The conflict was a result of increasing tension over several years between the Native tribes and the settlers who were encroaching on their lands, and competing for game and water. Explorers passing through had minimal effect. In October 1851,
Shoshone Indians killed eight men in
Fort Hall Idaho. From the time of the
Clark Massacre, in 1851 the regional Native Americans, commonly called the "Snakes" by the white settlers, harassed and sometimes attacked emigrant parties crossing the
Snake River Valley. European-American settlers retaliated by attacking Native American villages. In September 1852, Ben Wright and a group of miners responded to an Indian attack by attacking the
Modoc village near
Black Bluff in Oregon, killing about 41 Modoc. Similar attacks and retaliations took place in the years leading up to the Snake War. In August 1854, Native attacks on several pioneer trains along the
Snake River culminated in the
Ward Massacre on August 20, 1854, in which Native Americans killed 21 people. The following year, the US Army mounted the punitive
Winnas Expedition. From 1858 at the end of the
Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Paloos War, the US Army protected the migration to Oregon by sending out escorts each spring. Natives continued to attack migrant trains, especially stragglers such as the Myers party, killed in the
Salmon Falls Massacre of September 13, 1860. This Massacre lead to the capture of death of 29 emigrants. One historian
Henry Charles Carey described the attack as "more atrocious than any that had preceded it". As Federal troops withdrew in 1861 to return east for engagements of the
American Civil War, California Volunteers provided protection to the emigrants. Later the
1st Washington Territory Infantry Regiment and the
1st Oregon Cavalry replaced Army escorts on the emigrant trails. As gold mining declined in California in the later 1850s, miners searching for gold started to move north and eastward into the upper
Great Basin, and Snake River valley, they competed more for resources with the Native Americans. They lived on the land longer and consumed more game and water. Many isolated occurrences resulted in violence, with the result that both sides were taking to arms. The influx of
miners into the
Nez Perce reservation during the
Clearwater Gold Rush raised tensions among all the tribes. The Nez Perce were divided when some chiefs agreed to a new treaty that permitted the intrusion. As miners developed new locations near
Boise in 1862 and in the
Owyhee Canyonlands in 1863, an influx of white settlers descended on the area. In January 1863 there was the most deadly massacre of Indians in American history, the
Bear River Massacre, over 250 men women and children were killed. Today near Preston, Idaho there is a monument to the lives lost during this massacre, and in 1990 the site was declared a National Historic Landmark. Western Shoshone, Paiute and other local Indians resisted the encroachment, fighting what was called the Snake War from 1864 to 1868. == Bear River Massacre ==