Qualla: Circleville Massacre https://qualla.com/circleville-massacre en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:04 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/9/w/b/1/circleville-massacre-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Circleville Massacre https://qualla.com/circleville-massacre Circleville Massacre: Introduction https://qualla.com/circleville-massacre/ Photo credit Epachamo, CC BY-SA 4.0. They came because of a letter. The Koosharem Southern Paiute band living in Circle Valley - the place settlers called Box Creek, soon to be renamed Circleville - had been trying to live peacefully alongside the Mormon colonists who kept pushing into their homeland. In the spring of 1866, the settlers told the Koosharem people that a letter had arrived and they wanted it read to them. It was a trap. What happened next in this small Utah valley, tucked between the Tushar Mountains and the Sevier Plateau at 6,000 feet elevation, would be deliberately buried for over a century. The Circleville Massacre stands as one of the most harrowing episodes of the Black Hawk War, a conflict that convulsed Utah Territory from 1865 to 1872 as Native peoples fought to hold onto land that was being taken from them at an accelerating pace.

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]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/w/b/1/circleville-massacre-wp/9wb1-circleville-massacre-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Circleville Massacre: A Valley on Edge https://qualla.com/circleville-massacre/ Photo credit Epachamo, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1866, the broader conflict between Mormon settlers and Native American groups in Utah had reached a boiling point. The Ute leader known as Antonga Black Hawk had been leading raids against settlements, and church officials ordered that Paiute groups be disarmed throughout the ...

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]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/w/b/1/circleville-massacre-wp/9wb1-circleville-massacre-a-valley-on-edge.mp3 0:06 2 full Circleville Massacre: The Cellar https://qualla.com/circleville-massacre/ Photo credit Epachamo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The captives were moved to an underground cellar for more secure confinement. What followed was not an act of panic or battlefield chaos. The settlers held a town meeting. They discussed what to do with their prisoners. They voted. The decision was to kill them. Twenty-four Paiut...

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]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/w/b/1/circleville-massacre-wp/9wb1-circleville-massacre-the-cellar.mp3 0:06 3 full Circleville Massacre: The Children Who Escaped https://qualla.com/circleville-massacre/ Photo credit Epachamo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The following day, the three children were found hiding in a nearby cave. A man named James Allred took them to Marysvale, a settlement roughly twenty miles to the northeast. His intention was to sell or trade them. The girl was killed by a violent bludgeoning. One of the boys di...

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]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/w/b/1/circleville-massacre-wp/9wb1-circleville-massacre-the-children-who-escaped.mp3 0:06 4 full Circleville Massacre: Silence and Memory https://qualla.com/circleville-massacre/ Photo credit Epachamo, CC BY-SA 4.0. For generations, the massacre was simply not discussed. Circleville remained a small ranching community in Piute County, population a few hundred, the kind of place where silence about an ugly past was easy to maintain. The event received scattered attention from historians - Alb...

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]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/w/b/1/circleville-massacre-wp/9wb1-circleville-massacre-silence-and-memory.mp3 0:06 5 full