WARD MASSACRE
In late August 1854 word reached that the 20-member emigrant party of Alexander Ward was killed by a band of the Shoshoni Indians, along the part of the Oregon Trail that was close to Fort Boise and along the Boise River. Major Rains ordered Haller to take his command and aid any survivors and to punish the Indians responsible for this.
Because of discharges and desertions the two companies assigned to Fort Dalles had a total of 56 soldiers. Haller took 26 of them with him to carry out his assignment. However, the citizens of the Dalles thought his command was too small and formed a company of 39 volunteers, under the command of Nathan Olney, who followed him and reported for duty. This mixed unit was also joined by a few warriors of the Nez Percés and Umatilla Indians that offered their services.
Upon arriving at the massacre sight they found 18 members of the party dead; only two boys had survived one of them being William Ward, the son of Alexander. William later explained what happened:
My oldest brother, Robert, who was out guarding the stock, came running into camp and said the Indians had taken one of the horses. We hitched up as soon as possible and drove out on the road where it was more open. We had hardly reached the road when we were surrounded by Indians, about two hundred in all as we were afterwards told. They immediately attacked us but our men succeeded in keeping them off until nearly sundown when the men were all killed. Then they came to the wagons where the women and children were. My brother Newton [who also survived] and I attempted to escape to the brush but we were both shot down by arrows. I was shot through the left side and lung. The last thing I remember, they were riding their horses over me.
Haller’s group looked around the area and discovered a grisly scene. The body of the Ward’s 17-year old daughter was discovered. “Her body bore signs of their most brutal violence- a hot iron having been thrust into her person, doubtless while alive.”
Other bodies were also discovered like Mrs. White who had her head “beaten to a perfect jelly, her body stripped of its clothing, and bore marks of brutal treatment- she had been scalped.”
Mrs. Ward was found in the center of the camp and in front of her lay the crisped bodies of three of her children, who had doubtless, been burnt alive, and the mother forced to witness it. Mrs. Ward must have been severely tortured. Many scars were found upon her body, evidently made by a hot iron- her flesh cut in numerous places- and a tomahawk wound upon the right temple, which probably caused her death. Three more children who belonged to the party were not found.
Haller had the bodies buried and returned to Fort Dalles because the Indians had long since fled into the mountains and it was too late in the season to go find them. The soldiers did manage to kill some Indians and took a few others prisoner.
The following spring General John Wool, commanding the Department of the Pacific, ordered Haller to another expedition and to return to the Ward massacre site and to find and punish the Indians responsible; Haller had with him over 150 men, including Nathan Olney who was acting as an Indian Agent.
He reached the Fort Boise area on July 15 and the next day talks were held with around 200 hundred Indians that were gathered. During the talks it was determined that four of the participants of the Ward killing were among the present. Haller ordered their arrest and brought them before a military commission in which he reminded them that “the poor Indians cannot and should not be judged by the standard of the civilized and Christianized nations of the world.”; they were tried and found guilty of the killings.
One of the Indians was shot while trying to escape but the other three were marched, on July 18, to the Ward site and the troops started to build gallows to carry out the sentence of the commission. The sentence was “read and interpreted to the Indians, who were placed in a wagon with ropes around their necks. The soldiers paraded at sundown, then the signal was given, the wagon drove from under the Indians, and they swung into eternity. The bodies were left handing until sunrise the next morning, and which time they were taken down and buried at the foot of the gallows.”
The bodies of the Ward party were also reburied because the wolves had dug them up during the winter. Once the burials were finished Haller, leaving the gallows standing, ordered an advanced and later established a supply depot on the Big Camash Prairie. From there he sent various parts of his command as far north as the headwaters of the Boise, Payette and Snake Rivers; to the east the Rocky Mountains and headwaters of the Missouri; to the south the Salmon Falls along the Snake River.
During this expedition, besides the killing of the four Indians, the command killed and hanged several more until the number of dead Indians equaled the number of dead whites. He also scattered the Shoshoni so that many of them fled towards the Humboldt River in California. The command returned home after covering a distance of around 1700 miles.
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