Idaho, then to California and Oregon.
The Indians of northern Utah and Southern Idaho were still not "tamed," nor living on reservations. They pretty much stayed out of the way of the white people, and were even somewhat friendly with the Mormons. In fact, the Mormons had a philosophy, perhaps coined by Brother Brigham, "it is cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them." There were several "tribes" of Indians, Shoshones and Bannocks, although they more considered themselves extended families than separate tribes or nations as we think of them today.
The U.S. Government, believing that Brigham Young and the Mormons had too much power, sent troops, and a non-Mormon governor, to Utah, who established Ft. Douglas, near Salt Lake. The troops were supposed to enforce anti-polygamy laws and protect emigrants and settlers from the Indians. There was a Colonel, Patrick Edward Conner, who was in charge. He apparently did not like Mormons, nor did he think too much of Indians either. In ordering the merciless killing of Indian children he commented, "nits make lice." Some of the soldiers under Conner were also anti-Mormon, including apostates who had come from Missouri just to get back at the Mormons.
Our Nelson ancestors, Edmond, his wife Jane Taylor Nelson, and their fourteen children, the oldest was our ancestor Price Williams, had crossed the plains and were all in Utah by 1850. Edmond died four months after reaching Utah, leaving Jane a widow, with six children under the age of 18, to raise. By 1860, Jane's older sons William Goforth, Edmond and Joseph Smith Nelson, had been called to settle in Cache Valley and were among the first to settle at a place called Franklin.
Franklin is just north of the Utah-Idaho border. In fact, the settlers probably weren't even sure where the border was. Many pioneer records call it Franklin, Cache County, Utah, and later records call it Franklin, Franklin County, Idaho. In fact, today Franklin is known as the oldest town in Idaho. It is located on Highway 34, just a few miles south of Preston, the county seat of Franklin County, Idaho, and a few miles north of Richmond, Cache County, Utah. The area has rolling hills with a few cedar trees, rivers and creeks, and a lot of fertile farming country. It is frequently windy and the winters are long and cold.
In 1863, three years after the Nelson brothers and ten other families had settled Franklin, William Goforth Nelson, recorded in his personal history what happened on January 26: "...a battle was fought between 500 U.S. soldiers and a band of Indians at Beaver Creek, later called Battle Creek...four Indian chiefs, Pocatello, Bear Hunter, Segguish and Lehi, decided among themselves that they would not allow a white man to go north of Bear River. After several men had been killed near Battle Creek and most of the emigrant trains on the California route north of Cache Valley, the Government took the matter in hand and sent soldiers as stated...the soldiers came to Franklin in the evening and had supper...my brothers, Edmond and Joseph, by request of the captain, went with them to lead them the way across the river and up the creek to the Indian camp. They (the Nelson brothers) were then released. The fight lasted from daylight until 11 o'clock am. During the night Porter Rockwell and a companion, having been on the hill south of the river watching the fight, were sent by Col. Conner to engage horse teams to haul the crippled soldiers to Camp Floyd (later named Ft. Douglas). ,
On orders from the non-Mormon governor of Utah, who apparently told Col. Conner to "kill all of the damned Indians," Conner decided to annihilate all those troublesome Indians: men, women and children, to make a name for himself. (He was made a General for his actions.) One account states there were approximately 500 Indians, of whom 250 to 300 were killed, including 90 women and children. Only 14 soldiers were killed, four officers and 49 enlisted men wounded. Seventy-nine were severely frozen. Chiefs Bear Hunter, Sagwich and Lehi were killed, Pocatello escaped, and all the Indian homes and property were burned by the soldiers.
In addition to William Goforth Nelson, many other Mormons wrote histories of the massacre and incidents surrounding it. These were collected in a 340 page book, "Bear River Massacre" published in Preston, Idaho, in 1982 by Newel Hart. There are, of course, conflicting stories and different points of view. Here are a few quotes:
From William Nelson: "the sleds (carrying the wounded US soldiers back to Ft. Douglas) were mostly loaded with three soldiers. The first day I only had one on my sled, Lieut. Chase. This man was ordained an elder while sitting on a cornerstone of the Kirkland Temple. He apostatized and came to Utah with Col. Conner...while our sleds were being loaded at the camp, Fileomen (Philomen) Merrill (first bishop of Soda Springs, who later settled in St. David, Arizona) came to me and said that Chase was there in the tent and was shot through the shoulder and had one thigh broken, and that he was begging to be administered to. Merrill wanted to know what I thought about it. I said that I thought it would be a wrong thing to do, so he was not administered to." (William Nelson later served as a bishop of Franklin for some 13 years.)
J.H. Martineau wrote: "the victory was of immense value to the settlers of Cache Valley and all the surrounding country. It broke the spirit and power of the Indians and enabled the settlers to occupy new and choice localities hitherto unsafe. Peter Maughan, the presiding bishop of the county, pronounced it an interposition of Providence on behalf of the settlers."
Martineau also wrote: "...the morning after the battle, and an intensely cold (temperatures in January in Franklin can reach 20 degrees below 0 F.) night, a soldier found a dead squaw lying in the snow, with the little infant alive, which was trying to draw nourishment from her icy breast. The soldiers, in mercy to the babe, killed it."
Another report of the same incident, by Conner's soldiers, says: "we found a dead squaw lying in the snow, with a little infant still alive, which trying to draw nourishment from her icy breast. We took the babe and mercifully delivered it to the 16 squaws and children whom Col. Conner left on the field, with adequate provisions." Another pioneer story tells about two Shoshone Indian girls whose parents were killed in the massacre, who were given to Mary Benson and Thomas Hull. The younger girl died, but the four year old was raised by the Hulls, named Jane (perhaps after Jane Taylor Nelson) and later married George Heber Riley, having ten children.
Brigham Young, in his own journal of Feb. 7, 1863, wrote: "Elder James H. Martineau called and reported that the soldiers in the late engagement with the Indians killed ninety squaws and children and wounded many other squaws; about fifty of the Indians escaped. Several squaws were killed because they would not submit quietly to be ravished, and other squaws were ravished in the agony of death. There were about 250 Indians killed in all."
Our Nelson ancestors were living in Franklin at the time of this horrible massacre of Indians by the U.S. Calvary and witnessed the aftermath. It may well be the worst atrocity against the Indians in all of U.S. history, as at least 250 (some accounts say 400) Indian men, women and children, were killed, compared with 172 at the Alamo in Texas in 1836 and 200 at Custer's famous "last stand" in 1876.
