Every Pioneer Parade is a Military Parade, July 24, 2022

Every Pioneer Parade is a Military Parade

Utah's Black Hawk War started 175 years ago today as Mormons and their 887 cows arrived in Timpanogos, Goshute, and Eastern Shoshone lands in 1847.

It ended as Timpanogos were forced to the Uintah Reservation in 1871.

In these 24 years Mormons attacked Timpanogos ~150 times and killed  90% of their People. 

Soon after Mormons arrived in Timpanogos land, Timpanogos Chief Wakara told Mormon Prophet Brigham Young that he & his people were not welcome to settle on the land.

Young said they were passing thru to California, needed to overwinter, & would continue in the spring. 

Three years later,  Brigham Young signed the Timpanogos Extermination Order, (12 years after the Mormon Extermination Order was signed) which violated the Hidalgo Treaty of 1848 & killed ~90% of Timpanogos People.

In 1849, 30 Mormons went to Timpanogos’s main river (Provo River) to erect a fort. Apostle George A. Smith commanded "remove (them) from their land…(Indigenous People) have no rights to their land."

Again, Mormons were told they were not welcome. They built their fort anyway. 

These Mormon settlers bullied & murdered Timpanogos man, then filled his body with rocks and thru him into the river. The Timpanogos band camped near Fort Utah demanded that Mormons turn over the man’s killer as well as cattle & horses as compensation for the murder. Mormons again ignored them (in their own home/lands).

Fort Utah militaristically occupied land sacred to Shoshone and which provided abundant food for its People & their horses. With Mormon settlers and their cattle eating those foods there wasn’t enough for everyone. Through overgrazing and overfishing, Mormons were starving Timpanogos. As land managers Timpanogos began culling Mormon cattle and horses to reduce overgrazing and protect the ecosystem. 

In response to ongoing food-based conflicts, Brigham Young, the First Presidency & the Quorum of the Twelve agreed that the only way to keep Fort Utah would be to exterminate the Timpanogos.

"I say go [and] kill them…let the women and children live if they behave themselves… never treat the Indian as your equal."
- Brigham Young, Jan. 1850

Fifty Mormon militiamen surrounded a village of about seventy Timpanogos early in the winter morning and opened fire on the families in their beds sleeping.

"Field cannons boomed as they fired chain-shot at the unsuspecting camp, ripping off limbs, sending women and little children running in all directions screaming in terror as the surrounding troops shot them down one by one… The battle lasted for two days.” 

Mormons pursued survivors up canyon, finding “terrified women and children were scattering about.” Mormons stole their deads’ belongings as well as about fifty of their heads (possibly some the skulls AIM demanded be released from this Church’s museum in Temple Square).

About 20,000 Indigenous people and zero cows were living in so-called Utah in 1847. Forty-three years later there were 210,779, mostly Mormon, settlers & about 280,000 cows living off the land.

My People committed genocide against Timpanogos and several other Peoples––ecologically thru overgrazing, overfishing, diverting streams, and cutting trees; biologically thru disease and military warfare; culturally through forced & voluntary conversion & education; and spiritually through the generational trauma of all this in addition to forcing them from their home/lands.

“One of the characteristics of trauma is the deep desire to repress it. Until you tell the story, til you face the truth of the horrors that have happened—that harm will haunt you, haunt your dreams as an individual, haunt your collective unconscious as a society.”
- Reverend Serene Jones
The church says “complex circumstances” led to #UtahsBlackHawkWar. A Timpanogos member said, "What choice were we given? To walk knee deep in the blood of our people? Or give up our sacred land & culture & accept white man's ways? It was a matter of what's right. Our honor. Survival. Why is that so complicated?"

The Timpanogos People are still not a recognized tribe. 

(breathe)

“May we go forward in repentance, which does not require individual culpability & shows how a community owns and understands the reverberations of its actions and its realities.May we seek repentance, which means to walk in a different direction. It’s so much more than, ‘I’m sorry.’”
- Reverend Serene Jones

One of the ways we can move move in a different direction is thru acting in mutual stakes. 

Indigenous Peoples tended this land for tens of thousands of years. After only 500 years of global colonization we’re now living with extinction level crises. Indigenous Peoples continue to be the best stewards. Globally, they protect 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity on 23% of the land as only 5% of the human population. 

Act in mutual stakes to $upport Indigenous persons and Peoples in their efforts for sovereignty and #LandBack & #WaterBack, to “protect the land, air, and water we all need to live” 

One way you can do this is by supporting ICWA on the State and Federal levels, as it is being threatened in the so-called supreme court this fall. Learn more @ProtectICWA and @LakotaLaw & @thislandpod