The Utter-Van Ornum Party
The Utter-Van Ornum wagon train, with forty-four people and one hundred heads of livestock, set out on the Oregon Trail in 1860. Encounters with Indigenous tribes had been, in the early years of the trail, peaceful. By 1860, relations were disintegrating as eastern settlers encroached increasingly on indigenous lands, but actual attacks were still rare.
On September 8, the Utter-Van Ornum wagon train stopped for the night near Castle Creek, Idaho. Some of their cattle was taken by Indigenous people, believed to be Bannock and Shoshone. Losing cattle on the Oregon Trail was a huge problem; it reduced the emergency food supply. It also meant there was less to help the settlers set up a new life in Oregon. But things would only get worse from there.
