MY STORY

Even though food was scarce that winter, it had been a good Warm Dance with many Aqui-Dika (Northern Shoshone) bands coming together to play games and socialize. It was a fun time, with young men racing horses, and older men telling stories of tribes to the east with whom they had recently traded for Anglo weapons (firearms). Many days later, after people began to drift back to their own hunting grounds, the camp still bustled with close to 450 men, women and children.

The Warm Dance had also brought me Gaagii ("raven"). Although he was not one of the Snake people (Shoshoni), he had made his way north to our camp during that terrible winter, when I turned 16.

I was collecting firewood, when I had the feeling that someone was watching me. Turning quickly, I saw a sturdy boy, not much older than me, standing on the edge of a dense copse of willows. He frightened me horribly, since he was dressed all in wolf skins, and seemed ready to run on all fours, like an animal. Then, he sort of changed, took on human shape, but still remained perfectly still....

There was so much fear during that time. The air had just turned cold, when the Anglos hanged a young Shoshone who they caught fishing. They said he was a horse thief. But he was the son of a Chief and other young men took revenge by killing two Anglo boys. After that, we all feared for each tomorrow.

Chief Bear Hunter said we must live in peace, even if the Anglos took our home, and kept us from the land and water of our mountain valley. Then one morning, they came and killed practically all of us.

The night before, an Anglo friend came to Chief Bear Hunter's lodge, and then the men were busy reinforcing barricades that protected our winter camp, sprawling along the Boa Ogoi river banks and backing onto a ravine.

Horse soldiers with all their weapons were moving through the snow drifts into position to cruelly attack us, and in the early morning darkness, at the crack of dawn just as we were lighting our first campfires, they struck without warning.

With a murderous cry, they charged but the muskets of our warriors drove them back, and I could see maybe 20 wounded or dead Anglos spread across the open plain in front of our camp. There was a pause, but an icy hand gripped my heart as I watched the Anglos encircling the ravine.

It was then, looking east into the sun, which was just on the verge of rising, that I saw them swarm down the slope!

MY STORY (cont.)

At the first sounds of fighting, people who were still asleep tumbled from their tepees, some grabbing weapons. Others ran in a frenzy for protection up the ravine. After their first charge, we hoped the Anglos would give up, faced by our fierce warriors, forted up behind sagebrush barricades on high embankments.

However, we soon saw that they were moving to where the ravine debouched through the bluffs. Some of these men already covered the mouth of the ravine, cutting off our escape. They next began climbing down the rims, firing on anyone they could see below. Worst of all, our warriors were already out of bullets!

This shooting killed many, while some tried to escape by swimming the icy river. The soldiers shot them. That was when they gave a blood-curdling yell, infuriated by their earlier losses, and in one mad headlong rush ran down the steep banks into our very midst, to begin their deadly work in earnest.

The battle turned into a panic. I was deafened by the roar of guns and the sharp report of pistols, yet still heard cries for mercy; but there was no mercy. The carnage lasted four hours, during which time I ran about very confused, from one hiding place to another.

With most of our warriors dead, the Anglos became as men possessed by devils. Side-by-side, soldiers and officers slaughtered people, broke the arms and legs of women, and raped them. With their bayonets, they cut open the bellies of pregnant women and pulled out the fetuses. After raping them, the white devils used hatchets to split each woman's head open. Babies and small children were bashed against tree trunks.

I saw one mother, a little older than me, chased by soldiers. They wounded her in the shoulder and chest, and then I lost sight of her as she fell down a bank that overhung the river. A soldier picked up her baby and tossed her into the icy water to drown.

All around me, I witnessed sorrow and rage, but also courage. Through a cloud of gun smoke, I saw Gaagii, my skinwalker lover, try and save my sister. He broke from cover, riding a black horse, and then caught her hand to pull her up behind him as they raced for the surrounding hills. I know he made it, but I am afraid she died, shot in the back.

When those evil men finally laid hands on me, I fell into a swoon. And although I was repeatedly raped, it was as if my spirit had temporarily fled my body, to soar among the clouds, detached from this wretched world of suffering.

Three women and a baby on a cradleboard

IT'S HISTORY NOW

JANUARY 29, 1863, a militia led by Colonel P.E. Connor perpetrated the Bear River Massacre. It was Orrin Porter Rockwell, the pioneer Mormon convert, gunslinger and accused murderer who guided Connor's troops to the Shoshone encampment.

Connor wanted to bring howitzers, but the snow was too deep - a stroke of luck that enabled a few people to escape. By some accounts, his troops used 55,000 bullets to kill around 250 to 350 members of this Northern Shoshone tribe, including 90 women and children.

Chief Bear Hunter was among the dead, that day. Sadistic soldiers beat and kicked him. They next stripped him naked and whipped him bloody. Still, he did not cry out or beg for mercy. So one soldier heated a bayonet, and then while his comrades held the Chief by the arms, he ran it through the agonizing man's ears.

As Colonel Connor strolled about the field of corpses, he let his men pillage anything they could find. When his men could no longer steal anything else, all that remained was put to the torch, including the last of the band's food supplies - to the horror of the few remaining survivors.

The soldiers burned the tribe's lodges, carried off 1,000 bushels of wheat and flour, and "appropriated" 175 Shoshone horses. As the troops withdrew from the killing field, the bodies of their victims were left exposed for wolves and crows to feast upon.

Nonetheless, a handful of survivors did live to tell the tale, thanks to the compassion of local Mormons, who gave them food and shelter until these forlorn people could travel to other camps.

With Bear Hunter dead, the remnants of his tribe now looked to Chief Sagwitch for leadership. It was not long before he and the chiefs of nine other Northwestern bands signed the Treaty of Box Elder at Brigham City, Utah, on July 30, 1863, bringing "peace" to the region.

Although the Aqui-Dika people had lived for centuries in northern Utah, near the mouth of the Bear River, they soon had to finally give up their last remaining homelands and move to the newly founded Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho, where some of their descendants still live today.

Just imagine - that was 5 generations ago. There were some 200 militia men who took part in the massacre. If they each had an average of 2.5 offspring...that means, there are about 20,000 people living today, WHO ARE THEIR DIRECT DESCENDANTS!

"Of the six major Indian massacres in the Far West, from Bear River in 1863 to Wounded Knee in 1890," writes historian, Brigham Madsen, "the Bear River affair resulted in the most victims, an event which today deserves greater attention than the mere sign presently at the site."

The Skinwalker Spellbook: Episode 2

Discover what becomes of the beautiful, young Shoshone woman, Sky Dancer, on her escape from the horrors of Bear River. Go to www.squidoo.com/sexmagic-2