"Combatant Children"

by Will Grigg
Apr. 21, 2014

It is difficult, if not impossible, for the mind of man to conjure a more depraved expression than “Combatant children.” That obscenity is inscribed on a plaque found on a monument just north of Preston, Idaho, which serves as a memorial to the victims of the Bear River Massacre.

The plaque, which was written in 1922, claims that the US Army attack on a Shoshone village in January 1863 was justified to punish “Indians guilty of hostile attacks on emigrants and settlers,” and that it resulted in the death of up to 300 Indians, “including about 90 combatant women and children.”

No evidence was ever produced that the victims of the massacre included the Indians who had actually participated in raids against settlers. Those raids, furthermore, were carried out because the government had failed to deliver provisions that had been promised in exchange for access to land. Many of the Indians had been reduced to near-starvation by the time Col. PE Connor staged the pre-dawn assault on the village.

Most importantly, it is perverse beyond expression to describe children slaughtered in their own home as “combatants” – unless we assume that's how we should describe anybody who happens to die at the hands of US government employees.













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