Battle Creek massacre

The Battle Creek massacre was a lynching of a Timpanogos group on March 5, 1849, by a group of 35 Mormon settlers at Battle Creek Canyon near present-day Pleasant Grove, Utah. It was the first violent engagement between the settlers who had begun coming to the area two years before, and was in response to reported cattle theft by the group. The attacked group (led by Kone Roman Nose) was outnumbered, outgunned, and had little defense against the militia that crept in and surrounded their camp before dawn. The massacre had been ordered by Brigham Young, the Utah territory governor and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The formation of the Mormon settlement of Utah Valley soon followed the attack at Battle Creek. One of the young survivors from the group of 17 children, women, and men who had been attacked grew up to be Antonga Black Hawk, a Timpanogos leader in the Black Hawk War.