The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History
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About this book
Explores how a pivotal event in U.S. historythe killing of nearly 300 Shoshoni men women and children in 1863has been contested forgotten and remembered. At dawn on January 29 1863 Union-affiliated troops under the command of Col. Patrick Connor were brought by Mormon guides to the banks of the Bear River where with the tacit approval of Abraham Lincoln they attacked and slaughtered nearly three hundred Northwestern Shoshoni men women and children. Evidence suggests that in the hours after the attack the troops raped the surviving women-an act still denied by some historians and Shoshoni elders. In exploring why a seminal act of genocide is still virtually unknown to the U.S. public Kass Fleisher chronicles the massacre itself and investigates the National Park Services proposal to create a National Historic Site to commemorate the massacre-but not the rape. When she finds herself arguing with a Shoshoni woman elder about whether the rape actually occurred Fleisher is forced to confront her own role as a maker of this conflicted history and to examine the legacy of white women "busybodies."
