Mountain Meadows Massacre
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The Mountain Meadows Massacre occurred on Friday, September 11, 1857 in Mountain Meadows, Utah, several miles south of Enterprise in Washington County along the Spanish Trail to Santa Fe. Mormon militia and Paiutes killed an entire wagon train of Arkansas farming families known as the Fancher party, traveling from Arkansas to California together with a group from Missouri that called themselves the "Missouri Wildcats". Around 120 unarmed men, women and older children were killed; 17 of the younger children were spared and all but one (who was raised in a Mormon family) were returned to relatives in Arkansas.
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The First 9-1-1
The travellers were besieged by Mormon-allied Paiutes for four days, beginning on Monday morning, September 7, 1857. On Thursday night at a Mormon camp at Mountain Meadows, Major John M. Higbee handed John D. Lee orders from Colonel Isaac C. Haight in Cedar City to "decoy the emigrants from their position, and kill all of them that could talk. This order was in writing." (Last Confession of John D. Lee, p. 234 (http://www.xmission.com/~country/reason/lee_mm.htm)). On Friday morning, Lee went to the migrants and convinced them to surrender their weapons and accept an armed one-on-one escort by the Mormon militia to safety from the Paiute siege. Once the escort was underway in single file, a call of "Do your duty!" was given, whereupon all but the young children were slaughtered, either by their armed escorts or by hidden Paiutes.
John D. Lee was excommunicated from the LDS Church and later executed for his alleged actions. While Lee admitted his reluctant complicity in a lengthy confession given previous to his execution (Life and Confessions of John D. Lee, pp. 238-242 (http://www.xmission.com/~country/reason/lee_mm.htm)), he claimed he was a scapegoat for the many Mormons, including leaders George A. Smith and Isaac C. Haight at the least, responsible for the massacre. In May 1961, the LDS Church reinstated Lee's membership.
The extent of Paiute participation in the massacre is a point of disagreement among researchers. Some allege that some of the Mormon militia were dressed as Native Americans.
The extent of LDS participation is also a point of disagreement. Some say the ordering authorities in Cedar City had sent a messenger to Salt Lake City seeking direction from President Brigham Young, and his belated response would allegedly have averted the massacre. Others are unconvinced that even this would absolve Young from responsibility, given the extent of his authority and influence as the leader of the Mormons.
Reasons for massacre
The exact reasons for the massacre remain unclear and are in dispute. Some have argued that the area of the killings was rife with religious violence.
There were apparently rumors circulating in the region that among the Fancher party were members of a mob that killed Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Jr. This is based on statements reportedly made by the Fancher party members to non-Mormon traders on the Mormon trail. In addition, some reportedly claimed to be present at the assassination of Mormon Apostle Parley P. Pratt earlier that year.
There were also rumors that the Federal Government was sending armed forces to take over Mormon settlements (see Utah War), which contributed to a general distrust of outsiders and non-Mormons. Lee told of an extreme loathing among the local Mormons of the bad-behaving, law-breaking, and violence-boasting party, leading to a plan to incite the Indians to scare them off or kill them; in Lee's account the ill-fated plan ended as a Mormon-led massacre.
Mark Twain's version of the events
Mark Twain wrote about the massacre, based on common public perceptions of Americans during the late 1880s, in Appendix B of Roughing It, published in 1891:
- A large party of Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of emigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses of their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for five days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the sort of scurvy apologies for "Indians" which the southern part of Utah affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them.
- At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They retired to the upper end of the "Meadows," resumed civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrants saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with cheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag of truce!
- The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President Haight and Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served a term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next proceeded:
- "They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and represented them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having (apparently) visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages; which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leaving everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to the settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, and subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost all shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all the emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and bloody murders known in our history."
Books and book reviews
- Juanita Brooks; Mountain Meadows Massacre; University of Oklahoma Press (Tdr); ISBN 0806123184 (softcover, 318 pages, May 1991); first published in 1950
- Brooks was a lifelong Latter-day Saint raised in Saint George and a child of the Mountain Meadows Massacre generation.
- Will Bagley; Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows; University of Oklahoma Press; ISBN 0806134267 (hardcover, 544 pages, October 2002); reviewed in The New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15814) and Deseret News (http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,405027525,00.html)
- Sally Denton; American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows; Knopf; ISBN 0375412085 (hardcover, 336 pages, June 2003); reviewed in The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A8059-2003Jul31) and in the Mistakes in the News section of the LDS Newsroom (http://www.lds.org/newsroom/mistakes/0,15331,3885-1-16767,00.html)
Forthcoming book
A trio of LDS scholars have been funded by the LDS church to write a book, Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, to be published by the Oxford University Press:
- Ronald W. Walker (BYU Professor of History),
- Richard E. Turley Jr. (managing director of the Family and Church History Department of the Church), and
- Glen M. Leonard (director of the Church's Museum of Church History and Art).
The three were granted access to documents in the LDS Church archives. According to Turley, a file in the archives confirms that Lee was acting on his own. The file included the notes of a Mormon historian who, at the request of Church leaders, conducted a confidential investigation of the massacre in 1892. Turley said, "There are very candid statements on the part of participants to a Church official under the agreement of confidentiality."
While the trio found additional evidence of church leaders' culpability, Turley stated that "Utahns elsewhere in the territory acted to preserve the lives of other troublesome immigrants . . . Unfortunately, the militia and church leaders of Iron County made different decisions, and their acts demand the strongest condemnation . . . Circumstance may explain their acts; nothing can justify them."
The new sources the co-authors are using will be made public once their book is published. Turley said although the church is cooperating and is funding the research, the work is "not a Church commission"; "The idea to do the book was ours, not theirs." Publication apparently has been delayed as the co-authors have tried to be as thorough in their research as possible. According to Turley, LDS leaders share the authors' desire to bring all available evidence out in the open. First drafts of the book will be circulated for comment among LDS and non-LDS parties, including historians and descendants of the perpetrators and victims. "Open, candid evaluation of that tragedy can produce catharsis, a cleansing spiritual renewal and healing," Turley said, adding that the authors will "present the evidence as we find it — honestly, openly and candidly."
External links
- Mountain Meadows Association (http://www.mtn-meadows-assoc.com/), a group described by The Salt Lake Tribune as "an unusual mix of historians and descendants of massacre victims and perpetrators"
- November 1999 (http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/mormons.html) and September 2003 (http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/massacre/meadows.html) articles from Archaeology magazine's website
- State of Utah: An account of the incident (http://historytogo.utah.gov/mtmeadows.html)
- New York Times: Reopening a Mormon Murder Mystery (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/12/arts/12MORM.html?todaysheadlines), (October 2002)
- Deseret News: Articles about Walker-Turley-Leonard book from May 2002 (http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,400009171,00.html) and May 2004 (http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595065218,00.html)
- History Channel producing documentary to air December 15, 2004 (http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/08/30/news/wyoming/736040367a8e80c287256f0000177fee.txt)
- (The program, Investigating History: Mountain Meadows Massacre, Who’s to Blame, did not actually air on the History Channel until February 8, 2005, and was repeated June 14, 2005.)
- Center for Studies on New Religions: Unearthing Mountain Meadows Secrets (http://www.cesnur.org/testi/morm_01.htm)
- LDS Newsroom: Turley comments about researching the forthcoming book (http://www.lds.org/newsroom/extra/0,15505,3881-1---34-615,00.html), in text and MP3 format
- Background articles (http://www.angelfire.com/sk2/ldsdefense/mmm.html) from a website copyrighted by The Truth About Anti-Mormonism
- Lengthy article from CourtTV (http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/mtn_meadows/index.html)