Wilson is a census-designated place (CDP) in Teton County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 1,567 at the 2020 census, up from 1,482 in 2010. It is part of the Jackson, WY–ID Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Fort Bridger was originally a 19th-century fur trading outpost established in 1842, on Blacks Fork of the Green River, in what is now Uinta County, Wyoming, United States. It became a vital resupply point for wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, California Trail, and Mormon Trail. The Army established a military post here in 1858 during the Utah War, until it was finally closed in 1890. A small town, Fort Bridger, Wyoming, remains near the fort and takes its name from it.
The Utah War (1857–1858), also known as the Utah Expedition, the Utah Campaign, Buchanan's Blunder, the Mormon War, or the Mormon Rebellion, was an armed confrontation between Mormon settlers in the Utah Territory and the armed forces of the US government. The confrontation lasted from May 1857 to July 1858. There were some casualties, most of which were non-Mormon civilians. The war had no notable military battles.
The Bear River Massacre, or the Engagement on the Bear River, or the Battle of Bear River, or Massacre at Boa Ogoi, took place in present-day Franklin County, Idaho, on January 29, 1863. After years of skirmishes and food raids on farms and ranches, the United States Army attacked a Shoshone encampment gathered at the confluence of the Bear River and Battle Creek in what was then southeastern Washington Territory, near the present-day city of Preston. Colonel Patrick Edward Connor led a detachment of California Volunteers as part of the Bear River Expedition against Shoshone tribal chief Bear Hunter. Hundreds of Shoshone men, women, and children were killed near their lodges; the number of Shoshone victims reported by local settlers was higher than that reported by soldiers.
The Goshutes are a tribe of Western Shoshone Native Americans. There are two federally recognized Goshute tribes today:
Washakie was a prominent leader of the Shoshone people during the mid-19th century. He was first mentioned in 1840 in the written record of the American fur trapper, Osborne Russell. In 1851, at the urging of trapper Jim Bridger, Washakie led a band of Shoshones to the council meetings of the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Essentially from that time until his death, he was considered the head of the Eastern Shoshones by the representatives of the United States government. In 1979, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Latter-day Saints, who migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the Midwest to the Salt Lake Valley in what is today the U.S. state of Utah. At the time of the planning of the exodus in 1846, the territory was part of the Republic of Mexico, with which the U.S. soon went to war over a border dispute left unresolved after the annexation of Texas. The Salt Lake Valley became American territory as a result of this war.
Chief Pocatello was a leader of the Northern Shoshone, a Native American people of the Great Basin in western North America. He led attacks against early settlers during a time of increasing strife between settlers and Native Americans. After making peace with the U.S. Government, he moved his people to their present reservation in Idaho and led the Shoshone during their struggle to survive following their deportation. The city of Pocatello is named in his honor.
Patrick Edward Connor was an Irish American soldier who served as a Union general during the American Civil War. He is most notorious for his massacres against Native Americans during the Indian Wars in the American Old West.
Jim Baker (1818–1898), known as "Honest Jim Baker", was a frontiersman, trapper, hunter, army scout, interpreter, and rancher. He was first a trapper and hunter. The decline of the fur trade in the early 1840s drove many trappers to quit, but Baker remained in the business until 1855. During that time he was a friend of Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and John C. Frémont. On August 21, 1841, he was among a group of twenty three trappers who were attacked by Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux on what became known as Battle Mountain. After Henry Fraeb was killed, Baker organized the trappers against the Native Americans in a multiple-day fight.
Chief Walkara was a Shoshone leader of the Utah Indians known as the Timpanogo and Sanpete Band. It is not completely clear what cultural group the Utah or Timpanogo Indians belonged to, but they are listed as Shoshone. He had a reputation as a diplomat, horseman and warrior, and a military leader of raiding parties, and in the Wakara War.
The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.
The Baker–Fancher party was a group of American western emigrants from Marion, Crawford, Carroll, and Johnson counties in Arkansas, who departed Carroll County in April 1857 and "were attacked by the Mormons near the rim of the Great Basin, and about fifty miles from Cedar City, in Utah Territory, and that all of the emigrants, with the exception of 17 children, were then and there massacred and murdered" in the Mountain Meadows massacre. Sources estimate that between 120 and 140 men, women and children were killed on September 11, 1857, at Mountain Meadows, a rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail, in the Utah Territory. Some children of up to six years old were taken in by the Mormon families in Southern Utah, presumably because they had been judged to be too young to tell others about the massacre.
The Great Platte River Road was a major overland travel corridor approximately following the course of the Platte River in present-day Nebraska and Wyoming that was shared by several popular emigrant trails during the 19th century, including the Trapper's Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, the California Trail, the Pony Express route, and the military road connecting Fort Leavenworth and Fort Laramie. The road, which extended nearly 370 miles (600 km) from the Second Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie, was utilized primarily from 1841 to 1866. In modern times it is often regarded as a sort of superhighway of its era, and has been referred to as "the grand corridor of America's westward expansion".
Sagwitch Timbimboo, which translates to "Speaker" and "One Who Writes on Rocks," was a nineteenth-century chieftain of a band of Northwestern Shoshone that converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of his tribe, he was one of the very few survivors of the horrific Bear River Massacre, which is considered the greatest loss of Indigenous life through wars with Anglo-Saxon people. Within the battle, Chief Sagwitch led his people away from the preemptive attack that the United States government had levied upon the people. Losing the majority of his own tribe, Chief Sagwitch helped rebuild his tribe and as the leader, led his people to a thriving life. Living the majority of his life in what is now Cache Valley, which is located in Northeast Utah and Southeast Idaho, Chief Sagwitch was an instrumental leader within the Shoshone Tribe and within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Helping build a temple with the Latter-day Saints in Logan, Utah, Chief Sagwitch became an Elder for the Church shortly after his conversion in 1873. Along with Chief Sagwitch being baptized, 101 of His tribe members also took the oath of baptism. Chief Sagwitch died on March 20, 1887, leaving a lasting legacy as an influential member of the Indigenous community.
Eastern Shoshone are Shoshone who primarily live in Wyoming and in the northeast corner of the Great Basin where Utah, Idaho and Wyoming meet and are in the Great Basin classification of Indigenous People. They lived in the Rocky Mountains during the 1805 Lewis and Clark Expedition and adopted Plains horse culture in contrast to Western Shoshone that maintained a Great Basin culture.
The Box Elder Treaty is an agreement between the Northwestern Shoshone and the United States government, signed on July 30, 1863. It was adopted after a period of conflict which included the Bear River Massacre on January 29, 1863. The treaty had little effect until 1968, when the United States compensated the Northwestern band for their land claim at a rate of about 50¢ per acre.
Sherman Coolidge, an Episcopal Church priest and educator, helped found and lead the Society of American Indians (1911–1923). That first national American Indian rights organization run by and for Native Americans pioneered twentieth-century Pan-Indianism, the philosophy and movement promoting unity among American Indians regardless of tribal affiliation.
Bahsahwahbee is a grove of Rocky Mountain juniper trees, locally called swamp cedars, in White Pine County, Nevada, where multiple massacres of Western Shoshone people occurred in the 19th century, two by the U.S. Army and one by vigilantes. The name means "sacred water valley" in the Shoshoni language. The area is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is located 8 mi (13 km) northwest of Great Basin National Park, 5 mi (8.0 km) northeast of Majors Place.
Friday (Arapaho: Teenokuhu or Warshinun, also known as Friday Fitzpatrick, was an Arapaho leader and interpreter in the mid to late 1800s. When he was around the age of eight, he was separated from his band and was taken in by a white trapper. During the next seven years, he was schooled in St. Louis, Missouri and went on trapping expeditions with his informally adopted father, Thomas Fitzpatrick. After he was recognized by his mother during an encounter with the Arapaho, he returned to the tribe.
