Battle Creek massacre

Battle Creek Massacre
Here Ute Indian women and children tried to hide from the Mormon militia by taking cover in the icy stream downstream from Battle Creek Falls
LocationPleasant Grove, Utah
Coordinates40°21′48″N 111°42′02″W / 40.3633°N 111.7005°W / 40.3633; -111.7005
DateMarch 5, 1849
TargetTimpanogos Native Americans
WeaponsGuns, stones
Deaths4
Injuredseveral injuries from being struck by thrown stones
Perpetrators35 Mormon miliatamen, ordered to carry out the attack by Brigham Young
MotiveRetaliation for reported cattle theft
Pleasant Grove City Park Monument "in commemoration of Utah's first Indian battle ..."

The Battle Creek massacre was a lynching of a Timpanogos group on March 5, 1849, by a group of 35 Mormon settlers at Battle Creek Canyon near present-day Pleasant Grove, Utah.[1] It was the first violent engagement between the settlers who had begun coming to the area two years before, and was in response to reported cattle theft by the group. The attacked group (led by Kone Roman Nose) was outnumbered, outgunned, and had little defense against the militia that crept in and surrounded their camp before dawn.[2][3] The massacre had been ordered by Brigham Young, the Utah territory governor and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The formation of the Mormon settlement of Utah Valley soon followed the attack at Battle Creek.[4] One of the young survivors from the group of 17 children, women, and men who had been attacked grew up to be Antonga Black Hawk, a Timpanogos leader in the Black Hawk War (1865–1872).

  1. ^ Coates, Lawrence G. (1978). "Brigham Young and Mormon Indian Policies: The Formative Period, 1836-1851". BYU Studies Quarterly. 18 (3). Brigham Young University: 436–437. ISSN 0007-0106. JSTOR 43040771.
  2. ^ Murphree, Daniel S. (2012). Native America: A State-by-state Historical Encyclopedia. Greenwood-Heinemann Publishing. p. 364. ISBN 978-0-313-38126-3.
  3. ^ Walker, Ronald W.; Jessee, Dean C. (1992). "The Historians' Corner [32:4]" (PDF). BYU Studies Quarterly. 32 (4). Brigham Young University: 125–126.
  4. ^ Griffiths, Leonard (May 20, 2020). The First 9/11 in America: September 11, 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre (A Senseless, Sad Tragedy). Meadville, Pennsylvania: Christian Faith Publishing. p. 347. ISBN 978-1-0980-1601-2.