In August, 1851, a band of Shoshoni Indians led by Cho Cho Co (also called Has No Horse) reportedly attacked a wagon train led by Thomas Clark on the Oregon Trail near where the Raft River joins the Snake River in present-day Idaho.
He came overland to the Willamette Valley in Oregon in 1848, but soon decamped with Jackson Vandevert and others to the California Gold Rush.
He led a band of warriors of the Tussawehee sub-tribe of the Shoshone, the most powerful tribe in the area that would become Eastern Oregon, Idaho, and Western Montana.
[8] As usual, Mrs. Clark, Grace, and Hodgson drove a mile ahead of the main train to a good stopping place and began to prepare the noon-day meal.
The Raft River is about 16 miles (26 km) west of the current Massacre Rocks State Park, an area where several wagon trains were attacked later in the 1850s.
[10] The attackers' strategy was to have some of their number charge the main body of the wagon train at full gallop, creating the maximum amount of confusion.
[18] Thomas Clark had heard the shooting and rode back at full speed with his hunting hounds baying beside him.
The warriors thought he was leading a large party, so they threw Grace down over the bluff and rolled stones down on her, leaving scars on her forehead that remained the rest of her life.
[20] The main body of the wagon train was too paralyzed by the fury of the attack to come to the assistance of the Clark family.
The traditional story is that, rather than follow the usual route of the Oregon Trail northwest to join the Columbia River, Clark headed west until he could steer towards the mountains known as the Three Sisters in the Cascade Range.
According to the story, the Clark company was the first group of whites to camp by the Deschutes River on the future site of Pioneer Park in Bend, Oregon.
[26] Menefee argues persuasively that Clark followed the usual Oregon trail in 1851 and the story has been confused with the 1853 trip of Thomas and Charles Clark when they crossed eastern Oregon south of the Blue Mountains with the "Lost Wagon Train" following the Elliott Cutoff.
[27] In either case it was Thomas Clark who gave a prominent extinct volcano within the city limits the name Pilot Butte.
[28] Menafee is supported by Thomas Clark's own letter in which he reports meeting his brother James on the 1851 trip about thirty miles east of The Dalles on the Columbia River.