SLC author: Army, Mormon settlers tried to hide Bear River Massacre
"Unlike previous writings on the massacre - a Utah event that happened in what turned out to be Idaho - Miller's book probes the relationships among the three central players: the Shoshones, the military and the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who settled the region.
And it delves into the way history has treated - or, as some believe, ignored - the massacre.
Miller agrees, in part, with Brigham Madsen, the retired University of Utah historian whose ground-breaking work 25 years ago first gave credence to Shoshone claims it was a massacre and not a battle.
Madsen contended the engagement was lost to history because the nation at the time was more interested in Civil War battles than in fights with American Indians in a remote corner of the West.
But Miller argues there is a further explanation as to why a massacre of at least 250 Shoshones fell into obscurity.
It was not in the interest of key players - the military and the Mormons - to remember, and the decimated Northwestern Bands of the Shoshone had no voice in the nation that came to surround them. "