by Harold Schindler

Controversy has dogged the Bear River Massacre from the first.

The event in question occurred when, on January 29, 1863, volunteer soldiers under Colonel Patrick Edward Connor attacked a Shoshoni camp on the Bear River, killing nearly three hundred men, women, and children. The bloody encounter culminated years of increasing tension between whites and the Shoshonis, who, faced with dwindling lands and food sources, had resorted to theft in order to survive. By the time of the battle, confrontations between the once-friendly Indians and the settlers and emigrants were common.

So it was that “in deep snow and bitter cold”

Connor set forth from Fort Douglas with nearly three hundred men, mostly cavalry, late in January 1863. Intelligence reports had correctly located Bear Hunter’s village on Bear River about 140 miles north of Salt Lake City, near present Preston, Idaho. Mustering three hundred warriors by Connor’s [p. 301] estimate, the camp lay in a dry ravine about forty feet wide and was shielded by twelve-foot embankments in which the Indians had cut firing steps. . . .

When the soldiers appeared shortly after daybreak on January 27 [sic], the Shoshonis were waiting in their defenses.

About two-thirds of the command succeeded in fording ice-choked Bear River. While Connor tarried to hasten the crossing, Major [Edward] McGarry dismounted his troops and launched a frontal attack. It was repulsed with heavy loss. Connor assumed control and shifted tactics, sending flanking parties to where the ravine issued from some hills. While detachments sealed off the head and mouth of the ravine, others swept down both rims, pouring a murderous enfilading fire into the lodges below. Escape blocked, the Shoshonis fought desperately in their positions until slain, often in hand-to-hand combat. Of those who broke free, many were shot while swimming the icy river. By mid-morning the fighting had ended.

On the battlefield the troops counted 224 bodies, including that of Bear Hunter, and knew that the toll was actually higher. They destroyed 70 lodges and quantities of provisions, seized 175 Indian horses, and captured 160 women and children, who were left in the wrecked village with a store of food. The Californians had been hurt, too: 14 dead, 4 officers and 49 men wounded (of whom 1 officer and 6 men died later), and 75 men with frostbitten feet. Even so, it had been a signal victory, winning Connor the fulsome praise of the War Department and prompt promotion to brigadier general.[1]

Controversies over the battle have tainted it ever since. For one thing, Chief Justice John F. Kinney of the Utah Supreme Court had issued warrants for the arrest of several Shoshoni chiefs for the murder of a miner. But critics have questioned whether the warrants could legally be served, since the chiefs were no longer within the court’s jurisdiction.[2] The legality of the federal writs was irrelevant, however, to Colonel Connor, commander of the California Volunteers at Camp Douglas. At the onset of his expedition against the Bear River band, he announced that he was satisfied that these Indians were among those who had been murdering emigrants on the Overland Mail Route for the previous fifteen years. Because of their apparent role as “principal actors and leaders in the horrid massacres of the past summer, I determined . . . to chastise them if possible.” He told U.S. marshal Isaac L. Gibbs that Gibbs could accompany the troops with his federal warrants if he wanted, but “it [p. 302] was not intended to have any prisoners.”[3] However—and this is another controversy—there have been many who have questioned whether Connor’s soldiers actually tangled with the guilty Indians.

Source: rsc.byu.edu

Those were Former Congressman John Lewis’s remarks advocating for the For the People Act (H.R. 1) just days before it passed the House. Almost two years ago.

That’s how long Mitch McConnell has refused to try and pass this bill — legislation that would reform redistricting and make our government work for the people, not the special interests.

With more pro-democracy senators now in Washington, there may be enough Senate votes to pass a new version of the bill Former Congressman Lewis spoke of — but it could come down to every last vote.

Will you reach out to your representative and ask them to support the For the People Act? Use our online advocacy tool to contact Congress and demand action on democracy reform.

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On Jan. 28, 1917, 17-year-old Carmelita Torres, who crossed the border daily from Juarez to clean houses in El Paso, refused to take a toxic disinfectant bath. Press accounts estimated that, by noon, she was joined by several thousand demonstrators at the border bridge. The protest became known as the “Bath Riots.”

By David Dorado Romo

Mexican border crossers were not considered illegal in the United States until 1917, when a new law imposed formidable barriers to entry: a literacy test, a head tax and a prohibition against contract labor. Mexican nationals for the first time needed a passport to enter the United States. That’s also the year that the U.S. entered World War I.

The war stirred deep feelings of paranoia and anti-foreigner patriotism in this country. Americans were afraid that Germans would launch bombing raids from Mexico. As a protest against Germany, Americans changed the name of frankfurters to hot dogs and sauerkraut to “liberty cabbage.” And to protect the country from the threat of typhus, U.S. Customs agents began the mandatory delousing of Mexican border crossers at the El Paso-Juarez international bridge; 127,000 people were subjected to this procedure in 1917 alone.

All immigrants from the interior of Mexico, and those whom U.S. Customs officials deemed “second-class” residents of Juarez, were required to strip completely, turn in their clothes to be sterilized in a steam dryer and fumigated with hydrocyanic acid, and stand naked before a Customs inspector who would check his or her “hairy parts” — scalp, armpits, chest, genital area — for lice. Those found to have lice would be required to shave their heads and body hair with clippers and bathe with kerosene and vinegar.

My great-aunt, Adela Dorado, would tell our family about the humiliation of having to go through the delousing every eight days just to clean American homes in El Paso. She recalled how on one occasion the U.S. Customs officials put her clothes and shoes through the steam dryer and her shoes melted

Source: zinnedproject.org

On January 28, 1997 in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission announces the confessions of four apartheid-era police officers to the killing two decades earlier of Stephen Biko, a leader of the South African “Black consciousness” movement. The confessions—that Mr. Biko was ”handled robustly,” but that there was never any intention to kill him—were given in exchange for political amnesty against prosecution.

In 1969, Biko, a medical student, founded an organization for South Africa’s Black students to combat the minority government’s racist apartheid policies and to promote Black identity. In 1972, he helped organize the Black People’s Convention and in the next year was banned from politics by the Afrikaner government. Four years later, in September 1977, he was arrested for subversion. While in police custody in Port Elizabeth, Biko was brutally beaten and then driven 700 miles to Pretoria, where he was thrown into a cell. On September 12, 1977, he died naked and shackled on the filthy floor of a police hospital. News of the political killing, denied by the country’s white minority government, led to international protests and a U.N.-imposed arms embargo.

Source: history.com for the complete article