Mormon Mountain Meadows Massacre--11 Sept 1857
(the movie "September Dawn" has the massacre as a background part of the story)
A Utah Massacre And Mormon Memory
As families tramp all over the country this summer, visiting historic sites, there's one spot -- Mountain Meadows in southwestern Utah -- that won't be on many itineraries. Mountain Meadows, a two-hour drive from one of the state's popular tourist destinations, Zion National Park, is the site of what the historian Geoffrey Ward has called ''the most hideous example of the human cost exacted by religious fanaticism in American history until 9/11.'' And while it might not be a major tourist destination, for a century and a half the massacre at Mountain Meadows has been the focus of passionate debate among Mormons and the people of Utah. It is a debate that cuts to the core of the basic tenets of Mormonism. This, the darkest stain on the history of the religion, is a bitter reality and challenging predicament for a modern Mormon Church struggling to shed its extremist history.
On Sept. 11, 1857, in a meadow in southwestern Utah, a militia of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, attacked a wagon train of Arkansas families bound for California. After a five-day siege, the militia persuaded the families to surrender under a flag of truce and a pledge of safe passage. Then, in the worst butchery of white pioneers by other white pioneers in the entire colonization of America, approximately 140 men, women and children were slaughtered. Only 17 children under the age of 8 -- the age of innocence in the Mormon faith -- were spared.
After the massacre, the church first claimed that local Paiute Indians were responsible, but as evidence of Mormon involvement mounted, it placed the sole blame for the killings on John D. Lee, a militia member and a Mormon zealot who was also the adopted son of the prophet Brigham Young. After nearly two decades, as part of a deal for statehood, Lee was executed by a firing squad in 1877. The church has been reluctant to assume responsibility -- labelling Lee a renegade -- but several historians, including some who are Mormon, believe that church leaders, though never prosecuted, ordered the massacre.
Now, 146 years later, Lee's descendants and the victims' relatives have been pressing the Mormon Church for an apology. The move for some official church acknowledgment began in the late 1980's, when a group of Lee descendants, including a former United States secretary of the interior, Stewart Udall, began working to clear their ancestor's name. In 1990, descendants of victims and perpetrators began urging the Mormon Church to accept responsibility for the massacre and to rebuild a crumbling landmark established at the site by United States Army troops in 1859.
The current church president, Gordon B. Hinckley -- himself a prophet who says he receives divine revelations -- took a personal interest in the episode, and in 1998 he agreed to restore the landmark where at least some of the bodies were buried. But even that concession turned controversial when, in August 1999, a church contractor's backhoe accidentally unearthed the bones of 29 victims. After a debate between Utah state officials and church leaders -- what has been called Utah's ''unique church-state tango'' -- about state laws requiring unearthed bones to be forensically examined for cause of death, the church had the remains quickly reburied without any extensive examination that might have drawn new attention to the brutality of the murders.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/24/opinion/a-utah-massacre-and-mormon-memory.html
Mountain Meadows Massacre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Date September 7–11, 1857
Location Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, United States
Deaths 120–140 members of the Baker–Fancher wagon train
Non-fatal injuries Around 17
Accused Utah Territorial Militia (Iron County district), Paiute Native American auxiliaries
Weapons Guns, Bowie knives
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a series of attacks on the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train, at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. The attacks began on September 7, 1857, and culminated on September 11, 1857, resulting in the mass slaughter of the emigrant party by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district and purportedly aided by Native American allies. The extent to which Native Americans participated in the massacre is disputed and up until recent decades much of the blame for the massacre was unjustly attributed to the Native Americans.[1] The militia, officially called the Nauvoo Legion, was composed of southern Utah's Mormon settlers (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS Church). Intending to leave no witnesses and thus prevent reprisals, the perpetrators killed all the adults and older children—about 120 men, women, and children in total. Seventeen children, all younger than seven, were spared.
The wagon train, mostly families from Arkansas, was bound for California on a route that passed through the Utah Territory, during a conflict later known as the Utah War. After arriving in Salt Lake City, the Baker–Fancher party made their way south, eventually stopping to rest at Mountain Meadows. While the emigrants were camped at the meadow, nearby militia leaders, including Isaac C. Haight and John D. Lee, joined forces to organize an attack on the wagon train. Intending to give the appearance of Native American aggression, the militia's plan was to arm some Southern Paiute Native Americans and persuade them to join with a larger party of their own militiamen—disguised as Native Americans—in an attack. During the militia's first assault on the wagon train the emigrants fought back, and a five-day siege ensued. Eventually fear spread among the militia's leaders that some emigrants had caught sight of white men and had likely discovered the identity of their attackers. As a result militia commander William H. Dame ordered his forces to kill the emigrants.
By this time the emigrants were running low on water and provisions, and allowed some approaching members of the militia—who carried a white flag—to enter their camp. The militia members assured the emigrants they were protected and escorted them from the hasty fortification. After walking a distance from the camp, the militiamen, with the help of auxiliary forces hiding nearby, attacked the emigrants and killed all of them that they thought were old enough to be potential witnesses to report the attack. Following the massacre, the perpetrators hastily buried the victims[citation needed], leaving the bodies vulnerable to wild animals and the climate. Local families took in the surviving children, and many of the victims' possessions were sold by auction. Investigations, after interruption by the American Civil War, resulted in nine indictments during 1874. Of the men indicted, only John D. Lee was tried in a court of law. After two trials in the Utah Territory, Lee was convicted by a jury, sentenced to death, and executed by a Utah firing squad on March 23, 1877.
Today, historians attribute the massacre to a combination of factors, including war hysteria about possible invasion of Mormon territory and hyperbolic Mormon teachings against outsiders, which were part of the excesses of the Mormon Reformation period. According to the book Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Glen M. Leonard, Richard E. Turley, Jr., and Ronald Walker, Stake President Isaac Haight (1813 – 1886) was the primary person to push the idea of using force against the emigrants and initially sent to Brigham Young asking for his advice. President Young's letter, which was dated September 10, arrived two days after the slaughter with these instructions, "In regard to emigration trains passing through our settlements, we must not interfere with them... You must not meddle with them... if those who are there will leave, let them go in peace. While we should be on the alert, on hand, and always ready, we should also possess ourselves in patience... always remembering that God rules."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
Published on Sep 16, 2015
In September of 1857, nearly 140 Arkansas emigrants camped near Enterprise in southwestern Utah. Local residents had heard rumors that the U.S. Army was en route to put down the growing Mormon movement, so the wagon train was viewed with suspicion and animosity. The Fancher-Baker Party was attacked without warning by Indians and later by local Mormon militia. In all, approximately 120 people were killed, mostly women and children. In 1877, 20 years after the mountain meadows massacre, participant John D. Lee was tried, convicted, and executed by a firing squad on the very spot that the Mountain Meadows Massacre took place. This engrossing documentary includes interviews with historians, reenactments, and photographs that tell all sides of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
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