Conspiracy and siege of the Mountain Meadows massacre

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Emigrant wagon train

With regard the conspiracy and siege of the Mountain Meadows massacre, the incident initially was planned by its Mormon perpetrators as an "Indian" attack for spoils. But the attack was repulsed and soon turned into a siege, culminating on September 11, 1857, in the massacre by the militia of the surrendered and unarmed emigrants. Local Paiute men recruited by the militia participated in the incident.

The Arkansas emigrants were traveling to California shortly before the Utah War started. Mormons throughout the Utah Territory had been mustered to fight the invading United States Army, which they believed was intended to destroy them as a people. During this period of tension, rumors among the Mormons also linked the Fancher-Baker train with enemies who had participated in previous persecutions of Mormons or more recent malicious acts.

The emigrants stopped to rest and regroup their approximately 800 head of cattle at Mountain Meadows, a valley within the Iron County Military District of the Nauvoo Legion (the popular designation for the militia of the Utah Territory).^[1]

Initially intending to orchestrate an Indian massacre,^{[citation needed]} two men with leadership roles in local military, church and government organizations,^[2] Isaac C. Haight and John D. Lee, conspired for Lee to lead militiamen disguised as Native Americans along with a contingent of Paiute men in an attack. This attack was in direct violation of instructions given to the Church by Prophet Brigham Young.^[3] This attack repulsed, a siege ensued; and intending to leave no witnesses of Mormon complicity in the siege and avoid reprisals complicating the Utah War, militiamen induced the emigrants to surrender and give up their weapons. After escorting the emigrants out of their fortification, the perpetrators executed approximately 120 men, women and children.^[4] Seventeen younger children were spared.

[edit] Background

Main articles: Fancher party's and Mormons' backgrounds and the Mountain Meadows massacre and War hysteria preceding the Mountain Meadows massacre

The Mountain Meadows massacre was caused in part by events relating to the Utah War, an 1858 invasion of the Utah Territory by the United States Army which ended up being peaceful. In the summer of 1857, however, Mormons expected an all-out invasion of apocalyptic significance. From July to September 1857, Mormon leaders prepared Mormons for a seven-year siege predicted by Brigham Young. Mormons were to stockpile grain, and were prevented from selling grain to emigrants for use as cattle feed. As far-off Mormon colonies retreated, Parowan and Cedar City became isolated and vulnerable outposts. Brigham Young sought to enlist the help of Indian tribes in fighting the "Americans", encouraging them to steal cattle from emigrant trains, and to join Mormons in fighting the approaching army.

In August 1857, Mormon apostle George A. Smith, of Parowan, set out on a tour of southern Utah, instructing Mormons to stockpile grain. He met with many of the eventual participants in the massacre, including W. H. Dame, Isaac Haight, and John D. Lee. He noted that the militia was organized and ready to fight, and that some of them were anxious to "fight and take vengeance for the cruelties that had been inflicted upon us in the States"^{[citation needed]}. On his return trip to Salt Lake City, Smith camped near the Fancher party. Jacob Hamblin suggested the Fanchers stop and rest their cattle at Mountain Meadows. Some of Smith's party started rumors that the Fanchers had poisoned a well and a dead ox, in order to kill Indians, rumors that preceded the Fanchers to Cedar City. Most witnesses said that the Fanchers were in general a peaceful party that behaved well along the trail.

Among Smith's party were a number of Paiute Indian chiefs from the Mountain Meadows area. When Smith returned to Salt Lake, Brigham Young met with these leaders on September 1, 1857 and encouraged them to fight against the "Americans". The Indian chiefs were reportedly reluctant. Some scholars theorize, however, that the leaders returned to Mountain Meadows and participated in the massacre. However, it is uncertain whether they would have had time to do so.

Fanchers' arrival at Cedar City

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

Cedar City was the last major settlement where emigrants could stop to buy grain and supplies before a long stretch of wilderness leading to California.^[5] When the ill-fated Fancher-Baker train arrived there, however, they were turned a cold shoulder: important goods were not available in the town store, and the local miller charged an exorbitant price for grinding grain.^[6] As tension between the Mormons and the emigrants mounted, a member of the Fancher-Baker party was said to have bragged he had the very gun that "shot the guts out of Old Joe Smith".^[7] Other members of the party reportedly bragged about taking part in the Haun's Mill massacre some decades before in Missouri.^[8] Others were reported by Mormons to have threatened to join the incoming federal troops, or join troops from California, and march against the Mormons.^[9] According to a witness, Alexander Fancher, captain of the emigrant train, rebuked these men on the spot for their inflammatory language.^[10]

[edit] Meetings at Cedar City

After the Fanchers left Cedar City, and before they arrived at the Meadows, several meetings were held in Cedar City and nearby Parowan by local Mormon leaders pondering how to implement Young's directives. At least nine southern Utah militiamen had already been sent out as scouts to the area's emigrant trails' mountain passes, looking for advance parties of the United States dragoons. After the massacre, these scouts would later return with welcome news that U.S. troops likely would not be arriving until spring.

Soon after the Fanchers left Cedar City, Major Isaac C. Haight, Mormon Stake President of Cedar City and second in command of the Iron County militia, sent a letter to William H. Dame, the militia's commanding officer and Stake President of Parowan, asking that the militia be called out against the Fanchers.^[11] Dame reportedly denied the request, but told Haight to let him know if the Fanchers committed any acts of violence.^[12] Haight, however, who was of equal rank to Dame in ecclesiastical matters, settled on a secondary plan to use the Native Americans instead of the militia. Whether Dame was privy to this plan is a matter of disagreement between the witnesses. According to one report, Isaac Haight said the "Indian attack" plan was being put in place under the religious authority of the Cedar City Stake, without Dame's authorization as military commander.^[13] Lee, however, said Haight told him that orders for the "Indian attack" came from Dame.^[14] Philip Klingensmith reported that the orders came from "headquarters" other than Cedar City, but he was unsure whether that meant Parowan or Salt Lake City.^[15]

Maj. John D. Lee, constable, judge, and Indian Agent. He led the initial assault, and falsely offered emigrants safe passage prior their mile-long march down field of massacre. He was the only convicted participant.

Possibly on September 4, 1857,^[16] Haight had a meeting with John D. Lee ordering him to assemble Paiute fighters to head towards Mountain Meadows 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 a Danite as well. Lee's meeting with Haight, according to Lee, took place late at night in Cedar City at the iron works, while they were wrapped in blankets against the cold.

In the afternoon of Sunday, September 6, Major Haight held his weekly Stake High Council meeting after church services, and brought up the issue of whether to what to do with the emigrants.^[17] The Council believed that there were U.S. armies approaching from the north and the south,^[18] and it was reported at the meeting that the Fancher-Baker party had threatened to "destroy every damned Mormon", and some of them had claimed to have killed Joseph Smith^[19] that they would wait at Mountain Meadows and then join with the approaching armies in a massacre of Mormons.^[20]

The planned Native American massacre of the Fancher train was discussed, but not all the Council members agreed it was the right approach.^[21] The Council resolved to take no action until Haight sent a rider (James Haslam) out the next day to carry an express to Salt Lake City (a six-day round trip on horseback) for Brigham Young's advice.^[22] The Council also resolved to send a messenger south to John D. Lee, instructing Lee to stay the planned Indian massacre at Mountain Meadows.^[23]

John M. Higbee was directed 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.

[edit] Siege (September 7–September 11, 1857)

A witness said that a Mormon Indian Agent, John D. Lee, left his home in Harmony on September 6, 1857 in the company of 14 Native Americans and headed toward Mountain Meadows.^[24] In the early morning of Monday, September 7^[25] the Arkansan "Fancher" party began to be attacked by as many or more than 200 Paiutes^[26] 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 killed 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.^[27]

Map of the Meadows
by Josiah F. Gibbs

According to one report, they attempted to send a little girl to a nearby spring for water, dressed in white, and she was fired upon, but escaped unharmed back to the camp.^[28] When two emigrant horsemen attempted to retrieve water, one was shot while another escaped, but not before seeing that the shooter was a white man.

On September 9, local Mormon leader Isaac C. Haight and his counselor Elias Morris visited Dame in Parowan, where the council decided that the militia would allow the emigrants to pass safely.^[29] After the Parowan council meeting, however, Haight spoke with Dame confidentially, relating the information that the emigrants probably already knew that Mormons were involved in the siege. This information changed Dame's mind, and he reportedly authorized a massacre.

[edit] Massacre

Maj. John H. Higbee, said to have shouted the command to begin the killings. According to his own story, he reluctantly participated after the massacre, only to bury the dead from what he thought was an "Indian attack".

Following orders from Haight in Cedar City, 35 miles (56 km)) away, on Friday September 11 John Higbee ordered a group of militiamen not in disguise to march and stand in a formal line a half-mile from the Fanchers,^[30] then Lee and William Batemen approached the Fancher-Baker party wagons with a white flag.^[31][32] 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.^[27] 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!"^[33] 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 victims who escaped the initial slaughter were quickly chased down and killed. Two teenaged girls, Rachel and Ruth Dunlap, managed to climb down an embankment to hide among oak trees for a time, but were spotted by a Paiute chief from Parowan, who took them to Lee. Lee ordered the girls killed despite pleadings for mercy by the chief and the girls. Captain Carleton^[34] mentions that the sisters were later found naked with slit throats. This scene was vividly recounted in a turn-of-the-century exposé by Gibbs.^[35]

[edit] Spared children and distribution of spoils

Christopher "Kit" Fancher, a massacre survivor, who was four years old at the time, was the son of Captain Alexander Fancher. He said, "He and...his little sister Tryphena, were taken and placed in Mormon homes....[Kit] was called "Charley" by the Mormons."^[36] After two years, the siblings were returned to family in Arkansas

Survivor Nancy Sephrona Huff, four years old at tragedy, "was taken away by John Willis, whom she lived with until she was returned to relatives in Arkansas two years later."^[37]

Approximately seventeen children were deliberately spared because of their age.^[38] In the hours following the massacre Lee directed Philip Klingensmith, Samuel McMurdy,^[39] and possibly J. Willis and Samuel Knight^[40] to take the children (a few of whom were wounded) to the nearby farm of Jacob Hamblin, a local Indian Agent.^[41] From there, the children were taken to Cedar City, where foster parents were found among local Mormon families.^[42]

After searching the bodies for valuables, Lee, Higbee, and Klingensmith made speeches and ordered the participants not to tell anyone, including their wives, and to blame the massacre on the Native Americans alone.^[43] Dame and Haight arrived at the scene late that night and stayed at the Hamblin ranch; they were not present during the massacre.

On September 12, 1857, 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.^[27] After the hasty burials, the participants gathered at the emigrant camp for a council, where Dame, Haight, and other church and military leaders thanked the participants for their zeal, and thanked God for delivering their enemies into their hands.^[44] The militia then performed the Mormon prayer circle ordinance, during which they again made sacred oaths not to reveal the role of Mormons in the massacre.^[45]

The Paiutes reportedly received a portion of the Fancher-Baker 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."^[46] There are conflicting accounts as to whether these items were auctioned off or simply taken by members of the local population. Surviving children saw Mormons wearing their parents' clothing and jewelry.^[47]

[edit] Sole conviction

Investigations, interrupted by the U.S. Civil War, resulted in nine indictments in 1874. Only John D. Lee was ever tried, and after two trials, he was convicted. On March 23, 1877 a firing squad executed Lee at the massacre site.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References