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'Illustration from '
The 'Mountain Meadows massacre' was a mass killing of the
Fancher-Baker wagon train at
Mountain Meadows in
Utah Territory on
September 11,
1857, by a group of
Mormons and
Paiute Indians.
The
Arkansas emigrants were traveling to
California shortly before
Utah War started. Mormons throughout the Utah Territory had been mustered to fight the invading
United States Army, which they believed was intended to destroy them as a people. During this period of tension, rumors among the Mormons also linked the Fancher-Baker train with enemies who had participated in previous persecutions of Mormons or more recent malicious acts.
The emigrants stopped to rest and regroup their approximately 800 head of cattle at Mountain Meadows, a valley within the Iron County Military District of the
Nauvoo Legion (the popular designation for militia of the
Utah Territory).
[1]
Initially intending to orchestrate an
Indian massacre, two men with
leadership roles in local military, church and government organizations,
[2] Isaac C. Haight and
John D. Lee, conspired for Lee to lead militiamen disguised as
Native Americans along with a contingent of
Paiute tribesmen in an attack. The emigrants fought back and a siege ensued. Intending to leave no witnesses of Mormon complicity in the siege and avoid reprisals complicating the
Utah War, militiamen induced the emigrants to surrender and give up their weapons. After escorting the emigrants out of their fortification, the militiamen and their tribesmen auxiliaries executed approximately 120 men, women and children.
[3] Seventeen younger children were spared.
Investigations, interrupted by the
U.S. Civil War, resulted in nine indictments in 1874. Only John D. Lee was ever tried, and after two trials, he was convicted. On
March 23 1877 a
firing squad executed Lee on the grounds of the massacre site.
Background
Utah Territory's political structure during the massacre
A decade before the massacre, Mormons established
Utah Territory as a
theocracy (''see''
theodemocracy).
Brigham Young presided over the
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as LDS Church president and Prophet of God,
[4] until
Christ's assumption of
world kingship at his Second Coming.
[5] U.S. president
Millard Fillmore appointed Young governor of the Territory of Utah
[6] and its Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Yet there was minimal effective separation between church and state until 1858.
[7]
Brigham Young envisioned a Mormon kingdom spanning from the Salt Lake valley to the
Pacific Ocean,
[8] and so he sent church leaders to establish colonies far and wide. These colonies were governed by Mormon officials under Brigham Young's mandate to enforce "God's law" by "lay[ing] the ax at the root of the tree of sin and iniquity", while preserving individual rights.
[9] Despite the distance to these outlying colonies, local Mormon leaders received frequent visits from church headquarters, and were under Young's direct doctrinal and political control.
[2] Mormons were taught to obey the orders of their
priesthood leaders, as long as they coincided with gospel principles.
[11] Young's view of theocratic enforcement included a
death penalty for such sins as theft.
[12] However, there are no documented cases showing that such threats were ever enforced as actual policy, and there were no accusations of thievery against the Fancher party. Mormon leaders taught the doctrine of
blood atonement, in which Mormon "covenant breakers" could in theory gain their
exaltation in heaven by having "their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins". More clearly stated, this doctrine holds that capital punishment is requisite for offenses of murder.
[13]
Commentator
Thomas G. Alexander argues that most violent speech by LDS leaders was rhetorical in nature and that statistical studies from 1882 to 1903, 25 years after the massacre, should be relied upon to determine whether or not frontier Utah was more violent in reality than surrounding regions.
[14] Be this as it may, there is consensus that William H. Dame and Isaac C. Haight, the two most senior local church leaders in southern Utah complicit in the massacre, took the rhetoric of such doctrines seriously as they contemplated sanctionable applications of violence.
[15]
According to rumors and accusations, Brigham Young sometimes enforced "God's law" through a secret cadre of avenging
Danites.
[16] The truth of these rumors is debated by historians. While there existed active
vigilante organizations in Utah who referred to themselves as "Danites",
[17] they may have been acting independently.
[2] Haight and Dame were never Danites; however, Young's records indicate that in 1857 he authorized Haight and Dame to secretly execute two ex-convicts traveling through southern Utah along the California trail if they were caught stealing cattle.
[2] Dame replied to Young in a letter that "we try to live so when your finger crooks, we move".
[2] Haight and/or Dame might have been involved in the subsequent ambush of part of the convicts' party just south of Mountain Meadows.
[2]
Persecution against Mormons and calls for vengeance
Main articles: Mormonism and violence
At the time of the massacre, Mormons had an acute memory of recent persecutions against them, particularly the death of "the prophets", and had been taught that God would soon exact vengeance. The persecutions began in the 1830s, when the state of
Missouri officially opposed their presence in the state, engaged with them in the
Mormon War, and expelled them in 1838 with an
Extermination Order. During the Mormon War, prominent
Mormon apostle David W. Patten was killed
in battle, and a group of Mormons were
massacred at Haun's Mill. After the Mormons established a new home in
Nauvoo,
Illinois, in 1839, they were again forced to leave behind homes and land in Illinois after conflicts with locals culminated in the 1844
assassination of Joseph Smith, Jr. and his brother,
Patriarch Hyrum Smith by a mob of Illinois militia.
Brigham Young led the majority of Mormons westward in 1846 to avoid
civil war.
[6]
In Utah, just months before the Mountain Meadows massacre, Mormons received word that yet another "prophet" had been killed: in April 1857, apostle
Parley P. Pratt was shot in
Arkansas by Hector McLean, the alcoholic, abusive, estranged husband of one of Pratt's
plural wives, Eleanor McLean Pratt.
[23] Mormon leaders immediately proclaimed Pratt as another
martyr, and compared his death with
that of Joseph Smith.
[24] Many Mormons held the people of Arkansas responsible.
[25]
In 1857, Mormon leaders taught that the
Second Coming of
Jesus was imminent,
[26] and that God would soon exact punishment against the
United States for persecuting Mormons and martyring "the prophets"
Joseph Smith, Jr.,
Hyrum Smith,
David W. Patten, and
Parley P. Pratt.
[27] In their
Endowment ceremony, faithful early Latter-day Saints took an
Oath of Vengeance against the murderers of the prophets.
[28] As a result of this oath, several Mormon apostles and other leaders considered it their religious duty to kill the prophets' murderers if they ever came across them.
[29]
The sermons, blessings, and private counsel by Mormon leaders just prior to the Mountain Meadows massacre can be understood as encouraging private individuals to execute God's judgment against the wicked.
[30] In
Cedar City,
Utah, church leaders taught that members should ignore dead bodies and go about their business.
[31] Col. William H. Dame, the ranking officer in southern Utah who ordered the Mountain Meadows massacre, received a
patriarchal blessing in 1854 that he would "be called to act at the head of a portion of thy Brethren and of the
Lamanites [a Mormon term for ''American Indians''] in the redemption of Zion and the avenging of the blood of the prophets upon them that dwell on the earth".
[32] In June 1857, Philip Klingensmith, another participant, was similarly blessed that he would participate in "avenging the blood of Brother Joseph".
[33]
Fancher-Baker party
'Fanchers' livestock brand,
a monogrammed ''J-F.'''
''Registered in 1852 at
Tulare County, California—
intended destination of ill-fated
Fancher-Baker train—to
Captain Alexander Fancher's
older brother John
The Fancher-Baker party consisted of several smaller parties that set out separately from
the Ozarks in northwestern
Arkansas, and then joined up along the way.
[2] Many of the families in the group were prosperous farmers and cattlemen with ample financial resources to make the journey west. Some of the groups had family and friends in California awaiting their arrival, as well as many relatives remaining in Arkansas. Among the groups were the Baker train, led by John T. Baker from
Carroll County, and the Fancher train, led by seasoned expeditioner Alexander Fancher,
[35] which left from
Benton County.
[2] Other groups included the Huff train, which also left from Benton, the Mitchell, Dunlapp, and Prewitt trains which left from
Marion County, and the Poteet-Tackitt-Jones, Cameron, and Miller trains which left from
Johnson County.
[2] Pleasant Tackitt, from the Poteet-Tackitt-Jones train, was a
Methodist minister who led the others in worship and prayer services while on their journey. When the groups left Arkansas in April of 1857, the total company numbered more than 200.
[38] However, during the journey, some groups split off and others joined.
[2] Some of the trains that joined the company may have been from other states, such as
Missouri.
[38]
The party was well outfitted with wagons, traveling carriages, a large herd of cattle estimated at close to 1,000 head, oxen, as well as numerous horses. They joined the expedition for various reasons; some to settle permanently in California, some to drive cattle west for profit, and some to find California gold.
[2] Like other emigrant groups traveling to California, they took money with them and planned to replenish their supplies in Salt Lake City for the remainder of the trip.
[2]
By late July or early August of 1857 the family groups arrived in northern Utah at
Salt Lake City.
[43] The actual date of arrival is unknown, but Brooks places the arrival as
August 3 or
August 4,
1857 based on reports in the "Journal of Church History."
[6] The Arkansans arrived in Utah with over 800 head of
cattle and were low on supplies when they reached the Salt Lake area, a major resupply destination for overland emigrants.
[45] The train led by Alexander Fancher waited outside Salt Lake City for more than a week as other groups caught up with them. The other, led by Captain John Twitty Baker was the last to arrive. Here the groups decided which route to take across the
Great Basin to California. North to the
California Trail, involved traveling the along the
Humboldt River, west across the desert to California and across the
Sierra Nevada mountains to Sacramento. This route put emigrants at risk of becoming snowbound in the mountains as the
Donner party had ten years before. South to the
Old Spanish Trail (trade route), would take them through the settlements in southern Utah, the arid
Mohave Desert and to
Los Angeles.
[2] At least one couple, Henry D. and Malinda Cameron Scott, chose to take the northern route while others from the woman's family went south with the united parties under Captain Fancher.
[2]
It was reported to Brigham Young that the the party was from Arkansas.
[2] It was also rumored that Eleanor McLean Pratt, the apostle Pratt's plural wife, recognized one of the party as being present at her husband's murder.
[49]
Escalating tensions
Utah War
Main articles: Utah War
In July 1857, while the Fancher-Baker party was en route to
Utah Territory, Mormons began hearing rumors
[50] that the
United States had launched an expedition to
invade the territory and
depose its theocratic government. For almost a decade, relations between Utah and the federal government had deteriorated over the issue of
polygamy and the role of Mormon institutions versus that of federal ones in the territory.
[51] By July 1857, Young's replacement,
Alfred Cumming, was appointed, and a fourth of the entire U.S.
army, some 2,500
dragoons, were already on the march.
On September 8, 1857, Capt. Van Vliet of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps. traveled to Salt Lake City to purchase supplies for the U.S. Army which planned to establish a presences in the territory. Gov. Young refused his procurement offers and informed the young officer that the Territory of Utah had declared War upon the United States of America. When Van Vliet arrived on Sept. 8, the siege at Mountain meadows had been underway for one day, on Sept. 10 an express rider had informed Young of the plight of the emigrants, and when Van Vliet left Salt lake City on Sept. 14 the Americans had been massacred, the survivors sold or given away, and their possessions plundered.
[6][6][6][6]
As news of the approaching army spread, the coming invasion took on
apocalyptic significance. Mormons saw it as a threat to their existence.
[56] Members of the
First Presidency framed the confrontation as a battle between the Kingdom of God and minions of the Devil.
[57] Some Mormons in southern Utah taught that the invasion was the beginning of the
Millennium,
[2] and the prevailing understanding there was that the U.S. Army intended to wipe out the Mormons as a people.
[59] In preparation for a seven-year siege predicted by Brigham Young, Mormon leaders began accelerating an existing program for stockpiling grain.
[60] Mormons were told to sell their clothing to buy as much grain as possible,
[61] and not to use grain as animal feed nor sell it to emigrants for this purpose.
[38]
Defiant against the United States, Brigham Young warned "mobocrats", particularly past Mormon persecutors and the "priests, editors, and politicians who have howled so long about us", to stay away from the territory, or "we will attend to their cases".
[2] He stated that if such persons entered the territory, "they will find a '
Vigilance Committee'" and they will "find the
Danites".
[6] But Young denounced plans by Mormons to rob "innocent" emigrant trains, saying that such robbers ''themselves'' would "be overtaken by a 'Vigilance Committee'".
[6] He wanted to ensure that "the good and honest may be able to pass from the Eastern States to California…in ''peace''".
[2]
Young ordered pioneer settlements furthest afield to pull up stakes–evacuating colonies in
San Bernardino (now southern California),
Las Vegas (southern Nevada),
Carson Valley (western Nevada), and
Fort Bridger (western Wyoming).
[2] Thereafter, the farthest remaining outpost of Mormonism were the outlying Mormon colonies at
Cedar City (led by Stake President-Major Isaac C. Haight) and
Parowan (led by Stake President-Colonel William H. Dame), two infant fortress-villages near Mountain Meadows where the massacre took place. These settlements were nearly 300 miles from the
Salt Lake City headquarters, and only reachable by a three days' journey on horseback, the messenger's changing mounts at various settlements along the way.
[2] Mormons in the area were to be the first defense against a feared "southern invasion"
[2] The word from Mormon headquarters was that the approaching
U.S. Army had orders to murder every believing Mormon,
[70] and that the troops were coming directly from
Missouri,
[6]
On
August 5,
1857, Brigham Young declared
martial law.
[6] All borders were to be sealed to further travel through Utah by emigrants.
[73] Young also made it illegal to travel through Utah without a permit,
[; ; .] but no safe conduct pass was made available to the Fancher-Baker train by Territorial or local officials. The party would not have been aware of Young's decree as it was only made public on
September 15,
1857.
[2]
Emigrant trains arriving from the east presented an opportunity for Mormons to trade or sell foodstuffs and other supplies, and until the
Utah War, most were friendly and willing to help travelers pass through the
Utah Territory.
[2] The Fancher train encountered residents along the way who were obeying Young's recent order to stockpile supplies in expectations of all-out war with approaching U.S. troops.
[76] The Mormons were directed not to sell any food to the enemy, as the emigrant train was labeled.
[38]
George A. Smith's circuit through southern Utah
On
August 3 1857,
Mormon apostle George A. Smith[78] left Salt Lake City to visit the southern Utah communities.
[79] He arrived at
Parowan on
August 8 1857,
[2] and on
August 15 1857, he set off on a tour of Stake President-Colonel W. H. Dame's military district.
[81] During the tour, Smith gave military speeches
[6] and counseled Mormons that they prepare to "touch fire to their homes, and hide themselves in the mountains, and to defend their country to the very last extremity."
[83] Smith instructed Mormons to stockpile grain, and not to sell it to emigrants for animal feed.
[84] John D. Lee accompanied Smith on part of this tour,
[2] during which Smith addressed a group of Native Americans in Santa Clara, counseling them that "the Americans" were approaching with a large army, and were a threat to the Native Americans as well as the Mormons.
[2] Riding in a wagon afterwards, Lee said he warned Smith that the Native Americans would likely attack emigrant trains, and that Mormons were anxious to avenge the blood of the prophets,
[2] and according to Lee, Smith seemed pleased, and said "he had had a long talk with Major Haight on the same subject".
[2]
Major Isaac C. Haight, the stake president of
Cedar City, met with Smith again on
August 21.
[2] Haight told Smith he had heard reports that 600 troops were already approaching Cedar City from the East, and that if the rumors were true, Haight would have to act without waiting for instructions from Salt Lake City. Smith agreed, and "admired his grit".
[2] Smith later said he was uncomfortable, perhaps "on account of my extreme timidity", because some of the militia members were eager that "their enemies might come and give them a chance to fight and take vengeance for the cruelties that had been inflicted upon us in the States", such as the
Haun's Mill massacre.
[2]
On the way back to Salt Lake City, Smith was accompanied by a party including
Jacob Hamblin of
Santa Clara, a newly appointed Mormon missionary to the Natives in the region who also ran a federally funded
Indian farm next to Mountain Meadows.
[92] Also traveling north with the Smith party were several Native chiefs of the southern Utah Territory
[93] On
August 25 1857, Smith's group camped next to the Fancher-Baker party, headed the opposite direction, at Corn Creek (now
Kanosh). Smith later said he had no knowledge of the Fancher-Baker party prior to meeting them on the trail.
[2] When the Fancher-Baker party inquired about places to stop for water and grazing, Hamblin directed them to Mountain Meadows,
[6] near the Indian farm there, a regular stopover on the
Old Spanish Trail.
Some members of Smith's party later testified that during their encampment they saw the Fancher-Baker party poison a spring and a dead ox, with the expectation that Native Americans would be poisoned.
[96] Silas S. Smith, the cousin of George A., testified that the Fancher-Baker party suspiciously asked whether the Native Americans would eat a dead ox.
[2] Although the poisoning story supported the Mormon theory that Native Americans had been poisoned and therefore conducted a massacre on their own,
[98] modern historians generally discount the testimony and rumors about the poisoned ox and spring as false.
[99] Nevertheless, the poisoning story preceded the Fanchers on their trip southward.
[100]
Interactions on road toward Mountain Meadows
The Mormons considered the emigrants of an
alien status because of Young's orders forbidding travel through Utah without a required pass—which the Fancher-Baker party did not have.
[76] However, Captains Baker and Fancher may not have been aware of Young's martial law order since it was not made public until
September 15,
1857.
[2]
The Fancher and Duke parties (respectively from Arkansas and Missouri) having assisted each other on their western journeys, it was believed by some locals that the Fancher party was joined by eleven members of a Missouri militia calling itself the "Wildcats". (Yet there is debate on whether these miners and plainsmen stayed with the slow-moving Fancher party after leaving Salt Lake City,
[103] or actually existed.)
Meanwhile the Mormons that the Fancher train encountered along the way were obeying Young's order to stockpile supplies in expectations of all-out war with approaching U.S. troops and declined to trade with the Fanchers. This friction was added to by the "
range war" that would be expected to erupt between local populations and any emigrants' leading vast herds of cattle—and indeed, both the Fancher and Duke parties' stock would compete with locals' for grazing and sometimes would break through the Mormon colonists' fences. Yet in the war panic, such mundane complaints escalated into more ominous charges.
For example, according to John D. Lee, "They swore and boasted openly... that Buchanan's whole army was coming right behind them, and would kill every God Damn Mormon in Utah.... They had two bulls which they called one "Heber" and the other "Brigham," and whipped 'em through every town, yelling and singing... and blaspheming oaths that would have made your hair stand on end."
[104]
While
Jacob Hamblin was in Salt Lake City he heard that the Fanchers had "behaved badly [...and had] robbed hen-roosts, and been guilty of other irregularities, and had used abusive language to those who had remonstrated with them. It was also reported that they threatened, when the army came into the north end of the Territory, to get a good outfit from the weaker settlements in the south."
[6]
In his report of his investigation of the massacre, Superintendent for Indian Affairs in Utah Territory, Jacob Forney
[106] said: "I [...made] strict inquiry relative to the general behavior and conduct of the company towards the people of this territory ..., and am justified in saying that they conducted themselves with propriety."
In Forney's interview with David Tullis who had been living with
Jacob Hamblin, Tullis related that "[t]he company passed by the house...towards evening.... One of the men rode up to where I was working, and asked if there was water ahead. I said, yes. The person who rode up behaved civilly."
[6]
Also, William Rogers later related where Shirts related he "saw the emigrants when they entered the valley, and talked with several of the men belonging to it. They appeared perfectly civil and gentlemanly."
[108]
Brigham Young's attempt to enlist Native Americans to fight "the Americans"
Brigham Young, as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the
Utah Territory, built strong diplomatic ties with the area's
Native American tribes. When it became clear there would be an invasion by U.S. troops, he sought to enlist them to join Mormons in fighting the "Americans". Young sent his trusted interpreter
Dimick B. Huntington to various tribes with wagon loads of food. Huntington told Native Americans that the
Utah War was a battle, prophesied in the ''
Book of Mormon'', between Mormons and Native Americans, on the one hand, and "gentiles" (non-Mormon whites) on the other.
[2] Young's message for the tribes was that they should "be at peace with all men except the Americans".
[2] Scholars disagree whether Young intended the Native American tribes to fight all non-Mormon Americans, including emigrants, or just the approaching U.S. Army.
[111]
No disapproval was expressed by Huntington when told by Shoshones that cows, horses, and mules had been stolen from Californians.
[2] Wilford Woodruff recorded Young's message to the Mormon apostles on
August 26 1857, "The Gentile emigrants [will] shoot the indians wharever they meet with them & the Indians now retaliate & will kill innocent People.",
[113] On
August 30 1857, Huntington gave a group of northern tribes "all the beef cattle & horses that was on the road to Cal[i]fornia, the North rout[e]".
On
September 1 1857, frontiersman James Gemmell was in Young's office when Hamblin, who had accompanied the group of tribal leaders (including
Ammon,
Kanosh,
Tutsegabit, and
Youngwids), and
George A. Smith on his return to Salt Lake, all of whom had camped near the Fancher-Baker party.
'Map depicting Mountain Meadows and surrounding region in 1857, showing path of
Old Spanish Trail'
When Hamblin told Young that the Arkansas train was near Cedar City, Young said, according to Gemmell (whose statement derives from an 1896 posthumous source named Wheeler), that if he were in charge of the Nauvoo Legion he "would wipe them out."
[2] These chiefs then met with Huntington and Brigham Young, where the Native American leaders were given "all the cattle that had gone to Cal. the south rout[e]." The Native American leaders questioned this, because previously, the Mormons had told them not to
steal cattle. Young acknowledged this, but said "now they have come to fight us & you, for when they kill us then they will kill you."
[2] Modern scholars generally agree that Brigham Young was authorizing Native American leaders to steal emigrant cattle.
[116] And there is evidence that a policy that Native Americans should steal emigrants' cattle was put into effect against emigrant groups other than the ''Fancher-Baker'' party.
[117]
Fanchers' arrival at Cedar City
Cedar City was the last major settlement where emigrants could stop to buy grain and supplies before a long stretch of wilderness leading to California.
[2] When they arrived there, however, they were turned a cold shoulder: important goods were not available in the town store, and the local miller charged an exorbitant price for grinding grain.
[2] As tension between the Mormons and the emigrants mounted, a member of the Fancher-Baker party was said to have bragged he had the very gun that "shot the guts out of Old
Joe Smith".
[120] Other members of the party reportedly bragged about taking part in the
Haun's Mill massacre some decades before in Missouri.
[2] Others were reported by Mormons to have threatened to join the incoming federal troops, or join troops from California, and march against the Mormons.
[122] According to a witness, Alexander Fancher, captain of the emigrant train, rebuked these men on the spot for their inflamatory language.
[2]
Conspiracy and massacre
Mormon meetings at Cedar City to decide emigrants' fate
'Three (of nine) Utah Territorial militiamen of Tenth Regiment "Iron Brigade"
indicted in 1874 for murder or conspiracy
(''Note:'' William H. Dame • Isaac C. Haight • William C. Stewart
Ellott Willden • Samuel Jukes • George Adair, Jun. ''not shown'')' |  'John H. Higbee'
''Young local authority.
Shouted command to begin killings.
Professed reluctant participation after contingent he commanded brought to scene solely to bury dead from
"Indian attack"'' | 
'John D. Lee'
''Constable/ judge/ Indian Agent.
Lead initial assault.
Falsely offered emigrants safe passage prior their mile-long march down field of massacre''
| 
'Philip Klingensmith'
''Local authority.
Participated in killings.
Later turned state's evidence against fellows''
|
|
After the Fanchers left Cedar City, and before they arrived at the Meadows, several meetings were held in
Cedar City and nearby
Parowan by local Mormon leaders pondering how to implement Young's directives. At least nine southern Utah militiamen had already been sent out as scouts to the area's emigrant trails' mountain passes, looking for advance parties of the United States
dragoons. After the massacre, these scouts would later return with welcome news that U.S. troops likely would not be arriving until spring.
Soon after the Fanchers left Cedar City, Major Isaac C. Haight, Mormon
Stake President of Cedar City and second in command of the
Iron County militia, sent a letter to William H. Dame, the militia's commanding officer and
Stake President of
Parowan, asking that the militia be called out against the Fanchers.
[124] Dame reportedly denied the request, but told Haight to let him know if the Fanchers committed any acts of violence.
[124] Haight, however, who was of equal rank to Dame in ecclesiastical matters, settled on a secondary plan to use the Native Americans instead of the militia. Whether Dame was privy to this plan is a matter of disagreement between the witnesses. According to one report, Isaac Haight said the "Indian attack" plan was being put in place under the religious authority of the Cedar City Stake, without Dame's authorization as military commander.
[2] Lee, however, said Haight told him that orders for the "Indian attack" came from Dame.
[2] Philip Klingensmith reported that the orders came from "headquarters" other than Cedar City, but he was unsure whether that meant Parowan or Salt Lake City.
[128]
Possibly on
September 4 1857,
[129] Haight had a meeting with
John D. Lee ordering him to assemble Paiute fighters to head towards Mountain Meadows for the planned attack. Lee was a bishop, a territorial legislator, and a friend to Joseph Smith, Jr. and Brigham Young, in both of whose service Lee had performed duties as a constable and of personal protection and was rumored to have meted out secret punishments as a
Danite as well. Lee's meeting with Haight, according to Lee, took place late at night in Cedar City at the iron works, while they were wrapped in blankets against the cold.
In the afternoon of Sunday,
September 6, Major Haight held his weekly Stake
High Council meeting after church services, and brought up the issue of whether to what to do with the emigrants.
[2] The Council believed that there were U.S. armies approaching from the north and the south,
[2] and it was reported at the meeting that the Fancher-Baker party had threatened to "destroy every damned Mormon", and some of them had claimed to have
killed Joseph Smith[2] that they would wait at Mountain Meadows and then join with the approaching armies in a massacre of Mormons.
[2]
The planned Native American massacre of the Fancher train was discussed, but not all the Council members agreed it was the right approach.
[2] The Council resolved to take no action until Haight sent a rider (James Haslam) out the next day to carry an express to Salt Lake City (a six-day round trip on horseback) for Brigham Young's advice.
[2] The Council also resolved to send a messenger south to
John D. Lee, instructing Lee to stay the planned
Indian massacre at Mountain Meadows.
[2]
John M. Higbee was directed to command a special contingent of militia drawn from throughout the southern settlements whose initial orders were to coordinate the affair while maintaining a picket around the area's perimeter.
===Siege (
September 7–
September 111857)===
A witness said that a Mormon
Indian Agent,
John D. Lee, left his home in Harmony on
September 6 1857 in the company of 14 Native Americans and headed toward Mountain Meadows.
[137] In the early morning of Monday,
September 7[138] the Arkansan "Fancher" party began to be attacked by as many or more than 200
Paiutes[139] and Mormon militiamen disguised as Native Americans. The Fancher party defended itself by encircling and lowering their wagons, wheels chained together, along with digging shallow trenches and throwing dirt both below and into the wagons, which made a strong barrier. Seven emigrants were killed during the opening attack and were buried somewhere within the wagon encirclement. Sixteen more were wounded. The attack continued for five days, during which the besieged families had little or no access to fresh water and their ammunition was depleted.
'Map of the Meadows
by Josiah F. Gibbs' According to one report, they attempted to send a little girl to a nearby spring for water, dressed in white, and she was fired upon, but escaped unharmed back to the camp.
[140] When two emigrant horsemen attempted to retrieve water, one was shot while another escaped, but not before seeing that the shooter was a white man.
On
September 9, local Mormon leader
Isaac C. Haight and his counselor Elias Morris visited Dame in Parowan, where the council decided that the militia would allow the emigrants to pass safely.
[141] After the Parowan council meeting, however, Haight spoke with Dame confidentially, relating the information that the emigrants probably already knew that Mormons were involved in the siege. This information changed Dame's mind, and he reportedly authorized a massacre.
Massacre
Following orders from Haight in Cedar City, 35 miles (56 km)) away, on Friday
September 11 John Higbee ordered a group of militiamen not in disguise to march and stand in a formal line a half-mile from the Fanchers,
[142] then Lee and William Batemen approached the Fancher-Baker party wagons with a
white flag.
[6][6] Lee told the battle-weary emigrants he had negotiated a truce with the Paiutes, whereby they could be escorted safely to Cedar City under Mormon protection in exchange for leaving all their livestock and supplies to the Native Americans.
Accepting this, they were split into three groups. Seventeen of the youngest children along with a few mothers and the wounded were put into wagons, which were followed by all the women and older children walking in a second group. Bringing up the rear were the adult males of the Fancher party, each walking with an armed Mormon militiaman at his right. Making their way back northeast towards Cedar City, the three groups gradually became strung out and visually separated by shrubs and a shallow hill. After about 2 kilometers Higbee gave the prearranged order, "Do Your Duty!"
[6] Each Mormon then turned and killed the man he was guarding. All of the men, women, older children and wounded were massacred by Mormon militia and Paiutes who had hidden nearby.
A few victims who escaped the initial slaughter were quickly chased down and killed. Two teenaged girls, Rachel and Ruth Dunlap, managed to climb down an embankment to hide among oak trees for a time, but were spotted by a Paiute chief from Parowan, who took them to Lee. Lee ordered the girls killed despite pleadings for mercy by the chief and the girls. Captain Carleton
[6] mentions that the sisters were later found naked with slit throats. This scene was vividly recounted in a turn-of-the-century exposé by Gibbs.
[147]
Spared children and distribution of spoils
Approximately seventeen children were deliberately spared because of their age.
[148] In the hours following the massacre Lee directed Philip Klingensmith, Samuel McMurdy,
[2] and possibly J. Willis and Samuel Knight
[150] to take the children (a few of whom were wounded) to the nearby farm of
Jacob Hamblin, a local Indian Agent.
[151] From there, the children were taken to Cedar City, where foster parents were found among local Mormon families.
[2]
After searching the bodies for valuables, Lee, Higbee, and Klingensmith made speeches and ordered the participants not to tell anyone, including their wives, and to blame the massacre on the Native Americans alone.
[2] Dame and Haight arrived at the scene late that night and stayed at the Hamblin ranch; they were not present during the massacre.
On
September 12 1857, the many dozens of bodies were hastily dragged into gullies and other low lying spots, then lightly covered with surrounding material which was soon blown away by the weather, leaving the remains to be scavenged and scattered by wildlife.
After the hasty burials, the participants gathered at the emigrant camp for a council, where Dame, Haight, and other church and military leaders thanked the participants for their zeal, and thanked God for delivering their enemies into their hands.
[2] The militia then performed the Mormon
prayer circle ordinance, during which they again made sacred oaths not to reveal the role of Mormons in the massacre.
[155]
The Paiutes reportedly received a portion of the Fancher-Baker party's significant livestock holdings as compensation for their part in the massacre. Many of the murdered emigrants' other belongings (including blood stained and bullet-riddled clothing stripped from the victims' corpses) were brought to Cedar City and stored in the cellar of an LDS warehouse as "property taken at the
siege of Sevastopol."
There are conflicting accounts as to whether these items were auctioned off or simply taken by members of the local population. Surviving children saw Mormons wearing their parents' clothing and jewelry.
[156]
Belated message from Young
The express rider Haslam returned with a letter from Young ordering that the emigrants not be harmed, but did not arrive in time to prevent the attack and moreover, after the siege had started Haight had fully resolved to murder any adult witnesses.
President Young’s message of reply to Haight, dated
September 10, read: "In regard to emigration trains passing through our settlements, we must not interfere with them until they are first notified to keep away. You must not meddle with them. The Indians we expect will do as they please but you should try and preserve good feelings with them. There are no other trains going south that I know of[.] [I]f those who are there will leave let them go in peace."
[157]
According to trial testimony given later by express rider Haslam, when Haight read Young’s words, he sobbed like a child and could manage only the words, "Too late, too late."
[158]
Historians debate the letter's contents. Brooks believes it shows Young "did not order the massacre, and would have prevented it if he could."
[159] Bagley argues that the letter covertly gave other instructions.
[160]
Investigations and prosecutions
While taking into account evidence Brigham Young did not order the massacre and lack of direct evidence Young condoned of it, historians question the roles of local Cedar City Mormon church officials in ordering the murders and Young's concealing of evidence in their aftermath.
[6] Young's use of inflammatory and violent language
[6] in response to the Federal expedition added to the tense atmosphere at the time of the attack. After the massacre, Young stated in public forums that God had taken vengeance on the Fancher party.
[163] It is unclear whether Young held this view because he believed this specific group posed an actual threat to colonists or were directly responsible for past crimes against Mormons. According to historian MacKinnon, "After the war, Buchanan implied that face-to-face communications with Brigham Young might have averted the [Utah War], and Young argued that a north-south telegraph line in Utah could have prevented the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
[6]
Part played by Paiutes
A few days after the massacre, September 29,1857,
John D. Lee briefed Brigham Young on the massacre. According to Lee, more than one hundred and fifty mobbers of Missouri and Illinois, with many cattle and horses, dammed the Saints leaders, poisoned not only a beef given to the Native Americans, but poisoned a spring which killed both Saints and Native Americans. The Native Americans became enraged and after a long siege killed all and stripped the corpses of clothing. Eight to ten children were spared by the Mormons. A second group, with a large cattle herd, would have suffered the same fate had not the Saints intervened and saved them.
Wilford Woodruff recorded Lees's account as a "tale of blood.".
[2]
On September 30, 1857, Mormon Indian Agent George W. Armstrong, sent a letter to Young from Provo with information of the massacre. In his account, the emigrants gave the Native Americans poisoned beef. After many Native Americanss died, they "appeased their savage vengeance" by killing fifty-seven men and nine women. There was no mention of survivors.
[2]
Decades later, Young's son, 13 years old in 1857, said he was in the office during that meeting and that he remembered Lee blaming the massacre on the Native Americans.
[167] Some time after Lee's meeting with Young, Jacob Hamblin said he reported to Young and
George A. Smith what he said Lee had related to Hamblin on his journey to Salt Lake.
[2] Brigham Young was mistaken when he later testified, under oath, that the meeting took place "some two of three months after the massacre".
[2] When Lee attempted to relate the details of the massacre, however, Young later testified he cut Lee off, stopping him from reciting further details.
[2]
Rumors of the massacre began to reach California in early October. John Aiken, a "gentile" who traveled with the mail carrier John Hurt through the killing field, reported to the Los Angeles Star that the unburied putrefied corpses of the women and children were more generally eaten than the men.
[6]
Confirmation of the massacre was received from the Mormon J. Ward Christian. Christian claimed that the emigrants had cheated the Native Americans who sold them wheat at Corn Creek, put strychnine in water holes and poisoned a dead ox. According to Christian, the party consisted of 130 to 135. All were killed by Native Americans with the exception of fifteen infant children, that have since been purchased with much difficulty by the Mormon interpreters.
[172]
And when Brigham Young sent his report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1858, he said the massacre was the work of Native Americans.
[6]
Paiute leaders maintain that Mormon accounts of Paiute initiation of the siege are untrue. Stoffel and Evans assert that Paiutes had no history of attacking wagon trains
[6] and no Native Americans were charged, prosecuted, or punished by federal officials as a result of the Mountain Meadows massacre. Tribal oral history accounts taken in 1980s and 1990s relate stories of Paiutes witnessing the attack from a distance rather than participating. There are some stories which relate some Paiute were present, but did not initiate or participate in the killings. A corroborating oral history of Sybil Mariah Frink tells of witnessing the planning of the massacre at her home in Harmony. She contends she followed fourteen Mormons who had disguised themselves as Native Americans to the scene of the massacre. She makes no mention of any Native Americans participating in the attack. Authors Tom and Holt summarize the state of proof regarding the massacre:
The fact that so much evidence, including relevant pages from the journals of many settlers, has been lost or destroyed, testifies to many Native Americans and their sympathizers that much of the official history cannot be considered to be complete or truthful. However, there is certainly some evidence that Native Americans with base camps on the Muddy and Santa Clara Rivers were at least involved in the initial siege of the wagon train."[6]
While by all accounts native American Paiutes were present, historical reports of their numbers and the details of their participation are contradictory.
[176]
Eyewitness accounts from Mormons that implicate the Paiutes (at first entirely so and then only in part) are set against Paiute accounts that absolve them from participation in the actual massacre. Historian Bagley believes "the problem with trying to tell the story of Mountain Meadows—the sources are all fouled up. You've either got to rely on the testimony of the murderers or of the surviving children. And so what we know about the actual massacre is—could be challenged on almost any point. _ "
[2]
Orchestration by militia
Although militia members put responsibility on the
Natives, many non-Mormons began to suspect Mormon involvement and called for a federal investigation.
[2] Territorial U.S. Indian Agent Garland Hurt, in the days following the massacre, sent a translator to investigate, who returned on
September 23 with the report that Paiutes attacked the emigrants and after being repulsed three time the Mormons tricked the wagon train members into surrender and killed them all.
[2] On the
September 27, Hurt, the last federal Agent in Utah Territory, escaped more than seventy five Mormons dragoons for the safety of the American Army with the help of members of the Ute tribe of Native Americans.
[180]
On Lee's journey to Salt Lake City to report the massacre, he passed
Jacob Hamblin going the opposite direction, and according to Hamblin, Lee admitted killing emigrants, including adolescent children, and stated that he acted under orders from officials in Cedar City.
[2] Lee denied making these admissions
[2] or breaking his oath of secrecy.
[2]
Young first heard about the massacre from second-hand reports,
[2] After Lee reached Salt Lake City, Lee met with Young on
September 29 1857,
[185] according to Lee, he told Young about Mormon involvement. Young, however, later testified that he cut Lee off when he started to describe the massacre, because he couldn't bear to hear the details.
[2] Lee, however, said he told Young of involvement by Mormons. Nevertheless, according to
Jacob Hamblin, Hamblin heard a detailed description of the massacre and Mormon involvement from Lee and reported it to Young and
George A. Smith soon after the massacre. Hamblin said he was told to keep quiet, but that "as soon as we can get a court of justice, we will ferret this thing out".
[2]
With regard to the new policy to unbridle Natives to steal cattle, roughly at the same time of the massacre Indian agent Hurt received word that militia leadership at
Ogden had arranged for the Snake tribe to run off over 400 cattle that were being driven toward California.
[188]
Federal investigations in 1859
'U.S. investigators of massacre'
(''Note:'' 'Reuben Campbell' (captain, U.S. Army),
'Garland Hurt' ''and'' 'Jacob Forney' (U.S. Dept. of Interior)
''not shown'') | |
The
Utah War interrupted further federal investigation and the LDS Church conducted no investigation of its own. Then in 1859, two years after the massacre, investigations were made by Hurt's superior, Jacob Forney,
[2] and also by U.S. Army
Brevet Major
James Henry Carleton. In Carleton's investigation, at Mountain Meadows he found women's hair tangled in sage brush and the bones of children still in their mothers' arms.
[2] Carleton later said it was "a sight which can never be forgotten." After gathering up the skulls and bones of those who had died, Carleton's troops buried them and erected a rock cairn.
By August 1859, Jacob Forney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah had retrieved the children from the Mormon families housing them and gathered them in preparation of transporting them to their relatives in Arkansas. He placed the children in the care of families in Santa Clara prior to transportation.
[6] Forney and Capt. Reuben Campbell (US Army) related that Lee sold the children to Mormon families in Cedar City, Harmony, and Painter Creek.
[192] Sarah Francis Baker, who was three years old at the time of the massacre, later said, "They sold us from one family to another."
[6] As early as May 1859, Forney reported that none of the children had ever lived with the Native Americans, but had been transported by white men from the scene of the massacre to the house of Jacob Hamblin. In July 1859 he wrote of his refusal to pay claims by families who alleged they purchased the children from the Native Americans, stating he knew it was not true.
[194] Forney had seen to the gathering up the surviving children from local families after which they were united with extended family members in Arkansas and other states.
[195] Families received compensation for the children's care, including Jacob Hamblin;
[6] some protested that the amounts were insufficient—although Carleton's report criticized the conditions under which some of the children lived.
[6]
Forney concluded that the Paiutes did not act alone and the massacre would not have occurred without the white settlers,
[198] while Carleton's report to the
U.S. Congress called the mass killings a "heinous crime",
[6] blaming both local and senior church leaders for the massacre.
'Nancy Sephrona Huff'
''Four-years-old at tragedy, Nancy Sephrona "witnessed the murder of her mother, and also lost her father, brothers, and sister....Nancy Saphrona was taken away by John Willis, whom she lived with until she was returned to relatives in Arkansas two years later."''[201] In an early federal investigation of the massacre, two Paiute chiefs named Jackson and Touche said that Brigham Young sent a letter to at least two Paiute bands that the Fancher-Baker party was to be killed, and that the letter was brought by Dimick B. Huntington.
[2] Scholars disagree on whether to credit this report as factual, since Huntingon's journal does not indicate he made a trip to southern Utah.
A federal judge brought into the territory after the Utah War, Judge
John Cradlebaugh, in March 1859 convened a grand jury in
Provo,
Utah concerning the massacre, but the jury declined any indictments.
[38]
1870s prosecutions of John D. Lee
Further investigations, cut short by the
American Civil War in 1861,
[6] again proceeded in 1871 when prosecutors obtained the affidavit of militia member Phillip Klingensmith. Klingensmith had been a
bishop and blacksmith from Cedar City; by the 1870s, however, he had
left the church and moved to
Nevada.
[6]
During the 1870s Lee,
[206] Dame, Philip Klingensmith and two others (Ellott Willden and George Adair, Jr.) were indicted and arrested while warrants were obtained to pursue the arrests of four others (Haight, Higbee, William C. Stewart and Samuel Jukes) who had successfully gone into hiding. Klingensmith escaped prosecution by agreeing to testify.
[207] Brigham Young
removed some participants including Haight and Lee from the LDS church in 1870. The U.S. posted bounties of $500 each for the capture of Haight, Higbee and Stewart while prosecutors chose not to pursue their cases against Dame, Willden and Adair.
Lee's first trial began on
July 23 1875 in
Beaver,
Utah before a jury of eight Mormons and four non-Mormons.
[208] The prosecution called five eye-witnesses: Philip Klingensmith, Joel White, Samuel Pollock, William Young, and James Pierce.
[209] Due to an illness,
George A. Smith was not called as a witness, but provided deposition testimony denying any involvement in the massacre,
[2] as did Brigham Young, who said he could not travel because he was an invalid.
[2] The defense called Silas S. Smith, Jesse N. Smith, Elisha Hoops, and Philo T. Farnsworth, who were part of George A. Smith's party on
August 25 1857 when he camped near the Fancher-Baker party in
Corn Creek. Each of them testified that they either saw, or suspected, that the Fancher-Baker party poisoned a spring and a dead ox, later eaten by Native Americans.
[212][213] The trial ended in a
hung jury on
August 5 1875.
Lee's second trial began
September 13 1876, before an all-Mormon jury. The prosecution called Daniel Wells, Laban Morrill, Joel White, Samuel Knight, Samuel McMurdy, Nephi Johnson, and
Jacob Hamblin.
[2] Lee also stipulated, against advice of counsel, that the prosecution be allowed to re-use the depositions of Young and Smith from the previous trial.
[2] Lee called no witnesses in his defense.
[2] This time, Lee was convicted.
'Lee just prior execution'
''(seated next to coffin)''
At his sentencing, as required by Utah Territory statute, he was given the option of being hung, shot, or beheaded, and he chose to be shot.
[217] In 1877, executed by firing squad at Mountain Meadows (a fate Young believed just, but not a sufficient
blood atonement, given the enormity of the crime, to get him into the
celestial kingdom).
[218] Lee himself professed that he was a
scapegoat for others involved.
I have always believed, since that day, that General George A. Smith was then visiting Southern Utah to prepare the people for the work of exterminating Captain Fancher's train of emigrants, and I now believe that he was sent for that purpose by the direct command of Brigham Young.
The knowledge of how George A. Smith felt towards the emigrants, and his telling me that he had a long talk with Haight on the subject, made me certain that it was the wish of the ''Church authorities'', that Fancher and his train should be ''wiped out'', and knowing all this, I did not doubt then, and I do not doubt it now, either, that Haight was acting by full authority from the Church leaders, and that the orders he gave to me were just the orders that he had been directed to give, when he ordered me to raise the Indians and have them attack the emigrants.[2]
Media coverage and commentary
Main articles: Mountain Meadows massacre and the media
Although the massacre was covered to some extent in newspapers during the 1850s,, the first period of intense nation-wide publicity about the massacre began around 1872, after investigators obtained the confession of Philip Klingensmith, a Mormon
bishop at the time of the massacre and a
private in the Utah militia. In 1872,
Mark Twain commented on the massacre through the lens of
contemporary American public opinion in an appendix
[220] to his semi-autobiographical
travel book ''
Roughing It''. In 1873, the massacre was a prominent feature of a history by T.B.H. Stenhouse, ''The Rocky Mountain Saints''.
[2] National newspapers covered the Lee trials closely from 1874 to 1876, and his execution in 1877 was widely covered.
The massacre has been treated extensively by several historical works, beginning with Lee's own ''Confession'' in 1877, expressing his opinion that
George A. Smith was sent to southern Utah by
Brigham Young to direct the massacre.
[2] In 1910, the massacre was the subject of a short 1910 book by Josiah F. Gibbs, who also attributed responsibility for the massacre to Young and Smith.
[2] The first detailed and comprehensive work using modern historical methods was ''Mountain Meadows Massacre'' in 1950 by
Juanita Brooks, a
Mormon scholar who lived near the area in southern Utah. Brooks found no evidence of direct involvement by Brigham Young, but charged him with obstructing the investigation and for provoking the attack through his rhetoric.
The most significant works after Brooks include the book ''Blood of the Prophets'' by Will Bagley in 2002
[6] and ''American Massacre'' by Sally Denton in 2003.
[2] Bagley pointed to what he said was strong circumstantial evidence of Young's involvement through Smith, and through his early September 1857 meeting with Paiute Indian leaders Tutsegabit and Youngwids. Denton also suggested involvement by Young through Smith, but argued against involvement by Paiute leaders.
In historical fiction, the massacre inspired a genre of frontier crime fiction in the
19th century. The massacre has been portrayed in several plays, and in a 2007 motion picture, ''
September Dawn''. A documentary entitled '' (2004) covers the massacre, the descendants of the victims and perpetrators, and the forensic evidence discovered at the massacre site.
LDS public relations
Main articles: Mountain Meadows massacre and Mormon public relations
After a period of official public silence concerning the massacre, and denials of any Mormon involvement,
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) took action in 1872 to excommunicate some of the participants for their role in the massacre. Since then, the LDS Church has consistently condemned the massacre, though acknowleging involvement by local Mormon leaders. In September 2007, the
LDS Church published an article in its official publications marking 150 years since the tragedy occurred.
[226].
Beginning in the late mid- to late-20th century, the LDS Church has made efforts to reconcile with the descendents of John D. Lee (reinstating him posthumously to full fellowship in the church), as well as those of the slain Fancher-Baker party. The church erected a memorial at the massacre site in 1999, and has opened many of its previously-confidential archival records about the massacre to scholars.
Commemorations
Non-Mormon markers and memorials at Mountain Meadows
'Early cairn at
Mountain Meadows'
''Photograph taken in 1898.
Stones of this marker scattered at least twice by vandals during
19th century''[227]
The original cairn Major Carleton had erected over the victims' mass graves on
May 20 1859 contained a granite marker inscribed with the words, ''Here 120 men, women, and children were massacred in cold blood early in September, 1857. They were from Arkansas'', along with a cedar cross bearing the words, ''Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord''.
[228] This marker was soon torn down by Brigham Young, then re-built in 1864 by the U.S. military, then torn down again around 1874.
[227] In 1932 a memorial wall was built around the 1859 Cairn.
[230] In 1990, the Mountain Meadows Association built a monument overlooking the Mountain Meadows massacre site, it is maintained by the Utah State Division of Parks and Recreation
.
On
September 15 1990, more than 2,000 people attended a memorial service at
Southern Utah State College, marking the dedication of the memorial. Participants in the memorial service included Judge Roger V. Logan, Jr. of
Harrison,
Arkansas and J. K. Fancher representing the emigrant families, tribal chairwoman Geneal Anderson and spiritual leader Clifford Jake, representing the Paiute tribe,
Rex E. Lee, representing descendants of LDS pioneer families from the area, and a then–first counselor in the
LDS First Presidency Gordon B. Hinckley representing the church.
According to quotes from an article in the Saint George, Utah, ''Spectrum'' newspaper:
[6]
J.K. Francher, a Harrison, Ark., pharmacist and freelance writer, said...[that he] never dreamed that a memorial service would come to fruition but "the spirit kicked in" and people of differing religious beliefs have reconciled. "The most difficult words for men to utter is 'I'm sorry and I forgive you'."Easing the burden of the victims was also the goal of Paiute Indian Tribal Chairwoman Geneal Anderson of Cedar City....
During the ceremony, descendants of both the victims and perpetrators joined arms on stage and in the audience, some hugging and embracing each other following a challenge by Rex E. Lee, Brigham Young University president.... Gordon B. Hinckley...said he came as a representative of a church that has suffered much over what happened. While people can't comprehend what occured...Hinckley said he was grateful for reconciliation by the descendants on both sides...."Now if there is need for forgiveness, we ask that it be granted."
A service memorialized the tragedy's sesquicentennial on September 8, 2007 at 10 a.m. at the Mountain Meadows monument, about 30 miles north from
St. George, Utah.
[233] And on September 11, 2007, there will be a communal memorial service held at the LDS sponsored monument and gravesite, to which members of the Mountain Meadows Association, the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation, Mountain Meadows Massacre Descendants, and representatives and interested members of the LDS church and the Paiute Nation are invited to attend.
[234]
Commemorations in Arkansas
'Replica of 1857 marker at
Mountain Meadows
erected in 2005 in Carrollton, Arkansas'
A marker was placed in the Carrollton, Arkansas town square in 1955 in commemoration of the surviving children's return to their next of kin there in 1859—to which (elsewhere in Carrollton) a replica of Carleton's original wooden cross and cairn was added in 2005.
A commemorative wagon-train encampment assembled at Beller Spring, Arkansas on
April 21–22, 2007, with some participants in period dress, to honor the
sesquicentennial of their ancestors' embarkation on the ill-fated journey.
[235]
LDS Church's 1999 memorial
Main articles: Mountain Meadows massacre and Mormon public relations
In 1999 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built and agreed to maintain a second monument at Mountain Meadows.
[236] During excavation for the monument, however, a backhoe moving a wall originally erected by Carleton accidentally unearthed the remains of at least 29 victims, allowing anthropologists to conduct forensic examinations.
The Mountain Meadows Foundation, based in Arkansas, was wary of the LDS Church's sole ownership of the property and oversight of the memorial. It sought to buy this area, encompassing three different emigrant gravesites, from its owner, the LDS church, to be administered through an independent trustee or else for the property to be kept in the LDS church's hands but for it to be leased to the federal government for oversight as a national monument. The church declined this idea, yet bought more parcels nearby as a preserve from resorts development.
[237] During ceremonies dedicating the monument, Hinckley said, "That which we have done here must never be construed as an acknowledgment of the part of the church of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful day."
Notes
1. The Utah Territory militia technically included every able-bodied Mormon in the region between ages eighteen and forty-five (;
2. .
3. stated he buried over 120 skeletons); James Lynch (1859) reported there were 140 victims; in , Superintendent Forney reported 115 victims; a 1932 monument states about 140 were involved in the massacre less 17 children spared; while Brooks' (introduction, 1991) believes 123 to be exaggerated, citing several reports of less than 100. The 1990 monument lists 82 identified by careful research of descendants of survivor ([1] and states that there are others still unknown. See also .
4. Minutes of meeting of Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 12 February 1849, p. 3 [LDS Archives], in .
5. ; LDS D&C 65:2, 5–6; Joseph Smith, Jr. (1844), History of the Church 6:290, 292; ; John Taylor (1853), JD 1:230; John D. Lee diary, 6 December 1848.
6.
7. John Taylor (1857), JD 5:266 ("We used to have a difference between Church and State, but it is all one now. Thank God."). Removed as governor during the Utah War, Young yet retained a great deal of control until his death in 1877 .
8. Hunter, Milton R. (2004), ''Brigham Young the Colonizer'', Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 141796846X, 70 (citing Brigham Young, Latter-day Saint Journal History, October 27 1850, Ms.).
9. In 1856, Young said "the government of God, as administered here" may to some seem "despotic" because "[i]t lays the ax at the root of the tree of sin and iniquity; judgment is dealt out against the transgression of the law of God"; however, "does not [it] give every person his rights?" .
10. .
11. ; (describing what is said to be a portion of the Mormon Endowment in which participants are commanded to "obey all orders of the priesthood, temporal and spiritual, in matters of life or death").
12. On the Mormon Trail, Young threatened adherents who had stole wagon cover strings and rail timber with having their throats cut "when they get out of the settlements where his orders could be executed" . Young also gave orders that "when a man is found to be a thief,...cut his throat & thro' him in the River" (Diary of Thomas Bullock, 13 December 1846). In Utah, Young said "a theif [sic] should not live in the Valley, for he would cut off their heads or be the means of haveing [sic?] it done as the Lord lived." (See the Diary of Mary Haskin Parker Richards, 16 April 1848). The preferred method of execution was by exsanguination or decapitation, the latter being "the law of God & it shall be executed". (See the diary of Willard Richards, 20 December 1846; Watson, Manuscript History of Brigham Young, 1846-1847, p. 480.)
13. . Mormon leaders stated that this practice was not yet "in full force" , but the time was "not far distant" when Mormons would be sacrificed out of love to ensure their eternal reward (; ; .)
14. Thomas G. Alexander. ''Review: Will Bagely. Blood of the Prophets'', BYU Studies Review (2003)
15. (referring to a request Haight sent to Brigham Young asking permission to enforce blood atonement against an adulterous Mormon desirous to submit for blood atonementvolunteer, a request Young eventually denied.
16. . The southern Utah pioneer and militia scout of the time John Chatterley later wrote that he had received threats from a "secret Committee, called ...'destroying angels'"
17. (warning "mobocrats" that if they came to Utah, they would find "Danites").
18. .
19. .
20. .
21. .
22.
23. (Parley and Eleanor entered a Celestial marriageunder the theocratic law of the Utah Territory), but Hector had refused Eleanor a divorce. "When she
left San Francisco she left Hector, and later she was to state in a court of law that she had left him as a wife the night he drove her from their home. Whatever the legal situation, she thought of herself as an unmarried woman."(p. 6)
24. "Murder of Parley P. Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", JD 19(27):417 (July 4 1857) ("Another Martyr has fallen—another faithful servant of God has sealed his pure and heavenly testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon with his blood."); ; "Reminiscences of Mrs. A. Agatha Pratt, January 07, F564, #16, LDS Church Archives, stating that Brigham Young said, "Nothing has happened so hard to reconcile my mind to since the death of Joseph.").
25. Eleanor McLean Pratt, "Mrs. McLean's Letter to the Judge", JD 19(27):426 (July 4 1857) ("[T]he blood of innocence has freely flowed to stain the soil of the fair State of Arkansas."); ; : "It was in accordance with Mormon policy to hold every Arkansan accountable for Pratt's death, just as every Missourian was hated because of the expulsion of the church from that state.").
26. ("[t]here are those now living upon the earth who will live to see the consummation" of the Millennium). Mormon leaders during the 1856–57 period taught that Jesus would return in 1891 .
27. "[I]t is a stern fact that the people of the United States have shed the blood of the Prophets, driven out the Saints of God,… [c]onsequently I look for the Lord to use His whip 
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