Rebirth after massacre: How this tribe’s river restoration could also help the Great Salt Lake

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. 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 fr