Northwestern Band restores Bear River Massacre Site

On January 29, 1863, Union Army troops slaughtered between 250 and 500 Shoshone men, women and children along Idaho’s Bear River in what is often described as the deadliest anti-Native attack in U.S. history, according to reporting from the Smithsonian Magazine. Settlers long mischaracterized the tragedy as a military battle.  

The magazine reports that the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation purchased 350 acres of the sacred site in 2018, and began restoring the degraded landscape where the attack occurred, blending ancestral knowledge with climate science. The Shoshone are removing invasive trees and replanting native flora to heal the soil and returning 13,000 acre-feet of water annually to the Great Salt Lake.