Finding Bia Ogoi: The Application of Historic Documents and Geomorphology to the Understanding of 19th Century Landscape Change of the Bear River Valley, Franklin County, Idaho

Summary

On the frigid morning of 29 January 1863 the California Volunteers under the command of Patrick Connor attacked the Shoshone village at Bia Ogoi in response to ongoing hostilities between whites and Native groups.  The result was the death of at least 250 Shoshone, many of them women and children, and 21 soldiers.  Over the course of the past 150 years extensive landscape modification has occurred from both natural and human agents obscuring the events of this fateful day.  A major focus of a recent NPS-funded study was the reconstruction of the 1863 landscape.  This effort employed not only traditional on-the-ground geomorphic studies, but also a series of historic documents and maps based upon first hand experiences.  We will present the methods employed in this study to describe a changing landscape and its implications for the archaeological study of the Bear River Massacre events.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions) 2017   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 592