A Battle Becomes a Massacre

A Battle Becomes a Massacre (tmp-895e1)

Location: Preston, ID 83263 Franklin County
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Country: United States of America
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N 42° 9.161', W 111° 54.451'

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Inscription

Massacre at Bear River

—The Largest Indian Massacre in the West —

The four-hour fight left the Shoshone band decimated and terrified. Lodges, food caches and belongings were burned and women and children murdered. Chief Bear Hunter was cruelly tortured to death. When the killing ceased, the massacre field was strewn with bodies which were left unburied and at the mercy of scavenging animals and people. "The way they were destroyed is beyond reasoning," says a contemporary tribal member living at Ft. Hall.
Stories told by the survivors of the massacre have been handed down through the years and still have the power to chill the blood with their vivid description of the horrors of that day. Heart wrenching accounts describe mothers, whose crying babies threatened to give away the location of other hiding tribal members, jumping into the freezing river with children in arms and having the swift current carrying them away. It is told that one of these mothers in later years comforted herself with the thought the "my baby is asleep in the river now and she's safe." As the soldiers went through the camp looking for survivors after the massacre, one young boy and his grandmother played dead to avoid being killed. The number of dead varies from the Army's official count of 240 to as many as 500. The best estimate by historians and tribal members is between 250 and 350, making the Bear River Massacre
on of the largest mass killings of Indians in U.S. history. (Marker Number 6.)
Details
HM Numbertmp-895e1
Marker ConditionNo reports yet
Date Added Wednesday, July 19th, 2017 at 9:43pm PDT -07:00
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Locationbig map
UTM (WGS84 Datum)12T E 425021 N 4667127
Decimal Degrees42.15268333, -111.90751667
Degrees and Decimal MinutesN 42° 9.161', W 111° 54.451'
Degrees, Minutes and Seconds42° 9' 9.66" N, 111° 54' 27.06" W
Driving DirectionsGoogle Maps
Area Code(s)208
Which side of the road?Marker is on the right when traveling North
Closest Postal AddressAt or near 2852-2918 US-91, Preston ID 83263, US
Alternative Maps Google Maps, MapQuest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, MSR Maps, OpenCycleMap, MyTopo Maps, OpenStreetMap

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