Ninety Mormon militiamen surrounded a Timpanogos camp on the Provo River in 1850, a half mile from this point, and what followed was not a battle.
Last reviewed 18 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 1849–now
The short answer
In February 1850, Mormon militiamen besieged a Timpanogos camp on the Provo River near Provo, Utah, for two days, killing between 40 and 100 men and at least one woman, executing men who tried to flee, taking survivors to be sold as slaves, and beheading as many as fifty of the dead.
Aladdin's Lamp — 2009 · planetary_nebula · CC BY 3.0
February 8 to 17, 1850
A two-day siege ended with heads on display
Ninety Mormon militiamen surrounded a camp of Timpanogos families on the Provo River. They did not let them leave. The siege ran two days. Guns and a cannon killed between 40 and 100 Timpanogos men, and at least one woman. One militiaman died. Eighteen more were wounded by return fire.
The people inside the camp tried to run in the night. One group went south. The other ran for Rock Canyon. Militiamen caught both groups and executed the men. More than 40 Timpanogos children, women, and a few surviving men were marched to Fort Utah as prisoners. They were taken north to the Salt Lake Valley. There they were sold as slaves to church members.
Some of the settlers cut the heads off as many as fifty of the dead men. They put the heads on display at the fort. The mostly women and children prisoners could see them.
The siege had a cause that started small. In January 1850, a Timpanogos man named Old Bishop was accused of stealing an item of clothing from a settler. Three Mormon men responded by killing him. Timpanogos people retaliated by taking around fifty head of cattle from the settlers at Fort Utah.
Militiamen beheaded up to fifty Timpanogos men and displayed the heads at the fort as a warning.
1849 to February 1850
Church leaders pushed Brigham Young toward war
Fort Utah's settlers petitioned Salt Lake City to go to war over the stolen cattle. Three church leaders, Isaac Higbee, Parley P. Pratt, and Willard Richards, pushed Brigham Young toward war. Young agreed to send militia after any Timpanogos judged hostile to the settlement.
Young dispatched Captain George D. Grant with the Nauvoo Legion. He then sent Daniel H. Wells to take command of the army in the field. The Timpanogos defended themselves from their village and an abandoned cabin before they broke and fled. Wells's men pursued survivors from the band led by Chief Old Elk across the valley, killing other Timpanogos people they found along the way.
This was not the settlers' first clash with the tribe. A year earlier, fifty of John Scott's men surrounded a smaller Timpanogos camp near Battle Creek Canyon over the same accusation of cattle theft. That camp's leaders, Pareyarts and Opecarry, watched settlers shoot down the people trapped in the creek. They carried that memory into the winter of 1850, when the siege on the Provo River began.
1853
Fort Utah's dead were dug up and moved
The dead of Fort Utah did not stay where they were buried. Settlers had used ground at Fort Field, Temple Hill, and Grandview to bury their own in the years right after the siege. In 1853 the growing town moved them again. They reinterred those graves at the newly established Provo City Cemetery.
The reason was practical. The land the pioneers had buried their dead on was wanted for something else. A cemetery, like a fish festival ground, was not a permanent claim if the town needed the space more.
One of those cemeteries did not survive even a generation.
1870s to 1880
A cemetery collapsed and became a college building
Temple Hill Cemetery had started as the second Fort Field burial ground. The town renamed it as it rearranged itself around it. By 1880 it was abandoned. The sandy soil could not hold. Graves caved in on themselves faster than the town could tend them.
The site did not stay empty. Brigham Young University built its Maeser Building on the same ground. The bodies moved to Provo City Cemetery. The land kept its next assignment.
A cemetery abandoned for collapsing graves became a university building.
1895
A mining fortune built a mansion near the siege ground
By the 1890s, the valley the militia had cleared forty-five years earlier was producing private fortunes. R. Spencer Hines built one of Provo's finest homes that year. It was a brick Victorian mansion with stained glass and gabled wings. It stood a little over half a mile from the Provo River siege ground.
Hines made his money from real estate and mining. He also ran a drug store that sold liquor under the state's medicinal-purposes law. This business twice put him in court over how much he sold. When he died in 1898, his widow Kitty Ann Leetham Hines ran the estate herself. She sat as vice president of the Provo Mining Company. She held stakes in two more mining outfits. She sold out and left for California in 1906.
The Hines Mansion still stands. The valley it was built in had been made available for this kind of fortune less than half a century before. A campaign had emptied it of the people who had fished its river first.
The Provo River still runs past the ground where the siege lines closed, and the valley around it now holds houses, a campus, and a cemetery that has already moved once.
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Deep time
The ground here sits on Quaternary deposits laid down as Lake Bonneville, the vast ice-age predecessor of the Great Salt Lake, filled and receded across the valley.
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Modern
1849-1853
Pioneer settlers, including William Dayton, died in accidents during the founding of Fort Utah in 1849 and were first buried at the Fort Field graveyard before their remains were moved to Provo City Cemetery in 1853.
In February 1850, Mormon militiamen laid siege to a Timpanogos Ute encampment on the Provo River for two days, killing between 40 and 100 Ute men and one or two women.
A burial ground at Grandview Hill was established in 1861 at the junction of three settler farms, with a child of Joseph Thompson the first person interred there.
The relocated Fort Field cemetery, renamed Temple Hill Cemetery, was abandoned by 1880 because its sandy soil caused graves to collapse, and the site is now occupied by BYU's Maeser Building.
Utah Valley Hospital opened in 1939 and grew into a 395-bed trauma center serving Utah County, having briefly been renamed Utah Valley Regional Medical Center from 1984 to 2016.
A fast-moving grass fire near State Street forced the evacuation of a nearby apartment building before firefighters put it out, damaging two or three cars.
Ninety Mormon militiamen besieged a Timpanogos camp there for two days, killing between 40 and 100 men and at least one woman with guns and a cannon. Survivors who fled were hunted down and the men executed, and as many as fifty of the dead were beheaded, their heads displayed at Fort Utah.
What caused the Provo River massacre?
A Timpanogos man named Old Bishop was accused of stealing clothing from a settler, and three Mormon men killed him in response. Timpanogos people retaliated by taking about fifty head of cattle, and Fort Utah's settlers petitioned Salt Lake City for war over the theft.
What was here before the massacre?
A camp of Timpanogos families lived on the Provo River, a people who had a prior clash with settlers a year earlier when fifty of John Scott's men surrounded a smaller Timpanogos camp near Battle Creek Canyon over the same cattle-theft accusation.
What happened to the survivors of the siege?
More than 40 Timpanogos children, women and a few surviving men were marched to Fort Utah as prisoners, then taken north to the Salt Lake Valley, where they were sold as slaves to church members.
What stands near the Provo River siege ground today?
The Hines Mansion, a brick Victorian built in 1895 for R. Spencer Hines and his wife Kitty, stands a little over half a mile from the siege ground. Brigham Young University's Maeser Building also occupies the former Temple Hill Cemetery site, which was abandoned in 1880 after its graves collapsed in sandy soil.
Who was buried at Fort Field and Temple Hill?
Pioneer settlers, including William Dayton, who died in accidents during the founding of Fort Utah in 1849, were first buried at the Fort Field graveyard. Those remains, along with others from Temple Hill and Grandview, were reinterred at the newly established Provo City Cemetery in 1853.
