After rising Wakara's War wartime hysteria following the Fountain Green massacre in a nearby town, a group of Goshute Native Americans uninvolved with the attack at Fountain Green and seeking peace with the Mormon settlers at Salt Creek Fort in present-day Nephi, Utah were invited inside then murdered and buried in a mass grave. One woman and two children accompanying those killed were taken prisoner.
Eyewitness accounts
Adelia Almira Wilcox, whose husband had been killed by Native Americans two weeks before, wrote in her memoir that those killed in the Nephi massacre were, "shot down without even considering whether they were the guilty ones or not .... They were shot down like so many dogs, picked up with pitchforks [put] on a sleigh and hauled away."
According to another local woman:
Background
During the summer of 1853 violence erupted between colonizers in Mormonism's largest denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and the local residents of Utah Valley. The series of tit-for-tat killings were in retaliation for the stealing of native land and resources, and settlers responding to the conflict in kind. This series of conflicts was dubbed Wakara's War (also called Walker's War).
Mass grave discovery
In 2006 the remains of the slain Utes were discovered in an area of Nephi called Old Hallow during a construction excavation.