Another group stayed along the Owyhee River, where they slowly starved. The Van Ornums and three other emigrants were later killed in mid-October near present-day Huntington. The attack and its aftermath are described in detail in the accompanying newspaper article.Įleven emigrants were killed during the first two days, after which the survivors abandoned their wagons and fled, splitting into several groups. Army dragoons had been stationed near the fort earlier that year to escort wagon trains through the Snake River country, but they escorted the Utter-Van Ornum party for only six days, purportedly because the commanding officer was upset with members of the train.Ībout ten days after parting from the dragoon escort, the Utter-Van Ornum train was attacked by approximately one hundred Indians, probably a mixed group of Shoshone and Bannock, perhaps accompanied by several white men. The wagon train-which consisted of eighteen men, five women, twenty-one children, twelve wagons, and one hundred head of livestock-arrived at the abandoned Fort Hall on August 21, 1860, encountering no major difficulties along the way. The Utter-Van Ornum party left Wisconsin in May 1860, most heading for Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Six years later, the Snake River country would witness another attack, the Utter-Van Ornum Massacre. The first major massacre of emigrants by Indians occurred along the Snake River in 1854 when nineteen overlanders were slaughtered by Shoshone Indians in what came to be known as the Ward Massacre. The great majority of these violent conflicts occurred west of the Rockies, which was by far the most dangerous portion of the overland journey. In comparison, he estimates that more than 425 Indians were killed by emigrants during the same period. Unruh estimates that just over 360 emigrants were killed by Indians from 1840 to 1860, most of them during the 1850s. However, as the number of emigrants crossing the Oregon Trail increased over the course of the 1850s, Indian-white relations deteriorated.
Although conflict did occur, historian John Unruh notes that “thievery and not murderous attack constituted the major threat posed by Indians.” In fact, mutual aid between Indians and overlanders was much more common than violent hostility. It recounts the experiences of Joseph Myers, one of the survivors of the worst massacre of overland emigrants by Indians in the history of the American West, the Utter-Van Ornum Massacre.Ĭontrary to cinematic depictions of Indian-white relations along the Oregon Trail, sustained attacks by Indians on emigrant wagon trains were rare. This article was published in the Oregon Argus on November 24, 1860. Continued abuse of our services will cause your IP address to be blocked indefinitely.Snake River Massacre Account by One of the Survivors Please fill out the CAPTCHA below and then click the button to indicate that you agree to these terms. If you wish to be unblocked, you must agree that you will take immediate steps to rectify this issue. If you do not understand what is causing this behavior, please contact us here. If you promise to stop (by clicking the Agree button below), we'll unblock your connection for now, but we will immediately re-block it if we detect additional bad behavior.
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