Mountain-Meadows-Massaker

Vorlage:Infobox civilian attack The Mountain Meadows massacre was the massacre of the Baker-Fancher party of emigrants passing through southwestern Utah Territory on Friday, September 11 1857 at Mountain Meadows, a stopover along the Old Spanish Trail.

The massacre was carried out by a militia led by local Mormon leaders, who had mustered the militias to keep watch during the time of tension with the United States government known as the Utah War. Mormons convinced some Paiute tribesmen to help besiege the emigrants prior to the final massacre, who were blamed for it at least in part, but historians agree Paiute involvement was proportionately small. The emigrants were mostly (perhaps entirely) from Arkansas, bound for California. Between 100 and 140 men, women and children were killed, sparing about 17 smaller children.

The massacre received wide news coverage in the 1870s, stoking anti-Mormon feelings elsewhere in the United States. Investigations resulted in nine indictments. Yet, out of the handful the prosecution considered most guilty, only one person was apprehended, tried and convicted: John D. Lee. In 1877 Lee, one of Brigham Young's several adopted sons, was executed by firing squad on the same grounds as the massacre, a fate Young believed just. Lee himself professed that he was a scapegoat for others involved, perhaps including Young. Historians disagree about what role, if any, Young played in the massacre or its cover-up.

Background: Mormons' uneasy position in the Utah Territory

A decade before the massacre, Mormons had emigrated to the Utah Territory to establish an isolated theocracy where they could practice their religion without persecution. In late July 1857, the Utah War began as Mormons received word that a large federal army was on the march, and planned a deposition of Mormon leader Brigham Young. Because of Mormon history, theocratic law, and eschatological teachings, conditions were ripe in the Utah Territory for violence and paranoia, particularly in isolated Southern Utah colonies.

Memory of Mormon persecutions in Missouri and Illinois

The Mormons involved in the massacre shared with other Mormons a collective memory of prior persecution and violence relating to Mormon religious practices, political power, and prosperity. This violence began in 1833 when non-Mormons drove Mormon settlers from Jackson County, Missouri. Mormons had settled there hoping to establish a theocratic City of Zion in preparation for the Second Coming. They met resistance, however, from non-Mormon Missouri settlers, and in 1838, the situation devolved into what is called the Mormon War. On the Mormon side, some military operations were conducted by a secretive organization known as the Danites. The non-Mormon settlers, however, obtained the backing of the Missouri government, and Governor Lilburn Boggs issued an Extermination order against the Mormons. Within a week of that order, a group of eighteen Mormons were massacred at Haun's Mill while attempting to repulse an attack by a vigilante militia. Faced with the full military power of Missouri, the Mormons surrendered, and moved to Illinois in 1839.

In Illinois, Mormons established Nauvoo, where they prospered with Joseph Smith, Jr. as mayor. In June 1844, Smith was arrested and imprisoned in Carthage on charges related to the destruction of the printing press of the Nauvoo Expositor which had criticized Smith for his theocratic intentions and practice of plural marriage. Smith and his brother Hyrum were assassinated by contingents of Illinois militia disguised as Native Americans, who stormed the jail. Further violent conflicts occurred between Mormons and their opponents. The Mormons negotiated with Governor Thomas Ford in 1846 for their voluntary removal, thus averting a civil war. Except for a remnant who stayed, the majority of Latter Day Saints followed their senior apostle Brigham Young and trekked West where they settled in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Mormons, determined to finally build lasting communities from which they could not be driven again, believed that they had been wronged by the United States, and made solemn oaths to never stop praying that God would take vengeance on the United States for killing Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Expansion of the Mormon kingdom into Southern Utah

When they left Illinois in 1846 for what was then outside of the confines of the United States, Mormons believed their leaders were responsible to God alone to administer divine "celestial law". After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo annexed Utah to the United States in 1848, the LDS Church petitioned for a territorial government for Utah with Young as its governor. The Utah Territory, however, remained a de facto theocracy.

Nearly 300 miles from Young's headquarters in Salt Lake City were the infant fortress-villages of Cedar City and Parowan, only reachable by a three days' journey on horseback,Vorlage:Fact the messenger's changing mounts at various settlements along the way. Although often visited by officials from Salt Lake, day-to-day affairs in these outlying Mormon colonies were decided by local officials, who were empowered to make arrests, try offenders of community law in ecclesiastical courts, and mete out punishments as they saw fit. It was rumored that on occasion such sacred communal punishments were carried out in secret by a secret society of Danites; however, historians have not found any direct evidence of a formal Danite organization in Utah led by Brigham Young.

Most disputes in the Utah Territory were solved by ecclesiastical courts; however, when the need arose for extraordinary law enforcement or military defense, the local theocratic leaders mustered militias. The most common military activity was against Native Americans. The Mormon colonists disturbed Native lands, while Natives occasionally stole livestock, and these disputes sometimes escalated into open warfare (as, for example, in the hostilities involving chief Walkara)—for the most part local Mormons followed Utah Territory's policy to maintain peace with the Natives. Brigham Young's now famous edict was to feed the Natives rather than to fight them.

Teachings from the Mormon pulpit

In the years just prior to the massacre, Mormon theology was undergoing a period of intense revival known as the Mormon Reformation. Mormon leaders such as the First Presidency (LDS Church) made dramatic calls for greater orthodoxy and rebaptism as a means for preparing for the Millennium, which they though would be soon.

Mormons had pronounced Millennialist expectations, as they worked to construct their "Zion" on earth in the preparation for Christ's imminent, triumphal return, when God will punish the unrighteous—particularly those who had persecuted Mormons and killed "the prophets" (Joseph Smith, Jr., Hyrum Smith, and later Parley P. Pratt. by exsanguination or decapitation In addition, Mormon leaders taught that celestial law included a doctrine of blood atonement, in which Mormon "covenant breakers" could 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". 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.

After hearing the dramatic rhetoric from the pulpit, many Mormons understood that they would be justified in enforcing celestial law in the Utah Territory against those worthy of God's judgment.

Apostle Parley P. Pratt's murder in Arkansas (May 1857)

In June 1857, news reached Utah that well-known and beloved Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt had just been murdered in Arkansas by Hector McLean, the husband of one of Pratt's plural wives. Pratt had met Hector's wife Eleanor a few years earlier in San Francisco, California, and she later left Hector and moved to Utah to marry Pratt. Though for religious reasons she considered herself "unmarried", Eleanor was not legally divorced from Hector at the time of her Celestial marriage to Pratt While Pratt was on a mission to the southern United States, McLean pressed criminal charges against Pratt in Arkansas, and when Pratt was acquitted, McLean and two accomplices murdered him in Alma, Arkansas on 13 May 1857.

Mormons viewed Pratt's death as a martyrdom, a view first expressed in Pratt's own dying words. Brigham Young compared his death with those of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and the death heightened the sense of persecution felt by the Mormons.

Baker-Fancher party

Composition and origin

Beginning in 1849, Midwestern families would set off on emigrant wagon trains further westward. From among their number and in the spring of 1857, hundreds of northeastern Arkansas families (from where once [1817-1828] had been, by treaty, the Cherokee Nation) began their treks to lands opening up for new settlement in the West.

Of this number, and headed to southern California, were about forty families who had just arrived in northern Utah. They have come to be called the Fancher train, party, or company after Captain Alexander Fancher, who had become their main leader. Fancher had journeyed to California from Arkansas previously in 1850 at the height of the Gold Rush and again in 1853.

Soon behind the Fanchers (and leading somewhat over half-as-many cattle) was a party of westward emigrants originating mostly in Arkansas's northern neighbor, Missouri, known as the Turner-Duke party. Both of these—the Duke and Fancher parties—were well- organized-and-equipped for their journeys. Some had sold their homes to settle in California, others, such as Fancher (perhaps, Duke) were driving cattle west for profit. The lure of gold likely motivated some of the the younger men.

Fanchers' path through southern Utah: difficulty trading for stockpiled supplies

The Arkansas emigrant party arrived in Utah in July with over 800 head of cattle but running low on some supplies when they reached the Salt Lake City area on August 3 1857, a major resupply destination for such emigrants. The main train led by Alexander Fancher waited outside Salt Lake City for more than a week as other trains caught up with them. The train led by Captain John Twitty Baker was the last to arrive. These emigrants had to decide which route to take across the Great Basin to California. The northern route meant traveling the Humboldt River Road west across the desert and Sierra Nevada mountains, then southward through California. The southern route, which involved less risk of the emigrants becoming snowbound in the mountains this late in the season, would carry them through the settlements in southern Utah toward the Mohave Desert and then onward toward Los Angeles. At least one couple chose to take the northern route while others from the woman's family tragically went south with the united parties under Captain Fancher.

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. 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. 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.

Utah War: invasion panic

Rumors of invasion

On July 18 1857, while the Baker-Fancher party was en route and nearing the Utah Territory, Brigham Young received word from Mormon mail-runner Porter Rockwell that the the United States was planning a deposition of Young's territorial government. For some Mormon settlers, the Utah War took on apocalyptic significance.

For almost a decade, relations between Utah and the United States government had deteriorated over competing claims by the Mormons' institutions versus the U.S.'s republican form of government for sovereignty within the territory. In 1856, the newly formed Republican Party had begun campaigning for a Constitutional amendment banning the church's practice of plural marriage, which together with slavery it called the "twin relics of barbarism". By July 1857, Young's replacement had already been appointed, and a fourth of the entire U.S. army, some 2,500 dragoons, were already on the march.

The Mormon population was usually eager to trade with emigrant trains but on August 5, 1857, Brigham Young had declared martial law

While for a half-decade Salt Lake City and Washington D.C. sparred with vitriolic rhetoric, Young busily prepared to defend the heart of "Zion" through orders for pioneer settlements furthest afield to pull up their stakes–evacuating Mormon colonies in San Bernardino (now in southern California), Las Vegas (southern Nevada), Carson Valley (western Nevada), and Fort Bridger (Wyoming). All borders were to be sealed to further travel through Utah by emigrants.

George A. Smith's circuit through southern Utah

Unlike more outlying settlements, those in southern Utah were not to retreat but remain as a bulwark against anticipated non-Mormon aggression. History bears out that the Mormon fears about carnage on civilians by regular U.S. Army troops was quite real, should political tensions have erupted in armed conflict. Mormons likewise feared even citizens' militia, born out of their persecutions by "mobs" in Missouri and Illinois. Mormons termed all armed opponents "the mob", whether the regular U.S. Army or merely citizens' militia.

Brigham Young's counselor George A. Smith, sent on a circuit throughout southern Utah communities, ordered the mobilization of militias to prepare to "touch fire to their homes, hide themselves in the mountains, and defend their country to the last extremity" in anticipation of the approaching U.S. troops. Thus preparations were made for all settlers to flee to prepared places of refuge in the mountains, should such an invasion occur, as settlers mistakenly thought was imminent. Plans were also made to prepare to ambush should Federal troops as they entered the valleys from eastern mountains. So it was in this state of war panic that militia scouts led by Jacob Hamblin accompanied George A. Smith in a meeting with the Fancher train at Corn Creek.

"Unbridling Indians" against Americans

On September 1, 1857, in Salt Lake City, Brigham Young (who as governor held the title of Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory) met with Indian chiefs from the southern Territory, which included the area around Mountain Meadows. During a one-hour meeting, Young complained that the Americans had come to kill both Mormons and Indians. He told the chiefs that if they fought the Americans, he would give them all the cattle on both the northern and southern California trails—referring in essence to such emigrants' cattle as the large herds of the Duke and Fancher parties..

In early September, at about the time of the massacre (according to an inquiry immediately thereafter by the Indian agent at Spanish Fork, Garland Hurt), the leadership of the Mormons' militia at Ogden near the northern trail, arranged, according to this territorial policy, for the Snake tribe of Northern Shoshone to run off over 400 cattle belonging to the Missouri emigrant named Squire.

Allegations of Fanchers' boisterous conduct

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, or actually existed.)

Range "wars" would be expected to erupt between local populations and 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. However, in the case of this "wildcat militia" said to have joined the Fanchers, an appreciably more serious class of accusations were lodged. Panicked by rumors (later found to be false) that hundreds of U.S. dragoons were about to come down through canyons from the mountain immediately to the east and attack their settlements, locals came to meet up with members of the Fanchers had stopped in Cedar City. Refusing to trade at non-wartime prices, the verbal exchanges between the Fanchers and locals got heated; and it came about that local authorities in Cedar City would accuse members of the Fancher party of having made very profane and threatening remarks. Whatever the case, locals were quite ready to believe the worst about the emigrant party and to consider them to be fully allied with the soon-to-invade U.S. troops which the locals falsely believed to be right to the east in the mountains.

According affidavits or interviews with LDS church historian Jenson, both many years after the fact, locals professed that Wildcats or other Fanchers:

• bragged about taking part in the Haun's Mill massacre of Mormons some decades before in Missouri;
• threatened to either await for the arrival of Federal troops or else to return from California with an army—in order, in either case, to wipe out the Mormon population;
• bragged they had the very gun that "shot the guts out of Old Joe Smith"..

Militia's conspiracy at Cedar City to massacre Fanchers: a belated message from Young

Although at least nine southern Utah militiamen had been sent out as scouts to the area's emigrant trails' mountain passes, looking for advance parties of the United States dragoons, before these scouts could return with welcome news that U.S. troops likely would not be arriving until spring—and yet as the Fancher party approached Mountain Meadows—several meetings were held in Cedar City and nearby Parowan by local Latter Day Saints (LDS) leaders pondering how to implement Young's directives.

In the afternoon of Sunday, September 6, at first Isaac B. Haight, president of the Parowan LDS "Stake" and the second in command of the Iron County militia, and other local leaders made war plans. According to statements made years later by locals, it was due to these authorities' having decided to take Fancher threats at face value that in this meeting they determined to ordered the militia to assist the Natives to massacre ("destroy", "use up") the emigrants' wagon train.

Yet Haight hesitated and sent a rider (James Haslam) to carry an express to Salt Lake City (a six-day round trip on horseback) for Brigham Young's advice. Meanwhile, organization among the local Mormon leadership reportedly broke down. Haslam did return 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 resolved to exterminate 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.

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.”

Historians debate the letter's contents. Brooks believes it shows Young "did not order the massacre, and would have prevented it if he could." Bagley argues that the letter covertly gave other instructions.

(After this letter had been received—and with regard the Duke party that was also still in the area (as had been the Fanchers)—despite Young's proposed sealing of borders, the militia adhered by clarified orders to confiscate the Missourian "Duke" party's livestock but not massacre its members.)

Militia's besiegement of following emigrant party with few casualties

Believing he was responding to covert war policies, Jacob Hamblin began assembling Natives to engage in a cattle raid on the Missourian "Duke" party, which was following the Fancher Party. This raid took place after the Mountain Meadows massacre. At least one Duke party member was killed or wounded in these raids and their large herds were run off. After the Dukes had been besieged by Natives for a small period, Hamblin and a party of local Mormon militia arrived at the scene in formal military manner and Hamblin approached the Duke train—after which Hamblin arranged for the Dukes to exchange the majority of their cattle to be turned over to the warring Natives in exchange for the Dukes' safe passage toward California. Hamblin fulfilled his usual duties as an emigrant party scout, leading the Dukes on a course where they would not pass the scene of carnage at Mountain Meadows. Then after the Duke train made it to California, they sent their drovers back to Cedar City and Hamblin assisted them in retrieving part of their livestock.

Massacre of Fancher party at Mountain Meadows

Siege and its casualties (Mon., Sept. 7 — Fri., Sept 11, 1857)

Map depicting Mountain Meadows and the surrounding region of southwestern Utah in 1857, showing path of the Old Spanish Trail.

When wagon train scout and newly assigned president of the mission to the Natives Jacob Hamblin was accompanying George A. Smith and area Native chiefs to Salt Lake City, he met up with the Fancher party. Hamblin informed the Fanchers that they could find water and fresh grazing for their livestock at the grassy, mountain-ringed Mountain Meadows. This area was a regular stopover on the Old Spanish Trail which happened to be where Hamblin's own home was located.

Before the Fanchers arrived at the Meadows, orders went out for Indian agent and militia officer John D. Lee to assemble Paiute fighters to head towards there 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 an "Avenging Angel" as well.) John M. Higbee was 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.

On September 7 the party began to be attacked by as many or more than 200 Paiutes 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 massacred 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

Massacre

Following orders from Haight in Cedar City, 35 miles away, on Friday September 11 Higbee ordered a group of militiamen not in disguise to march and stand in a formal line a half-mile from the Fanchers, then Lee and William Batemen approached the Baker-Fancher party wagons with a white flag. 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!" 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 who escaped the initial slaughter were quickly chased down and killed. Two teenaged girls, Rachel and Ruth Dunlap, managed to clamber down the side of a steep gully and hide among a clump of oak trees for several minutes. The girls were spotted by a Paiute chief from Parowan, who took them to Lee, who ordered the girls killed depite both the chief and the girls' pleadings for mercy.

Cover-up

The guilty sworn to secrecy

All of the Mormon participants in the massacre were then sworn to secrecy and told to blame the attack on the Paiutes. 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."

Whatever the case, 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.

Allegation Fanchers' poisoned water or cattle

Lee went to Salt Lake and told to Young a story of the Fanchers' having poisoned a beef and spring which killed Indians and Mormons, for which the Indians had massacred the train, which story Young passed on to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

The "poisoning" complaint against Fancher party emigrants that is reported as to time and place has to do with certain words the emigrants used at Corn Creek, where Mormon preacher George A. Smith met with the Fancher party. Militia scouts, in their state of invasion panic as they assisted Smith in the interrogation of the Fanchers, would be assumed to have had their had their eyes and ears open. In any case, in trial testimony years later, militiaman Silas Smith (George A. Smith's cousin) said that "[W]hen some of the emigrant men asked if the Indians would eat a dead ox that lay nearby, it "created suspicion that they would play foul games by some means," with Silas's adding, "I could not say they were a rough set of fellows but that was my opinion."

However Silas testified he met the emigrants on two additional occasions, with Silas's testimony evincing no further complaints about their conduct. Forney 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." And with regard this allegation of poisoning, Forney said, "I regard the poisoning affair as entitled to no consideration." </ref>

Historians agree that any validity to a complaint of poisoning would relate, at the very worst, to a natural outbreak of disease. Furthermore, the charge was self-serving in its attempt to throw blame for the massacre on the Natives and away from the militia.

Surviving children

Approximately seventeen children were deliberately spared because of their young ages. In the hours following the massacre Lee directed Philip Klingensmith and possibly two others to take the children (a few of whom were wounded) to the nearby farm of Jacob Hamblin, a local Indian agent. (A photograph of four-year-old survivor named Nancy Saphrona Huff, taken when she was a young woman back in Arkansas, is featured in the documentary Burying the Past. (Note: it can be viewed by clicking on the footnote.)) 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. Forney and Capt. Reuben Campbell (US Army) related that Lee sold the children to Mormon families in Cedar City, Harmony, and Painter Creek. Sarah Francis Baker, who was three years old at the time of the massacre, later said, "They sold us from one family to another." As early as May 1859, Forney reported that none of the children had ever lived with the Indians, 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 Indians, stating he knew it was not true.

Distribution of spoils

The Paiutes reportedly received a portion of the Baker-Fancher 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. Some of the surviving children subsequently claimed to have seen Mormons wearing their dead parents' clothing and jewelry.

Investigations and trials

Early investigations (1857, 1859)

Although militia members put responsibility on the Natives, many non-Mormons began to suspect Mormon involvement and called for a federal investigation.

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 Pauites admitted participating, and implicating Mormon leaders at Cedar City. Fearing his life was in danger, on September 27, 1857 Hurt fled to Fort Bridger.

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, 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. 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.

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. Families received compensation for the children's care, including Jacob Hamblin; some even protesting the amounts were insufficient—although conditions some of the children lived under were criticized within Carleton's report. Forney concluded that the Paiutes did not act alone and the massacre would not have occurred without the white settlers. while Carleton's report to the U.S. Congress called the mass killings a "heinous crime", blaming both local and senior church leaders for the massacre.

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.

Prosecutions of Lee (1870s)

Further investigations, cut short by the American Civil War in 1861, 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.

During the 1870s Lee, Dame, Klingensmith and two others were indicted and arrested while warrants were obtained to pursue the arrests of four others including Haight and Higbee, who had successfully gone into hiding. Klingensmith escaped prosecution by agreeing to testify. Dame and the others except Lee were eventually let go due to lack of evidence. Lee's first trial ended in a mistrial but on retrail Lee was convicted and thereafter executed by firing squad at Mountain Meadows.

Later collection of historical data (1890s on)

Vorlage:Sect-stub In the 1890s, Assistant LDS Church Historian Andrew Jenson collected all the records he could find concerning the massacre. These includes Jenson's field notes, excerpts of witnesses' diaries, sworn affidavits, newspaper reports, and the transcriptions from the Mormon church's internal investigations. Many of these are interviews with participants who were granted complete confidentiality with regard to whatever they might say.

A book by LDS historians Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard on the massacre is scheduled to be published by Oxford University Press. A decade in the making, research for the book draws from the Jenson archive. The files have never been open to the public, or for use by historians. Media reports indicate they are scheduled to be available to the public as early as 2008 or 2009.

Reactions to the massacre

Media and academic coverage

Early works

The trial of John D. Lee put an idea of an out-of-control theocracy into the public imagination. And, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the tragedy found place in a whole genre of historical treatments, novels—even two silent films. While the historical works among these critiqued (oftentimes in polemic fashion) early Utah's religious teachings and rhetoric, a caricature drawn from out of their criticisms came to find its place, in stereotype form, in popular fiction and entertainment.

Attitudes by recent scholars

The causes and circumstances of the Mountain Meadows Massacre remain contested and highly controversial. According to historian of the Utah War 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."

Although there is no evidence that Brigham Young ordered or condoned the massacre, the roles of Cedar City church officials in ordering the murders and Young's concealing of evidence in their aftermath are still questioned. Moreover, while by all accounts native American Paiutes were present, historical reports of their numbers and the details of their participation are contradictory. Young's use of often inflammatory and violent language in response to the perceived Federal colonialism has also been cited as adding to the tense atmosphere that helped precipitate the attack.

Selected historical works

• The semi-autobiographical travel book Roughing It (1872) by Mark Twain within its Appendix B comments on the massacre based upon public perceptions of Americans during the mid nineteenth century.
• The documentary film Burying the Past: Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre (2004) contains footage of forensic analysis of human remains from the massacre.
• The PBS documentary The Mormons (2007), aired on PBS in two parts on April 30th and May 1st, 2007 and discussed the effects of the Mountain Meadows massacre on the church's image today.

Selected historical fiction

• The play Fire In The Bones (1978) by Thomas F. Rogers is a depiction of the massacre from the perspective of John D. Lee, and is based heavily on Juanita Brooks' research.
• The play Two-Headed (2000) by Julie Jensen depicts two middle-aged Latter Day Saint (Mormon) women reflecting on the massacre that occurred when they were children.
• The novel Red Water (2002) by Judith Freeman is a fictionalized account of John D. Lee's role in the massacre from the perspective of three of his nineteen wives.
• The film September Dawn (2007), slated for wide release on August 24, 2007, directed by Christopher Cain, is described by a press release as fictionalizing the "point of view held [by] direct descendants ... that the iconic Brigham Young had complicity in the massacre, a view denied by the Mormon Church." Reportedly, the film depicts a love story set at the time of the massacre.

Expression of regret

In a PBS interview LDS apostle Jeffrey Holland said

I grew up in the shadow of Mountain Meadows and knew about it—sometimes in sort of hushed tones— ...from my childhood on. .... As a teenager, ... I first came in contact with Juanita [Brooks'] book [Mountain Meadows Massacre]. Juanita was my high school English teacher.... Certainly she never talked about it in any public way....What little bit I knew, I knew from her book,...the way most of us became acquainted with the challenge, the difficulty, the tragedy of Mountain Meadows. ...

Nobody's done more than President Hinckley in current times, in current terms, to try to get closure, to try to express regret, apologies or whatever—not for the church, not institutionally. No, try as people may, there has never been any smoking gun in Brigham Young's hand or anyone else's at that level of leadership of the church. But there was clearly local responsibility. I don't think anybody's denying that. ... What we do know is that lives were taken, and that never should have been. ...

When I knew Juanita and knew her family, she was an...absolutely faithful Latter-day Saint. ... I saw her living out her life with the peace and tranquility [of someone] who had...probably helped the church come to grips with something that all of us wish had never happened. ...

[In the context of the Mountain Meadows Massacre,] I'm willing to be held to the highest possible standard, ... although I have thought why hasn't the Haun's Mill experience, prior to Mountain Meadows, why hasn't anybody been exorcized about that? What about the parents who lost children there? Now, two wrongs do not make a right. ... But I think it's at least context, and it's history. And probably, while a great many people may or may not know the phrase Mountain Meadows, I don't know that anybody knows Haun's Mill. And I'm just very happy, frankly, that they don't. ...Let's not dredge up anything that doesn't have to be dredged up. ...

The only thing that I would say—this is not to raise some sort of persecution complex ...—but we are a church which has had an extermination order issued against us. That is unprecedented in the history of this God-fearing nation. There has never been an extermination order against a religious belief, except us. Now, we're not whining about that. ... Our people knew what it was like to be hated; they knew what it was like to have their children killed; they knew what it was like to have their prophet murdered in cold blood. ... Their blood has been spread across six states, and then across the Oregon Trail. ...

That isn't justification. ... Everybody has known tough times. But you raise a very sensitive, difficult subject, and at the very least, in fairness to those who went through it and experienced it, it has to be seen in some frontier context of what had been a very, very difficult 30 years for Mormon pilgrims. ...

In a soundbite PBS broadcast in 2007 LDS apostle Dallin Oaks said:

I have no doubt, on the basis of what I have studied and learned, that Mormons, including local leaders of our church, were prime movers in that terrible episode and participated in the killing. And what a terrible thing to contemplate, that the barbarity of the frontier, and the conditions of the Utah war and whatever provocations were perceived to have been given, would have led to such an extreme episode, such an extreme atrocity perpetrated by members of my faith. I pray that the Lord will comfort those that are still bereaved by it, and I pray that he can find a way to forgive those who took such a terrible action against their fellow beings.

Memorials and commemorations

Early markers and memorials

Replica of the original Mountain Meadows Massacre Monument in Carrollton, Arkansas.

The original cairn Major Carleton had erected over the victims' mass graves had been 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 cross bearing the words, Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.

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.

(The LDS church allowed descendants of Lee to perform Mormon saving ordinances on John D. Lee's behalf in 1961.)

1990 monument

Starting in 1988 descendants of both the Baker-Fancher party victims and the Mormon participants collaborated to design and dedicate two monuments to replace the neglected and crumbling marker on the site. There are now three monuments to the massacre, two of them in Utah.

Mountain Meadows Association built a monument at Mountain Meadows in 1990, maintained by the state of Utah. 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 Roger Logan 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. In blog commentary at the LDS blog timesandseasons.org, attendee Catherine Baker wrote:

I am a descendant of Captain Jack Baker of the Baker-Fancher train, and I attended the 3-day dedication ceremony in Cedar City in 1990 - ”forgiveness and reconciliation.” In the auditorium/gymnasium at the university, President Hinckley spoke at length. It was very moving and almost ethereal. The descendants were seated on the floor of the gym [in seats traditionally reserved for honored guests and dignitaries], while members of the church were seated in the stands surrounding us. At one point, President Hinckley asked all those in attendance [...,] if they had a relative, or knew someone who participated in the Mountain Meadows Massacre to stand - about two-thirds of the people stood (as a humorous aside: I was sitting next to my 86-year-old uncle, Bill Baker (a man of few words that are always dry and monotone) and he poked me in the side and whispered out of the side of his mouth to me, ”eek gad - maybe they called us all here just to finish us off.” But I digress . . . at this ceremony, President Hinckley spoke eloquently on the subject and he said he was there ”to [...] ask our, the descendents, forgiveness. He also exonerated [current] members of the Piute nation - in the presence of their current Chief. The Piute Chief sang/recited an old Piute prayer at the end of the ceremony and we all left with tears in our eyes.

According to an article in the Saint George, Utah, Spectrum newspaper:

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."

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....

1999 monument: foundation's petition to purchase site

In 1999 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built and agreed to maintain a second monument at Mountain Meadows.

On August 3, during excavation for the LDS designed project, a backhoe moving a wall originally erected by Carleton accidentally unearthed the remains of at least 29 victims. The Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation was upset that a directive not to disturb much below the surface had been misinterpreted by these construction contractors.

Anthropologists from the University of Utah and Brigham Young University, having to turn down requests that streamed in from people curious if DNA tests could ascertain familial relationships with the victims, still worked around the clock to quickly perform various forensic examinations on the bones before they were returned for reinterment in a private ceremony on September 10. Yet some aspects of the massacre's written accounts could now be reassessed against forensic knowledge gleaned from these reports. For example, anthropologist Shannon Novak's team found that out of approximately 20 skulls of adults examined, five showed the tell-tale signs of bullet entries to the backs of heads in agreement with historical written reports, while five others instead showed entry to their fronts. Novak subsequently has researched the background and lives of the massacre's victims, to appear in her book House of Mourning, to be published in 2008.

During meetings held in connection with the various ceremonies, the Mountain Meadows Foundation, based in Arkansas, 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 deeded to the federal government for a national monument. The church declined this idea, yet bought more parcels nearby as a preserve from resorts development.

Descendants' celebrations and remembrances

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.

References

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External links

• Mountain Meadows Association – "An unusual mix of historians and descendants of massacre victims and perpetrators" (The Salt Lake Tribune).
• An account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre from the Court TV Crime Library
• The Mountain Meadows Massacre -Ensign article by Richard E. Turley Jr., Managing Director, Family and Church History Department (LDS Church)
• Background articles from Comprehensive History of the Church, Messages of the First Presidency - President Wilford Woodruff, and The Restored Church
• Images of the current Mountain Meadows monument and surrounding area
• Resources and Links from the Mountain Meadows Association
• Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Search the site for many references to Mountain Meadows massacre; research, articles, and personal interview with Juanita Brooks by Mormon scholars and noted historians.
• Mark Twains Accounts of the Goshutes, a Uto-Aztecan Tribe (Ute/Paiute) in Utah.
• Paiute Indians on Utah.gov