The Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation is reclaiming the Bear River Massacre site by restoring the land’s natural ecosystem. They hope the Great Salt Lake could benefit, too
It was the deadliest massacre of indigenous people in U.S. history. But today, many still don’t know the story.
It was 1863, on an icy January morning, at dawn. Hundreds of members of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation were sleeping where they had settled for the winter along the Bear River, or as they call it, “Wuda Ogwa.”
The Shoshone Nation were a nomadic tribe, but every winter they would make this place their home, near what’s now known as Preston, Idaho. There, they’d fish for trout and hunt game birds. Hot springs nearby warmed the ground, heating their tepees and lodges, and giving their horses a place to graze in an otherwise frost-bitten landscape.
But that day, the tribe was nearly entirely wiped out.
U.S. military soldiers — led by Col. Patrick Edward Connor — set out from Ft. Douglas, Utah, toward Chief Bear Hunter’s camp, reportedly in retaliation for Shoshoni raids. The soldiers killed an estimated 300, including women and children, according to historians, though tribal leaders say it was more, closer to 500. Connor reported his troops counted 224 bodies, destroyed more than 70 lodges, seized 175 horses, and captured 160 women and children, according to National Park Service records.
Though they were few, some of the Northwestern Band survived. Today, their descendants are working to reclaim the site of the massacre as their home — and restore its natural ecosystem.
“This is a graveyard. This is our Arlington Cemetery,” Brad Parry, vice chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation’s tribal council, said in a PBS documentary about the tribe’s restoration project. “This is where our people had to fight for their freedom to exist.”
“I want to take this land back in time, to when it was wild,” Parry continues. “And restore our connection to it.”
Parry and other tribal leaders held a forum Wednesday at the Northwestern Band’s tribal office in Ogden, Utah, to share the massacre’s history — and also share how the tribe is working to restore the land.
There, Parry told a room of more than 140 people that his grandmother, Mae Timbimboo Parry, learned about the massacre directly from her grandfather, Yeager Timbimboo, who was about 12 years old when the attack happened. To survive, he hid among dead bodies.
“He laid on the frozen ground, playing dead,” Parry said. “A soldier saw him playing dead, raised his rifle at him three times, but didn’t shoot.”
Now, more than 160 years later, Parry is leading the effort to give the site of the massacre new life. Though its history is fraught with horrific bloodshed, Parry told Utah News Dispatch that tribal leaders want to turn their grief into healing.
“We’ve wallowed long enough. We’ve been sad long enough. This has been detrimental long enough. Let’s flip the script,” he said. “Let’s take it back to what our ancestors would recognize and start bringing the community back to the land. And not just indigenous communities, but all communities.”
Since the Bear River Massacre, the Northwestern Band hasn’t had any land to call home. Their tribe was never given a reservation.
But in 2018, the tribe purchased about 350 acres of land around the massacre site. Their goal, Parry said, is to restore it to its wild, natural state, and to help the river’s ecosystem thrive.
And because all things in nature are connected — what happens in one ecosystem can affect another — the efforts to restore that section of the Bear River can have a cascading effect on a downstream neighbor that’s in dire need.
How the Wuda Ogwa restoration could bring more water to the Great Salt Lake
The Bear River is the largest tributary of the Great Salt Lake, which has been shrinking to dangerously low levels due to drought, climate change and water diversion for agriculture and development. Today, the lake remains on the brink of ecological collapse.
The drying Great Salt Lake poses an existential threat to not only the wildlifethat rely on its waters and wetlands, but also to people. Less water means more exposed lake bed, leading to dust storms laced with cancer-causing carcinogens like arsenic. In Utah, leaders are all in agreement — for the sake of Utah’s future, the Great Salt Lake must be saved.
And the Wuda Ogwa restoration project could play a part.
Tribal leaders say researchers’ models have predicted that the restoration of Bear River natural habitats could help send an estimated 13,000 acre-feet of water to the Great Salt Lake a year by ripping out water-sucking invasive plants and replacing them with native plants, cleaning out creeks, and restoring old agricultural fields to wetlands.
The Great Salt Lake needs every drop of water it can get, so that amount of water isn’t insignificant — but it would far from solve the lake’s crisis. It needs about 8 to 15 more vertical feet of water (the equivalent of two Bear Lakes) to be healthy, according to the Great Salt Lake Collaborative.
And whether that water will actually flow all the way to the Great Salt Lake is still an open question. The tribe has secured water rights for the project, Parry said, but because it crosses state lines, tribal leaders have encountered challenges from leaders in Idaho during water rights adjudication discussions.
“One of the biggest problems that we’ve found is the state above you — their users don’t care about the Great Salt Lake,” Parry said. “I can say that because we’ve been involved in adjudication, and instead of asking how they can protect their water rights, (they ask), ‘Are you guys doing this for the Great Salt Lake?’”
Asked to clarify those comments, Parry told Utah News Dispatch that in talking with Idaho state officials and irrigation farming districts in Idaho, “their goal isn’t to help us save the Great Salt Lake.”
Parry said the tribe has its own, primary reasons for wanting to restore the land and the wetlands — but the benefits to the Great Salt Lake would be a positive consequence of the restoration that the tribe also supports.
He added that tribal leaders have found that the further away from the Great Salt Lake, there’s less interest in helping save it. But he argued “we’re all in this together,” and the impacts from toxic dust from the dried lake bed would be far-reaching, including potentially in other states like Idaho.
“If the states don’t start working with each other, it’s never going to happen,” he said.
The Wuda Ogwa restoration project
Parry said the tribe has secured roughly $13 million in various state and federal grants and other funding sources for the river restoration project.
During Wednesday’s forum, tribal leaders and researchers detailed how after the Bear River Massacre, colonial settlement transformed what was once the Bear River’s natural bends and wetlands into farm and grazing land. Since then, it has become a shadow of what it once was.
Now, thanks to the help of volunteers on weeding and planting days, the tribe is working to remove invasive plants and replace them with native vegetation. They’re also working with engineers and biologists to reshape the river and its wetlands to a more natural state to help attract back fish, birds and other wildlife.
One of the biggest foes they’re working to root out is the Russian Olive. The thorny, invasive tree that sucks up massive amounts of water has taken over the river shoreline.
Brian Andrew, an engineer at the firm Hansen Allen and Luce that’s been hired by the tribe for the project, said there are an estimated 400,000 Russian Olive plants on a 60-acre area of the site. A mature Russian Olive tree consumes an estimated 75 gallons of water a day and crowds out other native plants like willows and cottonwoods.
Early in the project, Parry said tribal leaders envisioned building a geothermal heated amphitheater and cultural interpretative center. But he said the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted funding, and construction costs have since skyrocketed.
Now, Parry said the tribe is focused on restoring the land first and foremost, now envisioning a trail system as a way for members of the public to experience the wetlands once they’re thriving.
So far, the tribe’s partners estimate they’ve planted and seeded about 69,000 native plants over 111 acres. Between 2025 and 2027, they expect to plant an additional 130,000 over 250 acres.
Parry said with $13 million in funding that’s already been secured, they’ve made good progress — but he said tribal leaders continue to ask for donations since “we’re always looking for funding,” especially for monitoring the project’s impact on the ecosystem.
“Another $5 to $10 million wouldn’t hurt,” he said.
