Rescue of a Frontier Boy BY N E W E L L H A R T
Reuban Van Orman, a survivor of an 1860 massacre along the Snake River, was forcibly retrieved from the Shoshones and Bannocks in Cache Valley, Utah, in 1862. But the boy, aged about 10, apparently did not appreciate the combined strategy of settlers, a traveler, a detachment of cavalry troops, and a determined uncle who spent thousands of dollars to track him down. T o young Reuban the rescue merely disrupted two years of wandering with Chief Bear Hunter's tribe. T h e dramatic Cache Valley rescue took place shortly after the founding of C a m p Douglas, in Salt Lake Valley, Utah, just before the creation of Idaho Territory. T o the residents of Cache Valley, the event meant the threat of a bloody Indian war following the departure of the troops. T o Colonel Patrick E. Connor's California Volunteers, from the month-old C a m p Douglas, the rescue was a necessary preliminary to their calculated military attack on Bear Hunter's band. This was the historic fight at Bear River, which followed a few weeks later. T o Reuban's uncle, Zachias Van Orman, it was a personal matter. T h a t cold November day of 1862 would have been a happy but frustrating climax to his long and costly search. Uncle Zachias, a dark-eyed, blackhaired six-footer from the mining camps of Oregon, gives this grisly background of how the boy was lost. My brother was emigrating to Oregon in 1860 and was massacreed by the Indians, he lost in money and property about 6000 dollars and 4 of his children taken captive 3 girls one boy the girls died of starvation in Mr. Hart, a resident of Berkeley, California, is a free-lance writer. T h e story of the rescue of the white boy held captive by the Indians is a by-product of his studies on the Battle of Bear River.
