Stop the Press

by James W. Ure

  An anti-Mormon crusade began. The president told Congress that Brigham had been collecting weapons for war against the government for years. He avowed that Brigham, superintendent of Indian Affairs in the territory, was inflaming hostile feelings among the Indians against the United States. All but two Indian agents had left the territory on the run, and of course there were the judges and other appointed officials who had fled Utah with the tales of Mormon wantonness, reckless disregard for law, and other excesses.48

  Meanwhile, Brigham believed what he preached: the Second Coming was imminent. God would usher in the millennium, and the Indians, as predicted in Mormon scripture, would play a necessary role in the Last Days. He blasted the government from the pulpit and warned the people to prepare to repulse the invaders.49

  The May 20, 1857, issue of the Deseret News brought word that stunned the Mormons: Parley P. Pratt, one of the most beloved of the church's apostles, had been killed in Arkansas. Hector H. McLean had done the deed, “presumably in jealousy at the conversion of Mrs. McLean to Mormonism.”50 Convert Eleanor McLean had left her abusive husband and had married Parley Pratt, then attempted to take her children to Utah. Hector tracked Pratt from St. Louis to Arkansas, stabbed Pratt three times, and shot him in the neck.

  Brigham praised and eulogized the late Pratt, but in fact he may have been relieved that one of the main voices of conflict with the church president had been stilled. Pratt and Brigham had skirmished for years, and Brigham was wary of Pratt's popularity. He later suggested Pratt deserved his fate, since he had taken a number of additional wives without Brigham's authorization.51

  Parley Pratt was killed in Arkansas; his place of death would fuel the conflagration that became the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

  About the same time as Parley Pratt was killed in Arkansas, President Buchanan authorized that 2,500 soldiers be sent to Utah to have Brigham replaced with a federally appointed governor. National sentiment was on the side of sending the army. Even Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had once been favorably disposed toward Utah's Mormons, said it was “the Duty of Congress to apply the knife and cut out this loathsome, disgusting ulcer.”52

  On July 22, 1857, Brigham led 2,500 Mormon faithful up Big Cottonwood Canyon southeast of Great Salt Lake City. They planned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the pioneers’ arrival in the valley while encamped at Silver Lake. The festivities were underway when riders reigned up on sweaty horses. They had news that an army under the command of General William Harney was en route to Utah.53

  In spite of the high stakes and poor odds, Brigham was determined to fight the US Army. The wounds from Missouri and Nauvoo were still fresh, and he was not about to allow an army to destroy his mountain Zion. This was the prelude to the Last Days, and so be it. He stepped up the anger and added more pepper to his rhetoric. His followers felt the divine vengeance of the coming battle.54

  Meanwhile, Brigham was laying out a military and political strategy. He would not give himself up to become a martyr. His people needed his leadership. He calculated that the 1,200 miles between Great Salt Lake City and the federal troop staging area in Kansas allowed his people some time to set up defenses. Gathering his counselors, they decided on a guerilla war against the supply trains. They set up harassing units where the incoming soldiers would be most vulnerable. The Nauvoo Legion would defend Great Salt Lake City, and if they failed, Brigham would evacuate and burn the town, he said in a fierce speech in August. “I shall lay my dwelling houses in ashes, I shall lay my mills in ashes, I shall cut every shrub and tree in the valley, every pole, every inch of board, and put it all into ashes.”55

  In August, George A. Smith reviewed the Iron Battalion in southern Utah. For two weeks he watched the troops drill, instilling them with martial zeal and telling settlers that the US Army was preparing a war of extermination. In Parowan, Smith fanned war hysteria toward the oncoming outsiders. “Legend has it Smith advised the people to plant fruit trees on the public square and reminded them that bones make good fertilizer.”56

  The hatred of outsiders, invasion by an army sent by the federal government, the murder of Parley Pratt, and the battle cry of Brigham and his counselors set a stage with horrible consequences.

  It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

  —Voltaire

  “Language fails to picture the scene of blood and carnage,” wrote Jacob Hamblin, a devout Mormon and colonizer of southern Utah, when, on September 26, 1857, he came upon the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.1

  The fighting lasted five days and did not end until September 11, fifteen days before Hamblin's stunned view of the battleground. “[Wolves] had disinterred the babies and stripped the bones of their flesh, [and] had left them strewn in every direction. At one place I noticed nineteen wolves pulling out the bodies and eating the flesh. [The scene] was dismal in the extreme. This was one of the gloomiest times I ever passed through.”2

  Mountain Meadows, in the low hills fifty miles southwest of Cedar City, is the site of the worst slaughter of white civilians in the history of the frontier West. “It was violence to achieve political ends,” said historian Will Bagley of the bloodbath.3

  The massacre was planned and conducted by whites—Mormons, disguised as Indians. The Mormons were joined in the slaughter by a band of Paiute Indians with the promise of rich spoils.4 Mountain Meadows is a valley on the Old Spanish Trail where wagon parties bound for southern California regularly stopped to sip the sweet water from Cane Springs, to graze their cattle, and to rest before pushing on toward the Mojave Desert. Walking along the six miles of the valley a visitor can imagine the horror of the five-day siege in 1857. The bones of some of the murdered still lie beneath the earth.

  From the very beginning, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tried to deflect responsibility for its involvement in the massacre. Over the years the official position of the church would change and change again. Even today, some apologists for the church refuse to put the blame in Brigham's pocket. Historian John G. Turner wrote, “Young bears significant responsibility for what took place at Mountain Meadows.”5 Bagley goes further, claiming Brigham sent George A. Smith to southern Utah in August 1857 to set in motion the destruction of the Fancher-Baker train.6

  Already on a war footing, Brigham Young told his Saints not to let a kernel of grain go to waste or to be sold to their enemies. Their enemies were the US government and gentiles.

  Into this boiling pot of Mormon fear and emotion came the Fancher-Baker emigrant wagon train, known to history as the Fancher party. Originating in Arkansas, the train reached Great Salt Lake City from the Oregon Trail–Mormon Trail sometime in early August. They camped overlooking Salt Lake Valley some six or seven miles east of Great Salt Lake.7

  Rumor mutated into fact among the Mormons. In the Fancher party were men said to have killed Apostle Parley P. Pratt three months before in Arkansas. It was also rumored that the Fancher party included militia who had killed the eighteen Mormons in the Missouri massacre at Haun's Mill in 1838. Arkansas was close enough to Missouri that for many Mormons it was true. It was even whispered that some of the Fancher party were in the mob that killed the prophet Joseph Smith. Great Salt Lake City was already braced for war with the US Army, and the people refused to sell supplies to the Fanchers.

  Mistrust of the Fanchers grew as they slowly moved south from Salt Lake Valley. Rumors were like wildfire in a wind, fed by Apostle George A. Smith and a band of officials representing Brigham Young. Smith moved south ahead of the Fancher wagons. Every village was alerted. The enemy was advancing. Prepare.8

  As Bagley put it, “Once the party left Salt Lake, it disappeared into a historical maze built of lies, folklore, popular myth, justification and a few facts.” Much of the party's southward trek became hearsay.9

  Reaching American Fork, thirty miles south of Great Salt Lake City, the wagon train was again refused provi
sions, even though the local Mormons had plenty of flour, bacon, vegetables, poultry, butter, cheese, and eggs. One woman in southern Utah traded the Fancher party a cheese for a bed quilt. She and her husband would later be cut off from the church.10

  The Fancher men were said to be very free in their language and committed “little acts of annoyance” for the purpose of provoking the Saints.11 In a frenzy of rumor, the Fanchers were also accused of having camped at Corn Creek where it was alleged they killed eighteen head of cattle and then poisoned the carcasses and a spring. Two or three or six or ten Indians who had eaten the cattle had died. The story was never told the same way twice, but the edgy Mormons were certain it was true. George A. Smith, like a Mormon Paul Revere, called out the outrages as he continued south, whipping up anti-emigrant sentiment.

  The Fancher cattle herd grew in size as rumor blazed ahead of them. Their cattle were said to be heedlessly feeding on land set aside for Mormon herds. “From the moment they left Corn Creek nothing is certain about the Fancher party except that in less than three weeks every member who could have given a reliable account of its fate would be dead,” wrote Bagley.12

  At a meeting in Cedar City, Mormon militia colonel William H. Dame gave Stake President Isaac Chauncey Haight the tacit go-ahead to attack the wagon train and destroy the whole company.13

  In an inflammatory speech to the gathered militia in Cedar City, Haight recited the list of abuses suffered by the Mormons, blaming it on gentiles whom he compared to the approaching Fancher party. “When we pled for mercy, Haun's Mill [massacre of Mormons] was our answer, and when we asked for bread they gave us a stone…. [We went] far into the wilderness where we could worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience without annoyance to our neighbors. We resolved that if they would leave us alone we would never trouble them,” announced Haight. Yet the nation had sent an army to exterminate the Mormons, he said, and he pronounced that he would give his “last drop of blood in defense of Zion.”14 It was strong stuff.

  John D. Lee sent runners to gather Indians from the surrounding countryside and treated forty or fifty of them to a feast in Harmony, a southern Utah town not far from Mountain Meadows. With a sword in hand and a red sash around his waist, on September 5, 1857, he exhorted to Indians to shout out their support for the attack. He was not happy with their ho-hum response. “Lee called for a better response,” said Bagley. “It was not much better.”15 The Paiutes had been promised the spoils of the Fancher party, including its large cattle herd. But they seemed to be losing heart.

  With Lee calling for men to take arms against the party, men of conscience resisted the order. As for avenging the death of the prophet Joseph Smith, who could say any of these men had a hand in it? “You only suppose and that will not do for me,” said John Hawley.16 He had listened to Lee inciting the Paiutes to attack. He had heard Captain Harrison Pearce say he wished to “see all the Gentyles strippt naked and lashed on their backs and have the Sun scorch them to death by inches.”17

  A final war council was held in Cedar City, led by Lee, Haight, and John M. Higbee. Lee would lead the attack. He made his way toward the Fancher party, now resting their stock at Mountain Meadows and making ready for the harsh desert trek that lay ahead. With Lee was a large body of Mormon men who stopped in the hills not far from Mountain Meadows. Here the Mormons painted their faces and disguised themselves as Indians. They were joined by an unknown number of local Indians, mostly Paiutes.18 Lee led his men to hills overlooking the scattered wagons of the Fancher party.

  In the morning darkness of September 7, the Fancher party rolled out of their blankets and rekindled their fires. Water was carried from Cane Springs. Faces were splashed. Coffee was set to brew.

  The Mormon and Indian raiders—perhaps 150 in all—descended undetected down a ravine cut by Mogotsu Creek and took up positions mere yards from the wagon party. At first light, the Mormons and Indians opened fire. The deadly barrage killed between ten and fifteen. A surviving child would later say his family was just sitting down to a breakfast of quail and cottontail rabbit when the first shots rang out, toppling one of the children.19

  Coordinated attacks came from the ravine and from a hill to the west, but Arkansas gunfire killed at least one Indian and shattered the knees of two Paiute war chiefs.20 The return fire broke the surprise and temporarily frightened away the Mormons and Indians.

  During the lull that followed, the Arkansans circled their wagons a hundred yards from the bullet-spitting ravine. They shoveled dirt beneath the wagons to form ramparts against the flying lead. They also counterattacked, and Lee watched his irregular army fall back in the face of the unexpectedly strong resistance. Hopes for a quick victory faded, and a siege began. The Fanchers were cut off from Cane Spring by Mormon sharpshooters. The emigrants’ cattle were rounded up by the attackers and taken away.21

  The next day, Lee made another attack. It was a disaster, causing more Indian casualties and demoralizing the Paiutes, who had been told they had been blessed by the Mormons and would be impervious to gunshots. The Paiutes later said that “the emigrants had long guns and were good shots.”22 Lee later recalled, “Now we knew the Indians could not do the work…and we were in a sad fix.”23

  For five days the emigrants lay in their rifle pits waiting each assault. The stench of dead animals and human corpses rose in the warm September air. At one point the Fanchers sent William Aden and another man for help. Aden was killed when he approached a Mormon campsite, and his companion was likely also killed.24

  Early Thursday morning, September 10, Haight rang the Cedar City town bell and ordered the Nauvoo Legion regiment out. He selected only men chosen for their proven loyalty to the LDS Church. According to historian Bagley, each man had probably sworn a temple endowment oath to avenge the blood of the prophets.25 Another failed assault on Thursday resulted in the deaths and desertion of more Paiutes.

  John D. Lee, while crossing the valley to get a better view from a nearby ridge, was spotted by the emigrants. By then it was clear to the Fanchers that white men were among their attackers.26

  In Great Salt Lake City, Brigham Young welcomed a dusty rider named James Haslam. Haslam had come two hundred miles from Cedar City. It was September 10. Brigham told him to wait and after an interval bade him to return to Cedar City with a letter of instructions that “a company of emigrants then in southern Utah and bound for California were to be protected and assisted on their way.”27

  Haslam reversed his route and rode hell-for-leather to deliver the letter to militia commander William Dame, arriving sometime before September 14 but after the attack on the Fanchers was well underway.28

  The letter from Brigham said the Mormons “must not meddle with them [the Fancher party]. The Indians we expect will do as they please but you should try and preserve good feelings with them.”29 Bagley says this was Brigham's letter of plausible deniability.30 The letter arrived too late to halt the massacre but was presented as cover for any allegations against Brigham.

  At dawn on Friday, September 11, 1857, fewer than two dozen men of the wagon party were able to defend the wagons. Bagley describes how women and children huddled in the rifle pit to escape sniper fire. Death had claimed a number of wounded. Cut off from water, the survivors had little ammunition left.31

  Then the sniping stopped. The Mormon leaders at Mountain Meadows had agreed on a plan to draw out the defenders through the ruse of offering help. Lee's orders allegedly came from Colonel William Dame, and it was decided that the only safe course “was the utter destruction of the whole rascally lot.”32

  There were arguments against shedding innocent blood, but the response was that these were not innocents; they were cutthroats, robbers, and assassins. “Had they not boasted of murdering our Patriarchs and Prophets, Joseph and Hyrum?” asked John M. Higbee, a major in the militia.33 Some Mormon men of conscience “resisted orders to assault civilian Americans,” wrote Bagley.34

  As the sun rose on that Fri
day, Lee was faced with a double dilemma: he had to convince the defenders to surrender, and he must convince his Mormon militia to murder defenseless women and children who would place themselves in their trust.

  Bagley describes how the Mormons devised a plan that would allow the militia to kill the male emigrants easily, and murder the women and children separately. Lee would lead the first party in two wagons containing the wounded and the youngest children, with the women and older children marching behind them, thus isolating the innocent blood from the adult men. The men would follow in single file, each guarded by an armed escort.35

  Lee said the men ate breakfast and “prepared for the work at hand.”36 To the beleaguered emigrants it was inconceivable that the Mormons could devise such a devious plan to murder them all. Besides, they were parched from lack of water and famished from lack of food.

  Lee carried a truce flag toward the camp, promising protection if they surrendered. Rebecca Dunlap, a child survivor of the massacre, recalled that when three wagons approached their camp, the emigrants dressed her eight-year-old sister Mary in white. The child “went out towards them and waved a white handkerchief in a token of peace. The Mormons in the wagons waved one in reply and advanced to the corral.”37

  The two parties met. The Fanchers and the Mormons talked for about a half hour. Lee told the Fanchers that if they gave up their weapons it would show the Indians they no longer wanted to fight. The Mormons promised to take them back to the settlements. Lee recalled that the “men, women and children gathered around me in wild consternation. Some felt that the time of their happy deliverance had come, [but others] all in tears, looked upon me with doubt, distrust and terror.”38

  Lee divided them into three groups and began on the alleged march to safety. Leading the first group of young children in wagons, Lee started away from camp. Daniel McFarlane led the second group, consisting of the women and older children. The men followed fifty yards behind. An armed Mormon soldier fell in beside each of the men.