The Fountain Green massacre was an incident in 1853 near Fountain Green, Utah when a group of Utes killed four Mormons. The next day, Mormons in nearby Nephi, Utah killed eight Goshutes who had no connection to the earlier killings.
The event is often classified as part of Wakara's War, a series of battles and skirmishes in the region from 1853 to 1854.
A Daughters of the Utah Pioneers monument (no. 172), located in City Park in Fountain Green, Utah, memorializes the event.
In the early morning hours of October 1, 1853, Utes of Sanpitch attacked and killed four men—William Reed, James Nelson, William Luke, and Thomas Clark—who were encamped at Uinta Springs, near the head of Salt Creek Canyon. The men were driving two ox-drawn wagons filled with wheat to Salt Lake City, as the advance party of a larger group headed by a local leader Isaac Morley.
William Luke, an immigrant from Manchester, England, was anxious to go see his three sons, who had recently arrived from England, and may have encouraged the group to hasten its journey. The four men camped at Uinta Springs against Morley's instructions to make camp on the San Pitch River and await the arrival of the main group.
When Morley's group arrived at the camp, they found William Reed stripped, scalped, and disemboweled a short distance from the wagons. Luke and Nelson's throats were cut; they were also disemboweled. The Morley party emptied the wagons of their grain and then loaded three of the bodies for transport to Nephi, Utah (Clark's body later being found by a relative) and as the party readied to move on, numerous Utes appeared on the hillside.
Oral tradition holds that Morley, angry over disobedience to his orders, denied the dead men burial in the town cemetery. Their gravesites are unknown, despite efforts to locate the remains of the four men. [1]
The next day, a group of eight Goshute Native Americans uninvolved with the attack at Fountain Green and seeking peace with the settlers at the fort in Nephi, Utah were invited into the fort then murdered and buried in a mass grave. [2] [3] : 145 [4] In 2006 the remains of the victims were discovered in Nephi. [2] [5] [6]
A little less than five years later, four Danish immigrants—Jens Jorgensen, his wife Hedevig Jorgensen [7] [ unreliable source? ] Jens Terklesen, and Christian I. Kjerulf—were slain by natives in Salt Creek Canyon, while they were en route to settle with other Scandinavian immigrants in the Sanpete Valley. This tragedy, known as the Salt Creek Canyon Massacre, was marked by the brutality with which Jorgensen's wife and unborn child were butchered with a tomahawk.
Sanpete County is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 28,437. Its county seat is Manti, and its largest city is Ephraim. The county was created in 1850.
Tooele County is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 72,698. Its county seat and largest city is Tooele. The county was created in 1850 and organized the following year.
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions:
The Goshutes are a tribe of Western Shoshone Native Americans. There are two federally recognized Goshute tribes today:
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 comprising present-day Utah 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 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war.
John Williams Gunnison was an American military officer and explorer.
Isaac Morley was an early member of the Latter Day Saint movement and a contemporary of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. He was one of the first converts to Smith's Church of Christ. Morley was present at many of the early events of the Latter Day Saint movement, and served as a church leader in Ohio, Missouri, and Utah Territory.
Ute are the indigenous, or Native American people, of the Ute tribe and culture among the Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. They had lived in sovereignty in the regions of present-day Utah and Colorado.
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 Black Hawk War, or Black Hawk's War, is the name of the estimated 150 battles, skirmishes, raids, and military engagements taking place from 1865 to 1872, primarily between Mormon settlers in Sanpete County, Sevier County and other parts of central and southern Utah, and members of 16 Ute, Southern Paiute, Apache and Navajo tribes, led by a local Ute war chief, Antonga Black Hawk. The conflict resulted in the abandonment of some settlements and hindered Mormon expansion in the region.
The Salt Creek Canyon massacre occurred on June 4, 1858, when four Danish immigrants were ambushed and killed by unidentified Indians in Salt Creek Canyon, a winding canyon of Salt Creek east of present-day Nephi, in Juab County, Utah.
The Timpanogos are a tribe of Native Americans who inhabited a large part of central Utah, in particular, the area from Utah Lake east to the Uinta Mountains and south into present-day Sanpete County.
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. 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 was outnumbered, outgunned, and had little defense against the militia that crept in and surrounded their camp before dawn. 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. 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.
The Pahvant or Pahvants were a band of Ute people that lived in present-day Utah. Called the "Water People", they fished and hunted waterfowl. They were also farmers and hunter-gatherers. In the 18th century they were known to be friendly and attentive, but after a chief's father was killed by emigrating white settlers, a group of Pahvant Utes killed John Williams Gunnison and seven of his men during his exploration of the area. The bodies of water of their homeland were dried up after Mormons had diverted the water for irrigation. Having intermarried with the Paiutes, they were absorbed into the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah and relocated to reservations.
Sanpitch was a leader of the Sanpits tribe of Native Americans who lived in what is now the Sanpete Valley, before and during settlement by Mormon immigrants. The Sanpits are generally considered to be part of the Timpanogos or Utah Indians
The Battle at Fort Utah was a violent attack in 1850 in which 90 Mormon militiamen surrounded an encampment of Timpanogos families on the Provo River one winter morning, and laid siege for two days, eventually shooting between 40 and 100 Native American men and one woman with guns and a cannon during the attack as well as during the pursuit and capture of the two groups that fled the last night. One militiaman died from return fire during the siege. Of the Timpanogos people who fled in the night, one group escaped southward, and the other ran east to Rock Canyon. Both groups were captured, however, and the men were executed. Over 40 Timpanogos children, women, and a few men were taken as prisoners to nearby Fort Utah. They were later taken northward to the Salt Lake Valley and sold as slaves to church members there. The bodies of up to 50 Timpanogos men were beheaded by some of the settlers and their heads put on display at the fort as a warning to the mostly women and children prisoners inside.
Indigenous peoples have lived in the area now known as the state of Utah for thousands of years. Today they are divided into five main groups: Utes, Goshutes, Paiutes, Shoshone, and Navajo. Each occupies a different region within the state, many of which regions extend across borders into other states. In the 2010 census, there were a total of 32,927 American Indian and Alaska Natives living within the state, which totaled to 1.19% of the total population of Utah.
Wakara's War, also known as Walker's War was a dispute between the Paiute Indians and the Mormon settlers in the Utah Valley. This war is characterized as a string of disputes and skirmishes over property and the land from July 1853 to May 1854. This war was influenced by factors such as religious differences, the slave trade, and the division of the Salt Lake Valley.
The Nephi Massacre was an 1853 incident when a group Mormons killed eight Goshute Native Americans in Nephi, Utah in retaliation for the deaths of four Mormons in the Fountain Green massacre. The Goshutes had no involvement in the Fountain Green incident, which was perpetrated by members of the Ute nation.
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