"Do Not Execute Chief Pocatello": President Lincoln Acts to Save the Shoshoni Chief BY JEFFERY S. KING
Abraham Lincoln. USHS collections.
1864 BRIG. G E N . PATRICK E. CONNOR, military commander of the District of Utah, was determined to capture and punish Chief Pocatello, the Shoshoni leader who for many years had menaced white settlers in the Northwest and had aroused both anger and fear among the military and the settlers. T h e general's tactics led to a conflict between the civilian Indian Office and the War Department. T h e Indian Office had been transferred from the War Department to the Department of the Interior in 1849. Subsequently, with the support of western politicians and editors, military officials would demand that the Indian Office be given back to the War Department, especially when an Indian war was going on. What transpired
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Mr. King is a librarian and writer living in Washington, D.C.
