The Mountain Meadows Massacre

September 11th marks the gruesome day when 152 years ago, some 120 men, women, and children were slaughtered in cold blood by a group of Mormons.  The Mountain Meadows Massacre would be the "worst incident of organized mass murder of unarmed civilians" until the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

To understand how this happened, we must understand the relationship between the early Mormons and the rest of the nation.

Early Conflicts

Shortly after being organized as a church, Joseph and his two hundred or so followers settled in Kirtland, Ohio.  The church grew, but by 1837 many had begun to lose faith.  The "Law of Consecration" was introduced and retracted.  A bank founded by Smith and Rigdon failed.  Disaffected members accused Smith of being "an insidious fraud."  A mob attacked Joseph and Rigdon, tarring and feathering the former.  Historian Fawn Brodie makes a controversial conclusion that Eli Johnson, one of those in the mob, may have been upset with Joseph for "being too intimate with his sister."

Smith had begun sending Saints to Jackson County, Missouri, a location he had proclaimed was once the Garden of Eden.  He would later abandon Kirtland and go to JacksonCounty himself.  The local Missourians were displeased with this new and insular religious sect moving in.  Mormons tended to vote in blocs and they were buying up a lot of land.  Tensions grew, and eventually violence against the Mormons broke out.  When the Mormons were forcibly evicted from JacksonCounty, Joseph Smith gave a revelation of a parable in which land promised by the Lord could be reclaimed, by force if needed.  This revelation increased the Missourians’ unease.

At about this time, prominent church leaders like Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were excommunicated over various disputes with Joseph, including Joseph's "dirty, nasty, filthy affair" with his 16-year-old maid Fanny Alger, one of his first (unannounced) polygamous wives.  About 80 Mormons signed a Danite Manifesto warning the dissenters to depart lest a "fatal calamity" befall them.  Facing growing apprehension from the Missourians and dissent from within, Sidney Rigdon delivered a speech where he warned:

 

And that mob that comes on us to disturb us, it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them until the last drop of their blood is spilled; or else they will have to exterminate us, for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed...

The following month, a fight broke out when Mormons were illegally prevented from voting in an election.  Later, Missourians began burning Mormon homes and plundering their possessions.  General Alexander Doniphan arrived with a militia in an attempt to keep the peace, but the Mormons had set up their own militia and moved into DaviessCounty to fight back.  They attacked the settlements of Gallatin, Millport and Grindstone Fork and burned them all to the ground.  They continued to roam through the county, burning and plundering as they went.

A militia guarding Richmond and Liberty from the Mormons went against orders when it moved into the Mormon-runCaldwellCounty to intercept and disarm an approaching party.  Fellow Mormons believed their comrades had been captured by a mob of Missourians, and they resolved to chase the mob out of the county.  They didn’t realize it was a state militia they opened fire on.  The Mormons won the battle, but inadvertently became enemies of the state.  Exaggerated reports of the battle quickly spread.  General Doniphan called for backup.  A letter sent to the army explained:

The citizens of Daviess, Coroll, and some other normal counties have raised mob after mob for the last two months for the purpose of driving a group of fanatics, (called mormons) from those counties and from the State. These things have at length goaded the mormons into a state of desparation that has now made them the aggressors instead of acting on the defensive.

Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs wanted the Mormons out.  He issued an extermination order stating:

...the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace...

Shortly afterwards, 250 bitter non-Mormons, many of whom had been forced to flee DaviessCounty during the Danite rampage, descended upon Haun's Mill in a surprise attack and killed 18 Mormons, including 10-year-old Sardius Smith.

Mormon settlements were now surrounded by state militia, and the Mormons were forced to leave the state.  They gathered again at the Mormon settlement of Nauvoo, Illinois. By 1840, Nauvoo was a well established city.  Joseph Smith became the Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, a militia of 2,000 riflemen.  In 1844, Smith ran for President of the United States on a platform of theodemocracy.  He also established the Council of Fifty, men appointed to take over political positions should the world’s secular governments collapse during Christ's return.

As in Missouri, the residents of HancockCounty were becoming increasingly apprehensive about the growing Mormon presence.  Not only were Mormons bloc-voting, but Joseph Smith himself was gaining an alarming level of power and apparently wanted more with his bid for the United States presidency.  He was president of his church, mayor of his city, head of the municipal court, and had his own private militia.  Some in Illinois saw the Mormon church as subversive to the law; Smith was successfully avoiding arrest attempts from Missouri.  Word of Mormon polygamy was spreading, garnering a sense that Mormonism was an immoral religion that threatened traditional family values.

William Law was excommunicated when he voiced disagreement with Smith over polygamy and the church's dealings with the law.  He subsequently established the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper meant to expose the church as a "public nuisance" and to publicize Smith's polygamy. Smith then ordered his militia to destroy the press and every copy of the Expositor.  Smith and Hyrum were arrested for the crime and brought to Carthage jail, where they were murdered by a mob.

Mormons continued to be harassed throughout the county and eventually the state Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to disincorporate Nauvoo and dissolve its government.  By 1846, the Mormons were abandoning Nauvoo and preparing to trek west.

A New Beginning

The Mormons finally had some peace in the Utah territory, although they remained suspicious of government intrusion.  After being chased out of Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, enduring mob attacks, the massacre at Haun's Mill, and the murder of their prophet, Mormons were filled with a strong sense of persecution.   (Persecution remains a part of the Mormon consciousness even today, although it is generally attributed to a sense that "the devil will fight against the Lord’s church.")  In reality, however, the early Mormons participated in a back-and-forth struggle with wrongs committed by both sides.

This was a time when the temple ceremony contained the Oath of Vengeance, added after Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed:

 

You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation.

 

Brigham Young was President of the church and governor of the Utah territory.  He encouraged self-sufficiency so that the territory could remain independent from the States.  The federal government feared that Brigham Young was building his own independent theocracy, and Utah was increasingly viewed as a rogue territory that considered itself exempt from federal law.  Brigham Young spoke of the United States as if it were a separate nation that was full of enemies.  This attitude in Utah is reflected in an 1854 discourse by Jedediah Grant delivered at the Salt Lake City Tabernacle:

 

...I look for the Lord to use His whip on the refractory son called "Uncle Sam;" I expect to see him chastised among the first of the nations. I think Uncle Sam is one of the Lord's boys that He will take the rod to first... for his transgressions, for his high-mindedness and loftiness, for his evil, for rejecting the Gospel, and causing the earth to drink the blood of the Saints...

Brigham Young emphasized that peaceful travelers should be permitted to pass through Utah unmolested, but anyone who dared to cause trouble would have the Danites upon them. For his part, President Buchanan viewed Young as a danger, declaring:

 

...all the officers of the United States, judicial and executive, with the single exception of two Indian agents, have found it necessary for their own personal safety to withdraw from the territory, and there no longer remains any government in Utah but the despotism of Brigham Young...  Governor Young has, by proclamation, declared his determination to maintain his power by force, and has already committed acts of hostility against the United States.

President Buchanan sought the support of Congress in “suppressing the insurrection and in restoring and maintaining the sovereignty of the Constitution and laws over the Territory of Utah.”  He sent a militia with the intention of installing someone else as governor.  When word of the approaching army reached Young, he began to prepare his Saints for war, having them stock up on supplies while a militia was sent to harass and slow the approaching federal army.

The

Wrong Place

, The Wrong Time

A group of families, known as the Fancher (or Fancher-Baker) party, had set out from Arkansas towards California.  When they reached Utah, they had difficulty trading for much-needed supplies.  The Utahns were not only suspicious of outsiders, but they were saving their supplies for what they feared would be an imminent battle with the United States.

Making things worse, a few months earlier the Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt had been murdered in Arkansas by Hector McLean.  Pratt had converted McLean's wife and children to Mormonism and then married her as his twelfth polygamous wife.  An angry McLean found Pratt and killed him, giving the Mormons another martyr.

Rumors spread that members of the Fancher party had previously harassed Mormons, were involved with Pratt's murder, and that one of them owned the gun used to kill Joseph Smith. 

The Fancher party left CedarCity to continue towards California and stopped in Mountain Meadows for a few days to let their cattle feed. Stake President Isaac Haight wanted to send a militia after the emigrants.  Other leaders rejected the idea, but another plan was hatched: get the Paiute Indians to attack them instead.  John D. Lee was sent to organize the attack, but the Stake High Council decided to get Brigham Young's advice before proceeding.  They sent a messenger to Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, Lee went ahead with the attack.  He had the Native Americans attack the emigrant party, killing seven before the Fancher party could circle their wagons and dig in for what would become a five day siege.  Desperate for fresh water, they sent two riders to a nearby spring.  One was shot and killed, but the killers were some of Lee's men, not Native Americans. The survivor returned to his party, and Haight feared their ruse was exposed.  If word was allowed to spread that Mormons were behind the attack, it could be all the reason the government would need to attack, take their land, and scatter the Saints once again. Haight decided that the Fancher party should not escape alive.

Major John Higbee was ordered to march a militia to the emigrant camp.  Lee and William Bateman approached the wagons with white flags and informed the party that they had arrived to save them from the Native Americans.  They said they had negotiated a truce: the Paiutes would allow the party to leave in peace, but only if they left their livestock and supplies behind.  The militia would escort the party back to CedarCity.

The Fancher party had little choice.  They agreed to the terms and were split into three groups - the youngest children and a few of the mothers in wagons, the older children and mothers walking behind, and the men in the rear.  An armed militiaman walked beside each adult male. After about a mile of marching, Higbee shouted the order, "Do your duty!"  Each militiaman turned to the man he was escorting and fired.  Paiute Indians and other Mormon militiamen hiding nearby descended upon the women and children.  Within five minutes, all were dead except 17 children deemed too young to be able to tell what happened.  The militiamen swore an oath to keep the slaughter a secret.

Brigham Young initially reported that the Native Americans were at fault.  The federal government investigated the incident in 1859 and concluded that the Mormons were involved.  Haight, Higbee, and Lee fled before they could be arrested.  Eleven years later, Young excommunicated Haight and Lee.  Lee was finally arrested in 1874 and executed three years later.  He would be the only person held accountable for the 120 deaths in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

For more information:

Mountain Meadows Association
LDS Ensign article "The Mountain Meadows Massacre"

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