Benjamin Chadwick - Family History of Shoshoni Indian Incident

Ben and Sarah Walker Chadwick Sr 1898 Sarah Walker Chadwick,
Sarah Chadwick Bowns, Ben, Mae, Lizzie, Ada, Nettie

My father was a fearless man. While he was working on an old fashioned thrashing machine operated by horses instead of an engine near Franklin, he showed his courage – daughter Nettie Bybee



Ben and Sarah Chadwick and the children joined his Chadwick parents and siblings in the settlement of Franklin in the Idaho Territory to the north in the spring of 1864 (probably due to the floods and devastated crops from the previous season – A History of Weber County by Richard C. Roberts mentions severe flooding at Mill Creek in 1863.). They probably left the Walkers behind in the log house in Slaterville. At Franklin, Ben protected a Mormon woman and his father Joseph Chadwick from some intoxicated Shoshone Indians – a story that became legendary in early Mormon pioneer history. According to An Early History of Franklin written by Eldon T. Bennet in 2004, Ben Chadwick was threshing grain in the fields outside Franklin Fort when some members of the Eastern Shoshone tribe under friendly Chief Washakie came into town drunk and began to break windows and assault a Mormon woman on the streets. Ben and fellow workers came to her rescue. One of the Indians knocked down Ben's father Joseph with a club and Ben went after the Indian with a knife. 

Chief Washakie

Then Ben grabbed someone else's pistol and shot the Indian through the neck. Ben's father urged him to leave Franklin and hide out from the Shoshone. According to Nettie‘s biography, Ben sometimes hid inside a flour barrel. But the Shoshone wanted revenge and demanded that the Mormons turn Ben over to them. Eventually the Mormons traded them some supplies and oxen from the white men who had originally sold the Shoshone the liquor aka "fire water".

Later in the fall of that year Ben Chadwick and his family returned to the log house with the Walkers in Slaterville." compiled/written by Bill Horten - 2010 (pp 4-5)


Benjamin Chadwick Eldest son of
 Joseph Chadwick and Mary Whitehead

"The legend of the Shoshone shooting continued long after Ben‘s death. Longtime Slaterville resident Orval Holley remembered listening to the story being retold on local radio programs. Details of the incident have been mentioned in numerous LDS life sketches by his descendants. It has been written about in magazines such as a 1930 issue of The Trail Blazer as well as other histories of the town of Franklin, Utah. One such retelling of the story in a newspaper article on pioneer recollections by William G. Smith led to another 1934 article in the Ogden Standard-Examiner to clear up the historical confusion of the Battle Creek Massacre fight of U.S. Army Colonel Connor of January 1863 with this Indian episode of 1864. Sometimes the zeal of the descendants to connect their pioneer ancestors to national history led to some exaggerations and inaccuracies." _________________________________________
Source:
Ben and Sarah Walker Chadwick History by Bill Horten
pp 4-5 and pp 60