Review: Darren Parry. The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History. Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2019.

Authors

David W. Grua

Keywords

Darren Perry, indigenous identity, religious identity, Shoshone Nation

Abstract

Darren Parry’s The Bear River Massacre is a poignant retelling of the January 1863 killings of approximately four hundred Shoshone men, women, and children near the Bear River (Boa Ogoi), present-day southern Idaho, by Colonel Patrick E. Connor’s California Volunteers. More than a history of the event itself, though, Parry’s book presents a broad narrative of the impact of the killings on the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, of which Parry is the chairman. He includes in his narrative the conversion of many of the Shoshone survivors to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1873. Parry’s history is therefore also an important resource for scholars engaged in the study of the intersections between Indigenous and religious identities.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Grua, David W. (2021) "Review: Darren Parry. The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History. Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2019.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 8: No. 1, Article 12.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol8/iss1/12