SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — As Pioneer Day celebrations take place across the Beehive State, a Shoshone Tribe elder spoke out about the untold history of pioneers settling in native lands in Utah.
Darren Parry, former Chairman of the Shoshone Tribe and devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke to ABC4.com in an exclusive interview Thursday about the complexities of one of Utah’s most popular holidays.
“On one hand, I’m Shoshone… and on the other hand, I’m a sixth-generation Latter-day Saint,” Parry said. “I absolutely love and honor the pioneers who came, but they didn’t discover this land. There were people that lived here.”
Two sides to the pioneer story
According to the LDS church, as many as 70,000 Saints migrated to Utah and the surrounding areas between 1847 and 1868. “The records of those who made this trek describe… episode[s] of disease, danger, bravery, and miracles,” the church’s website reads.
“You have this state holiday when only one side is celebrated and told,” Parry told ABC4.com
Parry says telling the Indigenous people’s story is not to replace Pioneer heritage and history, but to be a companion to it. He strongly discourages harboring hard feelings of anger towards anyone based on history, but rather encourages people to ask, “Is there another side to the story?”
In a National Park Service historic resource study, the Mormon Pioneers were part of the idea and the realization of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, and that they “contributed to the growth of white supremacy in the west.”
“I cannot separate that story from the broader one. The story of Manifest Destiny, a belief that drove expansion across this continent at the cost of Indigenous lives, lands, and cultures,” Parry said. “I think a lot of people don’t look at the… problematic side of their ancestors coming here because it was never taught,” he said.
The Bear River Massacre
According to Parry, before the arrival of Mormon Pioneers, the Shoshone Tribe’s home base was centered in Cache Valley, or “Sihiviogoi” in the Shoshone language, meaning “Willow River.”
Over time, more and more pioneers came and settled in the valley. By 1856, thousands of Pioneers had settled there and had already begun to deplete its natural resources.
The late BYU historian, Harold Schindler, wrote in 2012 that tensions began to grow between settlers and the Shoshone, who, “faced with dwindling lands and food sources, had resorted to theft in order to survive.”
“The saints began writing letters to Salt Lake for somebody to come take care of the ‘Indian Problem,’” Parry told ABC4.com, adding that the letters eventually made it to U.S. Soldiers at Fort Douglas.
According to Schindler, on January 29, 1863, soldiers from Fort Douglas attacked a Shoshoni camp on the Bear River near modern-day Preston, Idaho, killing nearly 300 men, women, and children. However, many Shoshone believe the number to be closer to 400, making it the largest massacre of Indigenous people in the history of the U.S.
Healing from ‘generational trauma’
In an LDS Church history essay, historians detail that while Indigenous peoples in some instances captured horses and burned prairie grass to divert bison away from Latter-day Saint hunters, they were often hospitable and sometimes offered to push handcarts or help the migrants ford rivers.
Within 10 years of the Bear River Massacre, Shoshone and Pioneers began to interact with one another, Parry said. “In May of 1873, 102 Shoshones were baptized members of the LDS Church in the Bear River. The same river that, 10 years earlier, saw the destruction of our people.”
According to Shoshone oral history, tribal leaders began having visions and manifestations about a god among the Mormon Church, leading many to join the faith; However, Parry acknowledges that material benefits and security may have been a factor in so many Shoshone joining the church.
He concluded, saying, “We just want to acknowledge the past and allow us to heal from this generational trauma that’s existed from 1847 on.”
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