Wednesday, November 16, 2016
About that bear paw image
Some of you have undoubtedly noticed the photograph of the bear paw on the front page of the site. Nobody is quite sure how old it is or who carved it into a boulder that now resides in a park in Pocatello, Idaho. However, it is undoubtedly related to the Shoshone and Bannocks that traveled through this region and camped near the Portneuf River for centuries and traveled South to Bear River to spend their winters there.
If you happen to know of similar petroglyphs in the Southeastern Idaho region there is something more you can do to help out. First, protect the petroglyph! Don't tell irresponsible people where it is. Don't pour liquids on it. Don't expose it to the elements if it's protected by an overhang or vegetation. And whatever you do, don't try to remove it! Damaging or removing a petroglphy (or any artifact on public land) is a felony.
Second, please photograph the petroglyphs you know of. If you send them to us please give us a general idea of where it is located. We will not publish that data, but instead store it for researchers. GPS data is even better, but not necessary.
One of the issues with Idaho petroglyphs is that we do not have a Rosetta Stone to help us interpret them. Some symbols are known, but many are in dispute. By recording the symbols we can build an archive of them for further study.
History Everywhere
Sometimes you go hunting for history. Sometimes history goes hunting for you. Last night, after a long day, I sat down to read an old magazine that my dad gave me last year. It had been sitting in the reading pile, but I just hadn't gotten around to it. Five minutes later I was making a copy of an article. It turns out that particular magazine had a particular article by a particular author who just happened to ask someone a particular question that just happened to answer a particular question in my research I hadn't been able to resolve yet.
That's the reason for publishing this website and asking the community if they have any old family photos are documents that mention or relate to the Bear River Massacre. You never know what someone's grandfather, great uncle, or friend wrote down in their diary or that letter to Mom in 1945. Who knows, maybe your closet has the one document that changes history!
That's the reason for publishing this website and asking the community if they have any old family photos are documents that mention or relate to the Bear River Massacre. You never know what someone's grandfather, great uncle, or friend wrote down in their diary or that letter to Mom in 1945. Who knows, maybe your closet has the one document that changes history!
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Why history and why this project?

So what have I learned? Well, that's the point of the book, but there are still some ideas I'd like to share here. History is a finicky thing. It changes depending on who is telling it, why they are telling it, and when they are telling it. Usually this is done with the best of intentions, but the result is still the same. Rather than presenting truth as the facts of what happened writers want to present Truth (with a capital T) and facts become tools in the hands of the writer. This is inevitable, but if the writer is unaware of it or simply careless then "facts" are turned into lies and they do damage to the very ideals they wish to present. Too often our history is written by those with the best of intentions, but without an attitude of reserved judgment.

However, it is real. It did happen. Not only did it happen, but it happened in a world that is not so different from our own and it happened for a reason. It happened with people as real as our coworkers, our neighbors, and ourselves. It happened to families like ours. The question then is how real people could come to a place like the confluence of Beaver Creek and Bear River and slaughter one another? It seems unreal, but somehow at the moment it was real and they felt justified in their actions. How did people get from one to the other? Why did they do what they did? What really happened? Can we even really know? More importantly, can we avoid it in the future?



In the past few weeks the Bear River Massacre has changed for me. It is no longer a mythical historical event filled with bravado, villains, and heroes. It feels real now. As an artist that was my original goal - to understand the event well enough that when I put paint to canvas I could make history alive. However, what I have come to learn has become so much more complex and far reaching. We are who we are today because of what happened at Bear River in 1863. The effects of that day echo through history and have changed the course of nations. The world pivoted on January 29th in a small corner of Oregon Territory and yet nobody seems to have noticed. The lessons remain unlearned.
This is why this project is so important and why the help of others in the community is critical to its completion. The truth must be told, but more importantly we must come to understand not only what happened, but how we got there and how it led to where we are today.
Labels:
Bear River Massacre,
Connor,
history
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