Newspaper Articles

Contributed by Cheryl Grenaux

The  Mormons and the Late Massacre , San Francisco Evening Bulletin,
November 5, 1857

Three emigrant families arrived yesterday in Sacramento, by the Carson Valley route. They report, says the Union, many sad evidences of outrage and murder at different points along the route, particularly in the vicinity of Goose Creek. Near this creek, their attention was attracted by the appearance of a human foot protruding from the ground, and on examining the spot, the remains of three murdered men were found buried only three or four inches below the surface. Upon another grave there lay two dogs, alive but much emaciated, and so pertinacious in retaining their lonely resting place that no effort could entice or drive them from the spot. Their master was, most probably, the occupant of that grave, and their presence there, under such circumstances, was a touching exhibition of canine instinct and devotion. A few miles further on, they came upon another scene of murder, where, upon the ground, were strewn a few bones, and also knots of long, glossy hair, torn from the head of some ill-fated woman. near by were the remains of three head of cattle, with arrows still sticking in them.

Reports brought by these families tend strongly to corroborate the suspicion already existing against the Mormons as the instigators, if not the perpetrators, of the recent wholesale massacre of emigrants at Santa Clara canyon. Mr. Pierce, who came by way of Salt Lake, and joined the other two families at the Sink of the Humboldt, reports some five hundred Indians encamped near Salt Lake, who, as he learned from the Mormons, were retained as allies to operate against the troops sent out by the Government. He was also assured that these Indians had been instructed not to molest the emigration this year, as preparations were not sufficiently complete to enable the Mormons to make a stand against the United States. In the city itself, large crowds of Mormons were nightly practicing military drill, and there was every evidence of energetic preparations for some great event. Before his family left Salt Lake, vague declarations of a threatening character were made, to the effect that, next year, "the overland emigrants must look out;" and it was even insinuated that the last trains this year might be destroyed. From the Mormon train which recently left Carson Valley, and which these families met on the way, similar statements were vaguely communicated, one Mormon woman even going so far as to congratulate an old lady in one of these families upon her safe arrival so near her destination, and assuring her that "the last trains of this year would not get through so well, for they were to be cut off." We give these statements as we received them from members of these families, and, admitting their correctness, which we have no reason to doubt, they certainly go far to confirm a terrible suspicion.

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Killing of Immigrants -- Mormons Falsely Accused, Western Standard , San Francisco,
November 6, 1857

Brigham Young's Tactics, Daily Alta , San Francisco, San Francisco, December 23, 1857

The course of Brigham Young hereto fore, whenever any outrage has been perpetrated upon government officials or property, has been to make stout denial of all participation or knowledge of these overt acts. Even when his own conduct has so plainly belied his words (as it almost invariably has done) he has always maintained stoutly entire ignorance and innocence of these matters. The crowning act of this gross impudence, this adding of insult to injury, is reported by Mr. Lander, who is attached to Magraw's wagon road party, and who recently arrived in St. Louis on his way to Washington, and gave an interesting statement of the progress of the party, up to the time of its leaving, to the St. Louis Republican. Mr. Lander states, "that Brigham Young had already disclaimed any participation of knowledge of the overt act of burning the supply trains, and the best judges of the Mormon character believe that the leaders of this singular society will continue to endeavor to blind the eyes of the General Government, and put off the day of a stand up fight until the last moment."

This has always been the course pursued by Brigham Young . He denied all knowledge of, or participation in, the brutal murder of Lieutenant Gunnison; and his brave companions, when there is no single circumstance connected with massacre that does not point to Young and his band of "Destroying Angels," as the prime movers in the affair. Every other outrage that has been perpetrated upon the government officers and private individuals he has always ignored, when the truth of his statements were entitled to the same degree of credence that would have been his denial of an act of murder performed by his own hand, and that is still grasping the fatal weapon, he standing over the body he has just stricken down, to the very witnesses of the whole transaction, who had beheld him perform the bloody deed. He has denied all knowledge of, or participation in the murder of one hundred and sixty emigrants, men, women and children, last fall. And yet his myrmidoms hovered on the outside, while the butchery was going on, holding constant communication with the Indians , and receiving from them the captive children to help swell the bloating ulcer of Mormonism.

Why did this human hyena, who fills the capacities of Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs, take prompt action for the punishment of the Indians , if there was no complicity between him and the tribes? He boasts of his power over these barbarous hordes, and why was it not exercised, instead of welcoming numbers, if not all, of those attached to the band into Salt Lake City , with the most friendly greetings on the part of the inhabitants, immediately after the massacre was performed? Indeed, it may almost be said, that these Indians danced their congratulatory war dance in hellish glee almost within the limits of the town, and Brigham Young and all Mormondom looked on in quiet satisfaction.

It is to be presumed that the course of Mormon policy has been about played out. This independent denial of Young of all knowledge of the burning of the government train, is such an apparent and blackening falsehood, that it will have the effect of permanently sealing the ears of the Administration against the belief in any of his future statements in palliation or excuse of crimes or overt acts of treason. Hos record is at length written up, and he will have to pay the penalty of his many atrocious crimes.

Meanwhile, those of our citizens, who, while they express their abhorrence of Mormonism, are busily engaged, in the capacity of newspaper corresponding, in patching up arguments against the right and policy of sending troops to Salt Lake City , to take summary vengeance upon Young and his hosts, if it becomes necessary, if they can reconcile themselves to accept these gospel denials of Young as possessing one grain of truth, may have some reasonable excuse for the course which they are pursuing. If they cannot do so, then we suggest that they expend their tender sympathies upon the orphans and relatives of the band of emigrants who were butchered, last fall, through the instigation of Young, while on their way to become good citizens of California .

The Utah Expedition, New York Times , February 4, 1858

From the New York Times Army correspondent near

... The rumors of Mormon complicity with the Indians in the horrible massacre of the California emigrants and others, in passing through Utah , is confirmed by the report of Dr. Hurt, the Indian Agent, and others. Brigham Young's boasted power and influence over the Indians since he has assumed his treasonable position towards the General Government, is used to its full extent against it. Persons passing to and from California through Utah , were often cautioned against the Indians by the Mormons. After being very inquisitive about the route they intended to take, they would say to them "Look out, the Indians are very bad on that road;" or, "If you ain't careful, the Indians will clean you out before you get through."

The significance of these remarks and a few incidents will serve to establish.

Early in February last, two gentlemen, John Peltro and John Tobin, the latter an apostate Mormon, in company with several others, came to the Indian Farm, on the Spanish Fork, on their way to California . While there, Brigham Young , junior, a son of the High Priest, and a young man named Taylor, overtook them and remained over night and all left in the morning. Peltro and his party started first, and jocularly asked Young and Taylor if they were going their way. Young was heard to say, in an under tone: "We will overtake you soon enough." As soon as they had left it was the talk among the Mormons that the Indians were very hostile on the route this party had taken. In anticipation of the facts, before Mr. Peltro and the party had time to reach the southern settlements, rumors were rife that they had all been cut off by the Indians .

The mail carrier of the California mail that came up soon after reported that the party was attacked in the night, while asleep on the Santa Clara River, by the Indians Salt Lake CityCalifornia Paiutes had been instigated by the Mormons. These reports of the massacre were soon confirmed by others, and the Indians Paiutes J.D. Lee Paiutes made three different attacks, but were repulsed each time, when a number of Mormons, with Lee Paiutes shot them. He also said there were some 15 or 16 small children, who were not killed, but were taken by the Bishop. Lee , He was encamped near Ogden. They drove off all his cattle, (nearly 500 head,) and all his mules and horses. The Utah Indians

Special Report Of The Mountain Meadow Massacre,
by J. H. Carleton, Brevet Major, United States Army, Captain, First Dragoons,
May 25, 1859

Camp at Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, May 25th, 1859

I could get no information of these emigrants of a date anterior to this. Here seems to be given the first glimpse of their number, character, and condition; and an authentic glimpse, too, if the train destroyed was the one seen by the doctor, of which there can hardly be any doubt. The doctor was confirmed in his belief that the train he saw was the one destroyed, by many reasons. Among them one fact seemed to be very convincing. He observed a carriage in the train in which some ladies rode, to whom he made one or more visits as they journeyed along. There was something peculiar in the construction of the carriage and its ornaments its blazoned stag's head upon the panels, etc. This carriage, he says, is now in the possession of the Mormons. Besides, he afterwards heard as a fact that this train had been entirely destroyed. 

The people who owned it would not have been likely to have to sell such an important part of their means of transportation midway their journey. The road upon which these emigrants were seen by Dr. Brewer crosses the Rocky Mountains through the South Pass, and thence goes on down into the Great Basin to Salt Lake City , and thence Southward along the western base of the Wasatch Mountains to what is called the rim of the basin. Here the "divide" is crossed, when it descends upon the valley of the Santa Clara affluent toward the Colorado [River.] Fillmore City is upon one of the many streams which run westward down from the Wasatch Mountains into the basin. It is about 140 miles from Salt Lake City ; then upon another stream, 90 miles farther south, is Prawn [Parowan] City; then upon still another stream, 18 miles south of Parowan, is Cedar City; then to a settlement on Pinto Creek is 24 miles; thence to Hamblin's house, on the northern slope of the Mountain Meadows, 6 miles. 

From Hamblin's house over the rim of the basin to the southern point of the Mountain Meadows, where there is a large spring, is 4 miles, 1,000 yards. This swell of land or watershed, called the rim of the basin, runs west across nearly midway the valley called the Mountain Meadows. This valley runs north and south; its northern portion is drained into the basin, its southern toward the Santa Clara. Down on the Santa Clara is a Mormon settlement called "The Fort": here some 30 families reside. It is 34 miles from Mountain Meadows. East of Cedar City, say 18 miles, on the east slope of the Wasatch Range, drained by Virgin River, is the town of Harmony, of 100 families; and farther down the Virgin River, 12 miles from "The Fort," on the Santa Clara, is Washington City, also of 100 families. The Santa Clara joins the Virgin River near Washington City. 

The Pah Vent Indians live near Fillmore City. The Pah Ute Indians are scattered along from Parowan southward to the Colorado. 

The train of emigrants proceeding southward from Fillmore toward the Mountain Meadows are next seen, so far as my inquiries go, by a Mr. Jacob Hamblin , a leading Mormon, who has charge of "the Fort," on the Santa Clara, and resides there in the winter season, but who has a cattle ranch and a house, where he lives in the summer time, at the Mountain Meadows. I here give what he said, and which I wrote down sentence by sentence, as he related it. He told me he had given the same information to Judge Cradlebaugh:

"About the middle of August, 1857, I started on a visit to Great Salt Lake City . At Corn Creek, 8 miles south of Fillmore City, I encamped with a train of emigrants who said they were mostly from Arkansas . There were, in my opinion, not over 30 wagons. There were several tents, and they had from 400 to 500 head of horned cattle, 25 head of horses, and some mules.

This information I got in conversation with one of the men of the train. The people seemed to be ordinary frontier homespun people, as a general thing. Some of the outsiders were rude and rough and calculated to get the ill will of the inhabitants. Several of the men asked me about the condition of the road and the disposition of the Indians , and where there would be a good place to recruit their stock. 

I asked them how many men they had. They said they had between forty and fifty "that would do to tie to." I told them I considered if they would keep a good lookout that the Indians did not steal their animals, half that number would be safe, and that the Mountain Meadows was the best place to recruit their animals before they entered upon the desert, I recommended this spring, and the grazing about here, four miles south of my house, as the place where they should stop. The most of these men seemed to have families with them. They remarked that this one train was made up near Salt Lake City of several trains that had crossed the plains separately, and being Southern people, had preferred to take the southern route. This was all of importance that passed between us, and I went on my journey and they proceeded on theirs. On my way back home, at Fillmore City, I heard it said that that Company, meaning the train referred to, had poisoned a small spring at Corn Creek, where I had met them. 

There was some considerable excitement about it among the citizens of Fillmore and among the Pah-Vent Indian who live within 8 miles of that place. I was told that eighteen head of cattle had died from drinking the water; that six of the Pah-Vents had been poisoned from eating the flesh of the cattle that died, and that one or two of these Indians had also died. Mr. Robinson, a citizen of Fillmore, whose son was buried the day I got there, said that the boy had been poisoned in 'trying out' the tallow of the dead cattle. I am satisfied that he believed what he said about it. I thought at the time that the spring had been poisoned as stated. I encamped that night with a company from Iron County, who told me that the Company from Arkansas had all been killed at Mountain Meadows except seventeen children.

I afterwards met, between Beaver and Pine Creek, Colonel Dame of Parowan, who confirmed what these people from Iron County had said. He further stated that the Indians were collecting on the Muddy with a determination to 'wipe out' another company of emigrants which was several days in rear of the first. He mentioned that the Indians had supplied themselves with arms and ammunition from the train destroyed at the Meadows. After consulting with him, he advised me to go forward and spare no pains in trying to prevent their carrying their purpose into execution, and he gave me an order to press into service any animal I might require for that purpose. I got a horse at Beaver about 8 o'clock that evening, and the next evening at Pinto Creek, 83 miles distant, I met Mr. Dudley Leavitt from the settlements on the Santa Clara. 

I told him what I had heard. He told me it was true, and that all the Indians in the Southern Country were greatly excited and "All Hell" could not stop them from killing or from at least robbing the other train of its stock. He further stated that several interpreters from the Santa Clara had gone on with this last grain. I told him to return and get the best animal he could find on my ranch and go on as fast as he could and endeavor to stop further mischief being done. That is, if the Indians ran off the stock of the train, for himself and all the interpreters to go and recover it, if possible, and prevent further depredation. He left me under these instructions. 

The next morning, which, I think, was the 18th of September 1857, I arrived at my ranch, 4 miles from the Meadows. Here I had left my family. I found at the ranch three little white girls in the care of my wife, the oldest six or seven years of age, the next about three, and the next about one. The youngest had been shot through one of her arms below the elbow by a large ball, breaking both bones and cutting the arm half off. My wife, having a young child of her own, and these three little orphans besides, my home appeared to be anything but cheerful. About one or two o'clock that day I came down to the point where the massacre had taken place, in company with an Indian boy named Albert, who had been brought up in my family. 

The boy told me that the inhabitants from Cedar City had come down and buried the murdered people in three large heaps, which he pointed out to me; the boy showed me two girls who had run some ways off before they were killed. The wolves had dug open the heaps, dragged out the bodies, and were then tearing the flesh from them. I counted 19 wolves at one of these places. I have since learned from the people who assisted in burying the bodies that there were 107 men, women and children found dead upon the ground. I am satisfied that all were not found. The most of the bodies were stripped of all their clothing, were then in a state of putrefaction, and presented a horrible sight. There was no property left upon the ground except one white ox, which is still at my ranch.

The following summer, when the bones had lost their flesh, I reburied them, assisted by a Mr. Fuller. 

The Indians have told me that they made an attack on the emigrants between daylight and sunrise as the men were standing around the camp fires, killing and wounding 15 at the first charge, which was delivered from the ravine near the spring close to the wagons and from a hill to the west. That the emigrants immediately corralled their wagons and threw up an entrenchment to shelter themselves from the balls. When I first saw the ditch, it was about 4 feet deep and the bank about 2 feet high. The Indians say they then ran off the stock but kept parties at the spring to prevent the emigrants from getting to the water, the emigrants firing upon them every time they showed themselves, and they returned the fire. This was kept up for six or seven days. The Indians say that they lost but one man, killed and three or four wounded. 

At the end of six or seven days, they say, a man among them who could talk English called to the emigrants and told them if they would go back to the settlements and leave all their property, especially their arms, they would spare their lives, but if they did not do so they would kill the whole of them. The emigrants agreed to this and started back on the road toward my ranch. About a mile from the spring there are some scrub-oak bushes and tall sage growing on either side of the road and close to it. Here a large body of Indians lay in ambush, who, when the emigrants approached, fell upon them in their defenseless condition and with bows and arrows and stones and guns and knives murdered all, without regard to sex or age, except a few infant children, seventeen of which have since been recovered. 

This is what the Indians told me nine days after the massacre took place. From the position of the bodies this latter part of their story seems to be corroborated, and I should judge that the women and children were in advance of the men when the last attack upon them was made. When I buried the bones last summer, I observed that about one third of the skulls were shot through with bullets and about one third seem to be broken with stones. 

The train I sent Leavitt to protect had gotten as far as the canyon, 5 miles below the Muddy, when the Indians made a descent upon its loose stock, driving off, as the immigrants have since said, 200 head of cattle. Leavitt and the other interpreters recovered between 75 and 100 head, which were brought to my ranch. Of these the Indians afterwards demanded and stole some 40 head, and last January I turned over to Mr. Lane from California , the balance. 

These are all the facts within my knowledge connected with the destruction of the one and the passing along of the other of these two trains."

Mrs. Hamblin is a simple-minded person of about 45, and evidently looks with the eyes of her husband at everything. She may really have been taught by the Mormons to believe it is no great sin to kill gentiles and enjoy their property. Of the shooting of the emigrants, which she had herself heard, and knew at the time what was going on, she seemed to speak without a shudder, or any very great feeling; but when she told of the 17 orphan children who were brought by such a crowd to her house of one small room there in the darkness of night, two of the children cruelly mangled and the most of them with their parents' blood still wet upon their clothes, and all of them shrieking with terror and grief and anguish, her own mother heart was touched. She at least deserves kind consideration for her care and nourishment of the three sisters, and for all she did for the little girl, "about one year old who had been shot through one of her arms, below the elbow, by a large ball, breaking both bones and cutting the arm half off." 

A Snake Indian boy, called Albert Hamblin, but whose Indian name was a word which meant "hungry," who is now about 17 or 18 years of age, says that Mr. Jacob Hamblin brought him beyond where Camp Floyd is situated and that he has lived with Mr. Hamblin about six years here and about three years up north. He was sent by Mr. Hamblin to my camp at Mountain Meadow on the 20th day of May 1859, and in speaking of the massacre at this place related what follows in very good English: 

"In the first part of September a year and a half ago, I was at Mr. Hamblin's ranch 4 miles from here. My business was to herd the sheep. I saw the train come along the road and pass down this way. It was near sundown. I drove the sheep home and went after wood, when I saw the train encamp at this spring from a high point of land where I was cutting wood.

When the train passed me, I saw a good many women and children. It was night when I got home. Another Indian boy, named John, who lives at the Vegas and talked some English, was with me. He lived with a man named Sam Knight, at Santa Clara. After the train had been camped at the spring three nights, the fourth day in the morning, just before light, when we were all abed at the house, I was waked up by hearing a good many guns fired. I could hear guns fired every little while all day until it was dark. Then I did not know what had been done. During the day, as we, John and I, sat on a hill herding sheep, we saw the Indians driving off all the stock and shoot some of the cattle; at the same time we could see shooting going on down around the train; emigrants shooting at the Indians from the corral of wagons, and Indians shooting at them from the tops of the hills around. In this way they fought on for about a week."

I asked an Indian what he was killing those people for. He was mad, and told me unless I kept 'my mouth shut' he would kill me. Three men came down from Cedar City to our house while the fighting was going on. They said they came after cattle. Other men passed to and from Santa Clara to our house during the nights. The three men from Cedar City stayed about the house a while "pitching horseshoe quoits" while the fighting was on, when they afterwards went back to Cedar City. Dudley Leavitt came up from Santa Clara in the night while the emigrants were camped here; but he did not see them. He went on to Cedar City to buy flour. When he got to the house we told him the emigrants were fighting here. One afternoon, near night, after they had fought nearly a week, John and I saw the women and children and some leave the wagons and go up the road toward our house. There were no Indians with them. 

John and I could see where the Indians were hid in the oak bushes and sage right by the side of the road a mile or more on their route; and I said to John, I would like to know what the emigrants left their wagons for, as they were going into "a worse fix than ever they saw." The women were on ahead with the children. The men were behind, altogether 'twas a big crowd. Soon as they got to the place where the Indians were hid in the bushes each side of the road, the Indians pitched right into them and commenced shooting them with guns and bows and arrows, and cut some of the men's throats with knives. The men run in every direction, the Indians after them yelling and whooping. Soon as the women and children saw the Indians spring out of the bushes, they all cried out so loud that John and I heard them. 

The women scattered and tried to hide in the bushes, but the Indians shot them down; two girls ran up the slope towards the east about a quarter of a mile; John and I ran down and tried to save them; the girls hid in some bushes. A man, who is an Indian doctor, also told the Indians not to kill them. The girls then came out and hung around him for protection, he trying to keep the Indians away. The girls were crying out loud. The Indians came up and seized the girls by their hands and dresses and pulled and pushed them away from the doctor and shot them. By this time it was dark, and the other Indians came down the road and had got nearly through killing all the others. They were about half an hour killing the people from the time they first sprang out upon them from the bushes. 

Some time in the night Tullis and the Indians brought some of the children in a wagon up to the house. The children cried nearly all night. One little one, a baby, just commencing to walk around, was shot through the arm. One of the girls had been hit through the ear. Many of the children's clothes were bloody. The next morning we kept three children and the rest were taken to Cedar City; also the next morning the train of wagons went up to Cedar City with all the goods. The Indians got all the flour. Some of it I saw buried this side of Pinto Creek. There were two yoke of cattle to each wagon as they passed up. The rest of the stock had been killed to be eaten by the Indians while the fight was going on, except some which were driven over the mountains this way and that. 

The Indians stripped naked the dead bodies; that is all the men; some of the women had their underclothes left. There were a good many men who came over from Pinto Creek and about, and stayed around the house while the fight went on. I saw John D. Lee there about the house during that time. He lives in Harmony -- and Richard Robinson, Prime Coleman, Amos Thornton, Brother Dickinson, who all live at Pinto Creek. Thornton I saw at the house. When father (John Hamblin) came back, I came down with him onto the ground. The bodies were all buried then so we could not see them. There were plenty of wolves around. The two girls had been buried also and I did show them to father, the Indians buried the bodies taking spades from the wagons. The people from Cedar City came down three days later, after the massacre, but the Indians had buried all the bodies before they came. This is all I know about it."

This Albert Hamblin is nearly a grown man in point of size, and from appearance and bearing has evidently had engrafted upon his native viciousness all the bad traits of the community in which he lives. Two of the children are said to have pointed him out to Dr. Forney as an Indian whom they saw kill their two sisters. 

His story is artfully made up, evidently part truth and part falsehood. Leavitt could not have passed up from "The Fort" to Cedar City without knowing where the emigrants were besieged, as the road runs near the spring where the corral was, and between it and some hills occupied by the Mormons and Indians . That Albert stayed upon a neighborhood hill "herding sheep" day after day while the fight lasted, and then to the house of nights to go to sleep cannot be true. That Mormons were passing and re-passing upon the road, day and night, and did not know what was going on is simply absurd to one conversant with the surroundings of the place. 

In this Indian's statement that some of the Mormons at the house were "pitching horseshoe quoits," a glance is given at the fiendish levity with which the murdering, day by day, of this artfully entrapped party of gentile men, women and children was regarded. This "pitching of horseshoe quoits" was during the time when dropping shots from the Indians and the other Mormon concealed around the springs and behind the crest of hills kept back the perishing emigrants from water. There was time enough for some to go up to Hamblin's house for refreshments. No danger of the emigrants getting away. It was all safe in that quarter. "There is time enough for us to have a game of quoits, the other boys will take care of matters down there." 

The general will hardly fail to observe the discrepancy between Hamblin's statement and that of Albert in relation to the burial of the two girls and in relation to the burial of the bodies of the others who had been murdered. Hamblin says the people from Cedar City buried them; Albert that the Indians did it, taking spades from the wagons, not a likely thing for bona fide Indians to do. My own opinion is that the remains were not buried at all until after they had been dismembered by the wolves and the flesh stripped from the bones, and then only such bones were buried as lay scattered along nearest the road. 

Albert had evidently been trained in his statement. He gave much of it after cross-questioning, keeping always the Mormons in the background and the Indians conspicuously the prominent figures and actors, as Hamblin and his wife had endeavored to do. It was not until after I told him that Hamblin and his wife had informed me that John D. Lee and other Mormons were there and had asked him how it was possible he had not seen them, that he recollected about "Brother Lee" and "Brothers" Prime Coleman, Amos Thornton, Richard Robinson, and "Brother" Dickinson from Pinto Creek. He too had fallen into the general custom of the people and called every man "brother." 

I questioned other Mormons in relation to the massacre, but many of them said they had moved from the northern part of the Territory since it took place; others, that they were harvesting at Parowan, Cedar, and at "The Fort," and knew nothing of it until it was all over. Even "Brother" Prime Coleman said that he was harvesting near Parowan just before that time with Brother Benjamin Nell, but when the massacre took place he was down on the Muddy River with Brother Ira Hatch to keep down disturbances there among the Indians . He said that as he and Hatch were coming back they saw in the sand the tracks of three men who wore fine boots. This was at Beaver Dams. 

He and Hatch were frightened at this sign, were afraid of robbers, and did not stop, even for water, until they reached the Santa Clara, 2 miles off. At Pine Valley, near Mountain Meadows, they first heard of the massacre. There is no doubt but that all three of these men were active participants in the butchering at the Meadows. The foregoing is the Mormon story of the Massacre . As it took place on Hamblin's ranch and within hearing of his family, it was impossible for them to be "out harvesting" or "up north" or "down on the Muddy"; he himself had gone to Salt Lake City . At least he says so; but even this, I think, needs proof. Some account had to be made up, and the one most likely to be believed was that the whole matter had been started by the Indians and carried out by them, because the emigrants had poisoned a spring near Fillmore City. Mr. Rodgers, United States Deputy Marshal, who accompanied Judge Cradlebaugh in his tour to the South, told me that the water in the spring referred to runs with such volume and force "a barrel of arsenic would not poison it." 

While the Mormons say the Indians were the murderers, they speak with no sympathy of the sufferers, but rather in extenuation of the crime by saying the emigrants were not fit to live; that besides poisoning the spring "they were impudent to the people on the road, robbed their hen roosts and gardens, and were insulting to the church; called their oxen " Brigham Young ," "Heber Kimball," etc., and altogether were a rough, ugly set that ought to have been killed anyway." 

But there is another side to this story. It is said that some two years since Bishop Parley Pratt was shot in Cherokee Nation near Arkansas by the husband of a woman who had run off with that saintly prelate. The Mormons swore vengeance on the people of Arkansas , one of who was this injured husband. The wife came on to Salt Lake City after the bishop was killed and still lives there. 

About this time, also, the Mormon troubles with the United States commenced, and the most bitter hostility against the Gentiles became rife throughout Utah among all the Latter-Day Saints. It will be recollected that even while these emigrants were pursuing their journey overland to California , Colonel Alexander was following upon their trace with two or more regiments of troops ordered to Utah to assist, if necessary, in seeing the laws of the land properly enforced in that territory. 

This train was undoubtedly a very rich one. It is said the emigrants had nearly nine hundred head of fine cattle, many horses and mules, and one stallion valued at $2,000; that they had a great deal of ready money besides. All this the Mormons at Salt Lake City saw as the train came on. The Mormons knew the troops were marching to their country, and a spirit of intense hatred of the Americans and towards our Government was kindled in the hearts of this whole people by Brigham Young , Orson Hyde, and other leaders, even from the pulpits. 

Here, opportunely, was a rich train of emigrants -- American Gentiles. That is, the most obnoxious kind of Gentiles--and not only that, but these Gentiles were from Arkansas , where the saintly Pratt had gained his crown of martyrdom. Is not here some thread which may be seized as a clue to this mystery so long hidden as to whether or not the Mormons were accomplices in the massacre? This train of Arkansas Gentiles was doomed from the day it crossed through the South Pass and had gotten fairly down in the meshes of the Mormon spider net, from which it was never to become disentangled. 

Judge Cradlebaugh informed me that about this time Brigham Young , preaching in the tabernacle and speaking of the trouble with the United States, said that up to that moment he had protected emigrants who had passed through the Territory, but now he would turn the Indians loose upon them. It is a singular point worthy of note that this sermon should have been preached just as the rich train had gotten into the valley and was now fairly entrapped; a sermon good, coming from him, as a letter of marque to these land pirates who listened to him as an oracle. The hint thus shrewdly given out was not long in being acted upon.

From that moment these emigrants, as they journeyed southward, were considered the authorized, if not legal, prey of the inhabitants. All kinds of depredations and extortions were practiced upon them. At Parowan they took some wheat to the mill to be ground. The bishop replied, "Yes, but do you take double toll." This shows the spirit with which they were treated. These things are now leaking out; but some of those who were then Mormons have renounced their creed, and through them much is learned which, taken in connection with the facts that are known, served to develop the truth. It is said to be a truth that Brigham Young sent letters south, authorizing, if not commanding, that the train should be destroyed. 

A Pah-Ute chief, of the Santa Clara band, named "Jackson," who was one of the attacking party, and had a brother slain by the emigrants from their corral by the spring, says that orders came down in a letter from Brigham Young that the emigrants were to be killed; and a chief of the Pah-Utes named Touche, now living on the Virgin River, told me that a letter from Brigham Young to the same effect was brought down to the Virgin River band by a young man named Huntington [Oliver B. Huntington], who, I learn, is an Indian Interpreter and lives at present at Salt Lake City . 

Jackson says there were 60 Mormons led by Bishop John D. Lee , of Harmony, and a prominent man in the church named [Isaac C.] Haight , who lives at Cedar City. That they were all painted and disguised as Indians . 

That this painting and disguising was done at a spring in a canyon about a mile northeast of the spring where the emigrants were encamped, and that Lee and Haight led and directed the combined force of Mormons and Indians in the first attack, throughout the siege, and at the last massacre. The Santa Clara Indians say that the emigrants could not get to the water, as besiegers lay around the spring ready to shoot anyone who approached it. This could easily have been done. Major [Henry] Prince, Paymaster, U.S.A., and Lieutenant Ogle, First Dragoons, on the 17th of this month., stood at the ditch which was in the corral and placed some men at the spring 28 yards distant, and they could just see the other men's heads, both parties standing erect. This shows how vital a point the Assailants occupied; how close it was to the assailed, and how well protected it was from the direction of the corral. 

The following account of the affair is, I think, susceptible of legal proof by those whose names are known, and who, I am assured, are willing to make oath to many of the facts which serve as links in the chain of evidence leading toward the truth of this grave question: By whom were these 120 men, women, and children murdered? 

It was currently reported among the Mormons at Cedar City, in talking among themselves, before the troops ever came down south, (when all felt secure of arrest or prosecution), and nobody seemed to question the truth of it -- that a train of emigrants of fifty or upward of men, mostly with families, came and encamped at this spring at Mountain Meadows in September 1857. It was reported in Cedar City, and was not, and is not doubted--even by the Mormons--that John D. Lee , Isaac C. Haight , John M. Higbee (the first resides at Harmony, the last two at Cedar City), were the leaders who organized a party of fifty or sixty Mormons to attack this train. 

They had also all the Indians which they could collect at Cedar City, Harmony and Washington City to help them, a good many in number. This party then came down, and at first the Indians were ordered to stampede the cattle and drive them away from the train. Then they commenced firing on the emigrants; this firing was returned by the emigrants; one Indian was killed, a brother of the chief of the Santa Clara Indians , another shot through the leg, who is now a cripple at Cedar City. There were without doubt a great many more killed and wounded. It was said the Mormons were painted and disguised as Indians . The Mormons say the emigrants fought "like lions" and they saw that they could not whip them by any fair fighting.

After some days fighting the Mormons had a council among themselves to arrange a plan to destroy the emigrants. They concluded, finally, that they could send some few down and pretend to be friends and try and get the emigrants to surrender. John D. Lee and three or four others, headmen, from Washington, Cedar, and Parowan ( Haight and Higbee from Cedar), had their paint washed off and dressing in their usual clothes, took their wagons and drove down toward the emigrant's corral as they were just traveling on the road on their ordinary business. The emigrants sent out a little girl towards them. She was dressed in white and had a white handkerchief in her hand, which she waved in token of peace. The Mormons with the wagon waved one in reply, and then moved on towards the corral. The emigrants then came out, no Indians or others being in sight at this time, and talked with these leading Mormons with the three wagons. 

They talked with the emigrants for an hour or an hour and a half, and told them that the Indians were hostile, and that if they gave up their arms it would show that they did not want to fight; and if they, the emigrants, would do this they would pilot them back to the settlements. The migrants had horses which had remained near their wagons; the loose stock, mostly cattle, had been driven off--not the horses. Finally the emigrants agreed to these terms and delivered up their arms to the Mormons with whom they had counseled. The women and children then started back toward Hamblin's house, the men following with a few wagons that they had hitched up. On arriving at the Scrub Oaks, etc., where the other Mormons and Indians lay concealed, Higbee , who had been one of those who had inveigled the emigrants from their defenses, himself gave the signal to fire, when a volley was poured in from each side, and the butchery commenced and was continued until it was consummated.

The property was brought to Cedar City and sold at public auction. It was called in Cedar City, and is so called now by the Facetious Mormons , "property taken at the siege of Sebastopol." The clothing stripped from the corpses, bloody and with bits of flesh upon it, shredded by the bullets from the persons of the poor creatures who wore it, was placed in the cellar of the tithing office (an official building), where it lay about three weeks, when it was brought away by some of the party; but witnesses do not know whether it was sold or given away. It is said the cellar smells of it even to this day. It is reported that John D. Lee , Haight , and Philip Klingensmith (the latter lives in Cedar City) went to Salt Lake City immediately after the massacre, and counseled with Brigham Young about what should be done with the property. They took with them the ready money they got from the murdered emigrants and offered it to Young. He said he would have nothing to do with it. He told them to divide the cattle and cows among the poor. They had taken some of the cattle to Salt Lake City merchants there. Lee told Brigham that the Indians would not be satisfied if they did not have a share of the cattle. Brigham left it to Lee to make the distribution. One or two of the Mormons did not like it that Lee had this authority, as they say he swindled them out of their share. Lee was the smartest man of the lot. 

The wagons, carriages, and rifles, etc., were distributed among the Mormons. Lee has a carriage reported be one of them. The Indians have but few of the rifles. 

Much of this seems to be corroborated by a man named Whitelock, a dentist, now at Camp Floyd. Whitelock says he was told by a Mormon, who acknowledged that he was present at the massacre, but who is now in California , "that orders to destroy the emigrants first came from above" (Mormon Leadership) and that a party of armed men under the command of a man named John D. Lee , who was then a bishop in the church, but who has since (as Brigham Young says) been deposed, left the settlements of Beaver City, north of Parowan, Parowan City, and Cedar City on what was called a "secret expedition," and after an absence of a few days returned, bringing back strange wagons, cattle, horses, mules and also household property. 

There is legal proof that this property was sold at the official tithing office of the church. Whitelock says that this man could not report the details of the massacre without tears and trembling. He said he was so horrified at these atrocities he fled away from Utah to California . The man said he saw children clinging around the knees of the murderers, begging for mercy and offering themselves as slaves for life could they be spared. But their throats were cut from ear to ear as an answer to their appeal.

There are now wagons, carriages, and cattle in possession of the Mormons which can be sworn to, it is said, as having belonged to these emigrants by those who saw them upon the plains.

Two hundred and forty eight head of cattle were sold on the Jordan River after the arrival of the Army to United States commissaries by Mormons, and it is said that they can be traced as having come through the hands of Lee and [William H.] Hooper, who was Mormon Secretary of State, and were without doubt the cattle taken from the emigrants. Others are seen in the hands of the Mormons which are believed to have been captured at the time of the massacre. The Pah-Ute Indians of the Muddy River said to me that they know the Mormons had charged them with the massacre of the emigrants, but said they , "where are the wagons, the cattle, the clothing, the rifles, and other property belonging to the train? We have not got or had them. No, you find all these things in the hands of the Mormons." There is some logical reasoning in that, creditable at least to the obscure minds of miserable savages, whatever be the truth.

But there is not the shadow of a doubt that the emigrants were butchered by the Mormons themselves, assisted doubtless by the Indians . The idea of letting the emigrants come on to an obscure quarter of the Territory, amid the fastnesses of the mountains, with a formidable desert extending from that point to California , over which a stranger to the country, without sustenance, escape with his life; to a point were the Indians were numerous enough to lend assistance, and who could plausibly be charged with the crime in case, in the future any people should give trouble by asking ugly questions on the subject, exhibits consideration as to future contingencies of which these miserable Indians , at least are entirely incapable. 

Besides, "fifty men that would do to tie to" in a fight, all well armed and experts in the use of the rifle, could have wiped out ten times their number of Pah-Ute Indians armed only with the bow and arrow. Hamblin himself, their agent, informed that to his certain knowledge in 1856 there were but three guns in the whole tribe. I doubt if they had many more in 1857. The emigrants were to be destroyed with as little loss to the Mormons as possible, and no one old enough to tell the tale was to be left alive. To effect this the whole plans and operations, from beginning to end, display skill, patience, pertinacity and forecast, which no people here at the time were equal to except the Mormons themselves. Hamblin says three men escaped. They were doubtless herding when the attack was made, or crept out of a corral by night. 

The fate of one of these he had never learned. He must have been murdered off the road or perished of hunger and thirst in the mountains. At all events he never went through to California or he would have been heard from. One got as far as the Muddy River, ninety odd miles from Mountain Meadows. There the Indians cut his throat. The other got as far as Las Vegas, 45 miles still farther towards California , where he arrived totally naked, some Indians having stripped him of his clothes. Hamblin said an acquaintance of his coming from that way had seen marks in the sand where the Indians had thrown him down and where there had been struggling when he was stripped. The Las Vegas Indians cut his throat likewise. The Mormons had a fort at Las Vegas, now abandoned, but which was occupied at that time.

Here is something which seems to point to the "tracks in the sand of three men who wore fine boots" which brothers Ira Hatch and Prime Coleman saw at the Beaver Dams, and at which they became so frightened that they didn't stop to get water, although there was none other within 20 miles. During this "Siege of Sebastapol" or after the final massacre, it was doubtless discovered that the three emigrants had escaped, and Brothers Hatch and Coleman, perhaps two Mormons named Young, were sent in pursuit to cut them off on the desert or to get the Indians to do it. Hatch talks Pah-Ute like a native, and is now an interpreter of their language whenever needed. One of the Youngs, who now lives at Cotton Farm, near the confluence of The Virgin and Santa Clara, tells this story of the emigrants murdered on the Muddy: 

This is their story, but the truth doubtless was the Youngs, Hatch and Coleman, had followed up the man; had found him beyond the Muddy, brought him back, and then set the Indians upon him. The fate of these three men seems to close the scenes of this terrible tragedy on all the grown people of that fine train which was seen journeying prosperously forward at O'Fallons Bluffs on the 11th of the preceding June. There were doubtless atrocious episodes connected with the massacre of the women, which will never be known. Mr. Rogers, the deputy marshal, told me that Bishop John D. Lee is said to have taken a beautiful lady away to a secluded spot. There she implored him for more than life. She too, was found dead. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear.

The little children whom we left this John D. Lee distributing at Hamblin's house after that sad night, have at length been gathered together and are now at Indian Farm, 12 miles south of Fillmore City, or at Salt Lake City in the custody for Dr. Forney, United States Indian agent. They are 17 in number. Sixteen of these were seen by Judge Cradlebaugh, Lieutenant Kearney, and others, and gave the following information in relation to their personal identity, etc. The children were varying from 3 to 9 years of age, 10 girls, 6 boys, and were questioned separately. 

The first is a boy named Calvin, between 7 and 8 [ John Calvin Miller , 6]; does not remember his surname; says he was by his mother [ Matilda ] when she was killed, and pulled the arrows from her back until she was dead; says he had two brothers older than himself, named James and Henry, and three sisters, Nancy, Mary and Martha.

The second is a girl who does not remember her name. The others say it is Demurr [ Georgia Ann Dunlap , 18 mos.].

The third is a boy named Ambrose Mariam Tagit [ Emberson Milum Tackitt , 4]; says he had two brothers older than himself and one younger. His father, mother, and two elder brothers were killed, his younger brother was brought to Cedar City; says he lived in Johnson County, but does not know what State; says it took one week to go from where he lived with his grandfather and grandmother who are still living in the States.

The fourth is a girl obtained of John Morris, a Mormon, at Cedar City. She does not recollect anything about herself [ Mary Miller , 4].

Fifth. A boy obtained of E. H. Grove [ William "Joseph" Tillman Miller , 1], says that the girl obtained of Morris is named Mary and is his sister.

The sixth is a girl who says her name is Prudence Angelina [ Prudence Angeline Dunlap , 5]. Had two brothers, Jessie [Thomas J., 17] and John [John H., 16], who were killed. Her father's name was William [ Lorenzo Dow Dunlap ], and she had an Uncle Jessie [ Jesse Dunlap, Jr. ]

The seventh is a girl. She says her name is Francis Harris, or Horne, remembers nothing of her family [ Sarah Frances Baker , 3].

The eighth is a young boy, too young to remember anything about himself [ Felix Marion Jones , 18 mos.].

The ninth is a boy whose name is William W. Huff [ William Henry Tackitt , 19 mos.].

The tenth is a boy whose name is Charles Fancher [ Christopher "Kit" Carson Fancher , 5].

The eleventh is a girl who says her name is Sophronia Huff [ Nancy Saphrona Huff , 4].

The twelfth is a girl who says her name is Betsy [ Martha Elizabeth Baker , 5].

The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth are three sisters named Rebecca, Louisa and Sara Dunlap [ Rebecca J.Dunlap , 6; Louisa Dunlap , 4; Sarah Elizabeth Dunlap , 1]. These three sisters were the children obtained of Jacob Hamblin .

I have no note of the sixteenth [ Tryphena D. Fancher , 22 mos.].

The seventeenth is a boy who was but six weeks old at the time of the massacre [ William Twitty Baker , 9 mos.] Hamblin's wife brought him to my camp on the 19th of this month. The next day they took him on to Salt Lake City to give him up to Dr. Forney. He is a pretty little boy and hardly dreamed he had again slept upon the ground where his parents had been murdered.

These children, it is said, could not be induced to make any developments while they remained with the Mormons, from fear, no doubt, having been intimidated by threats. Dr. Forney, it is said, came southward for them under the impression that he would find them in the hands of the Indians .

The Mormons say the children were in the hands of the Indians and were purchased by them for rifles, blankets, etc., but the children say they have never lived with the Indians at all. The Mormons claimed of Dr. Forney sums of money, varying from $200 to $400, for attending them when sick, for feeding and clothing them, and for nourishing the infants from the time when they assumed to have purchased them from the Indians .

Murders of the parents and despoilers of their property, these Mormons, rather these relentless, incarnate fiends, dared even to come forward and claim payment for having kept these little ones barely alive; these helpless orphans whom they themselves had already robbed of their natural protectors and support. Has there ever been an act which at all equaled this devilish hardihood in more than devilish effrontery? Never, but one; and even then the price was but "30 pieces of silver."

On my arrival at Mountain Meadows, the 16th of this month, I encamped near the spring where the emigrants had encamped, and where they had entrenched themselves after they were first fired upon. The ditch they there dug is not yet filled up.  

The same day Captain Reuben P. Campbell, United States Second Dragoons, with a command of three companies of troops, came from his camp at Santa Clara and camped there also. Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy Marshall Rogers had come down from Provo with Captain Campbell, and had been inquiring into the circumstances of the massacre. The judge cannot receive too much praise for the resolute and thorough manner with which he pursues him investigation. On his way down past this spot, and before my arrival, Captain Campbell had caused to be collected and buried the bones of 26 of the victims. Dr. Brewer informed me that the remains of 18 were buried in one grave, 12 in another and 6 in another.

On the 20th I took a wagon and a party of men and made a thorough search for others amongst the sage brushes for a least a mile back from the road that leads to Hamblin's house. Hamblin himself showed Sergeant Fritz of my party a spot on the right-hand side of the road where had partially covered up a great many of the bones. These were collected, and a large number of others on the left hand side of the road up the slopes of the hill, and in the ravines and among the bushes. I gathered many of the disjointed bones of 34 persons. The number could easily be told by the number of pairs of shoulder blades and by lower jaws, skulls, and parts of skulls, etc.

These, with the remains of two others gotten in a ravine to the east of the spring, where they had been interred at but little depth, 34 in all, I buried in a grave on the northern side of the ditch. Around and above this grave I caused to be built of loose granite stones, hauled from the neighboring hills, a rude monument, conical in form and fifty feet in circumference at the base, and twelve feet in height. This is surmounted by a cross hewn from red cedar wood. From the ground to top of cross is twenty four feet. On the transverse part of the cross, facing towards the north, is an inscription carved in the wood. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." And on a rude slab of granite set in the earth and leaning against the northern base of the monument there are cut the following words: "Here 120 men, women, and children were massacred in cold blood early in September, 1857. They were from Arkansas ."

I observed that nearly every skull I saw had been shot through with rifle or revolver bullets. I did not see one that had been "broken in with stones." Dr. Brewer showed me one, that probably of a boy of eighteen, which had been fractured and slit, doubtless by two blows of a bowie knife or other instrument of that character.   

I saw several bones of what must have been very small children. Dr. Brewer says from what he saw he thinks some infants were butchered. The mothers doubtless had these in their arms, and the same shot or blow may have deprived both of life.

The scene of the massacre, even at this late day, was horrible to look upon. Women's hair, in detached locks and masses, hung to the sage bushes and was strewn over the ground in many places. Parts of little children's dresses and of female costume dangled from the shrubbery or lay scattered about; and among these, here and there, on every hand, for at least a mile in the direction of the road, by two miles east and west, there gleamed, bleached white by the weather, the skulls and other bones of those who had suffered. A glance into the wagon when all these had been collected revealed a sight which can never be forgotten.  

The idea of the melancholy procession of that great number of women and children, followed at a distance by their husbands and brothers, after all their suffering, their watching, their anxiety and grief, for so many gloomy days and dismal nights at the corral, thus moving slowly and sadly up to the point where the Mormons and Indians lay in wait to murder them; these doomed and unhappy people literally going to their own funeral; the chill shadows of night closing darkly around them, sad precursors of the approaching shadows of a deeper night, brings to the mind a picture of human suffering and wretchedness on the one hand, and of human treachery and ferocity upon the other, that cannot possibly be excelled by any other scene that ever before occurred in real life. 

I caused the distance to be measured from point to point on the scene of the massacre. From the ditch near the spring to the point upon the road where the men attacked and destroyed, and where their bones were mostly found, is one mile 565 yards. Here there is a grave where Captain Campbell's command buried some of the remains. To the next point, also marked by a similar grave made by Captain Campbell, and where the women and children were butchered; a point identified from their bones and clothing have been found near it, it is one mile, 1,135 yards. To the swell across the valley called the Rim of the Basin, is one mile 1,334 yards. To Hamblin's house four miles, 1,049 yards.

Major Henry Prince, United States Army, drew a map of the ground about the spring where the entrenchment was dug, and embracing the neighboring hill behind which the Mormons had cover. On the crests of these hills are still traces of some rude little parapets made of loose stones and loop holed for rifles. Marks of bullets shot from the corral are seen upon these stones. I enclose this map and also a drawing of the valley as it appears looking northward from a point below the spring and another drawing giving a near view of the monument. These latter are not so good as I could wish for, but they will serve to give a tolerably correct idea of what they are intended to represent. They were made by Mr. Moeller, who has lived many years among the Mormons.

In pursuing the bloody thread which runs throughout this picture of sad realities, the question how this crime, that for hellish atrocity has no parallel in our history, can be adequately punished often comes up and seeks in vain for an answer. Judge Cradlebaugh says that with Mormon juries the attempt to administer justice in their Territory is simply a ridiculous farce. He believes the Territory ought at once to be put under martial law. This may be the only practical way in which even a partial punishment can be meted out to these Latter-Day devils.

But how inadequate would be the punishment of a few, even by death, for this crime for which nearly the whole Mormon population, from Brigham Young down, were more or less instrumental in perpetrating.

There are other heinous crimes to be punished besides this. Martial law would at best be but a temporary expedient. Crime is found in the footsteps of the Mormons wherever they go, and so the evil must always exist as long as the Mormons themselves exist. What is their history? What their antecedents? Perhaps the future may be judged by the past.

In their infancy as a religious community, they settled in Jackson County, Missouri . There, in a short time, from the crimes and depredations they committed, they became intolerable to the inhabitants, whose self preservation compelled them to ride and drive the Mormons out by force of arms. At Nauvoo, again another experiment was tried with them. The people of Illinois exercised forbearance toward them until it literally "ceased to be a virtue." They were driven thence as they had been from Missouri , but fortunately this time with the loss on their part of those two shallow imposters, but errant miscreants, the brothers Smith.

The United States took no wholesome heed of these lessons taught by Missouri and Illinois. The Mormons were permitted to settle amid the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, with a desert on each side, and upon the great thoroughfare between the two oceans. Over this thoroughfare our Citizens have hitherto not been able to travel without peril to their lives and property, except, forsooth, Brigham Young pleased to grant them his permission and give them his protection . "He would turn the Indians loose upon them."

The expenses of the army in Utah , past and to come (figure that), the massacre at the Mountain Meadows, the unnumbered other crimes, which have been and will yet be committed by this community, are but preliminary gusts of the whirlwind our Government has reaped and is yet to reap for the wind it had sowed in permitting the Mormons ever to gain foothold within our borders.

They are an ulcer upon the body politic. An ulcer which it needs more than cutlery to cure. It must have excision, complete and thorough extirpation, before we can ever hope for safety or tranquility. This is no rhetorical phrase made by a flourish of the pen, but is really what will prove to be an earnest and stubborn fact. This brotherhood may be contemplated from any point of view, and but one conclusion can be arrived at concerning it. The Thugs of India were an inoffensive, moral, law-abiding people in comparison.

I have made this a special report, because the information here given, however crude, I thought to be of such grave importance it ought to be put permanently on record and deserved to be kept separate and distinct from a report on the ordinary occurrences of a march. Some of the details might, perhaps, have been omitted, but there has been a great and fearful crime perpetrated, and many of the circumstances connected with it have long been kept most artfully concealed. But few direct rays even now shine in upon the subject. So that however indistinct and unimportant they may at present appear to be, even the faint side lights given by these details may yet lend assistance in exploring some obscure recess of the matter where the great truths, that should be diligently and persistently sought for, may yet happily be discovered.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

James Henry Carleton, Brevet Major, U.S.A., Captain in the First Dragoons.
Major W.

Surviving Children of the Murdered Fix the Crime upon the Mormons,
San Francisco Evening Bulletin, May 31, 1859

The story of so horrible a human butchery as that which occurred at the Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, in the autumn of 1857, has by this time, no doubt, reached the States; but as no account which I have yet seen can in the slightest degree approximate to a description of the hideous truth, being myself now on the ground, and having an opportunity of communicating with some who were no doubt present on the occasion, I deem it proper to send you a plain and unvarnished statement of the affair as it actually occurred.

A train of Arkansas emigrants, with some few Missourians , said to number forty men, with their families, were on their way to California , through the Territory of Utah , and had reached a series of grassy valleys, by the Mormons called the Mountain Meadows, where they remained several days recruiting their animals. On the night of September 9, not suspecting any danger, as usual they quietly retired to rest, little dreaming of the dreadful fate awaiting and soon to overtake them. On the morning of the 10th, as, with their wives and families, they stood around their camp-fires passing the congratulations of the morning, they were suddenly fired upon from an ambush, and at the first discharge fifteen of the best men are said to have fallen dead or mortally wounded. To seek the shelter of their corral was but the work of a moment, but there they found but limited protection.

To enable you to appreciate fully the danger of their position I must give a brief description of the ground. The encampment, which consisted of a number of tents and a corral of forty wagons and ambulances, lay on the west bank of, and eight or ten yards distant from, a large spring in a deep ravine running southward; another ravine, also, branching from this, and facing the camp on the southwest; overlooking them on the northwest, and within rifle-shot, rises a large mound commanding the corral, upon which parapets of stone, with loopholes, have been built. Yet another ravine, larger and deeper, faces them on the east, which could be entered without exposure from the south and far end. Having crept into these shelters during the darkness of the night, the cowardly assailants fired upon their unsuspecting victims, thus making a beginning to the most brutal butchery ever perpetrated on this continent. We have received, from our Salt Lake correspondent, a copy of the following thrilling statement, made by John Lynch, who accompanied Dr. Forney, the Utah Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to Mountain Meadows, on his recent trip in search of the surviving children of the Mountain Meadows Massacre . It is the clearest and most interesting narrative of facts, in connection with that terrible tragedy, which has yet been given:

About three months since, I started to go to Arizona . When I arrived at Nephi, I was overtaken by Dr. Forney, the Indian Superintendent, who was going to the Mountain Meadows for the thirteen surviving children of the Mountain Meadows Massacre . He told me he was doubtful about the Mormons he had with him, and asked me if I would assist him in case they deserted him. My party consisted of twenty-five men. I told him I would do so, and would return with him to Camp Floyd myself, if he could get no other assistance. When the doctor arrived at Beaver City, as was anticipated, the Mormons deserted without apprizing him of their intention -- supposing that he would be unable to go further in his unassisted condition. I found him about 11 o'clock at night guarding his mules -- told him to go to bed, and I would relieve him. I persuaded two of my party to assist me; and with their aid, drive his teams down to the Mountain Meadows, and gave up my intention of going further south. We pursued our course to Parowan. In this place, which is inhabited almost entirely by English and Danes -- as are most of the southern settlements -- the greatest hostility was evinced towards us. The people would hold no communication with our party, and spoke in the most insulting terms of the Americans, as they designate all who are not Mormons.

We continued our journey to the Meadows, passing through Painter Creek and Cedar City. The scene of the massacre is a broad, level meadow encompassed by a chain of hills. Upon careful inquiry, we learn that the emigrants had been harassed by bands of men, whom they supposed to be Indians , during their journey from Cedar City to the Meadows, and, at the latter place, made a corral of their wagons for defense. The corral was near a spring, which was the source of a small stream running through the plain. Words cannot describe the horrible picture which was here presented to us. Human skeletons, disjointed bones, ghastly skulls and the hair of women, were scattered in frightful profusion over a distance of two miles. Three mounds, partially exposing the remains of some of the murdered, indicated the careless attempt that had been made to bury the unfortunate victims. We remained two or three hours at the Meadows, and occupied ourselves in burying the uncovered remains of the massacred.

This done, we proceeded to the residence of the man Hamblin , a Mormon, in whose possession the children were. We found them in a most wretched condition, half starved, half naked, filthy, infested with vermin, and their eyes diseased from the cruel neglect to which they had been exposed. After three days at Santa Clara, where clothing was made for the children, we returned with Hamblin and ten of the children to Cedar City, there obtained two more, and another at Painter Creek. When we passed through Beaver City, some of the Mormon men hooted at the children, and called them the survivors of Sebastopol and Waterloo. Among the children are some who retain a very vivid impression of much connected with the massacre. A very intelligent little girl, named Becky Dunlap , pointed out to me at Santa Clara an Englishman named Tullis , whom she says she saw murder her father. She also states that Hamblin's Indian boy killed her two sisters. Both she and a boy named Milum recognized dresses and a part of the jewelry belonging to their mothers, worn by the wives of John D. Lee, the Mormon Bishop of Harmony. The boy, Milum , also identified his father's oxen, which are now owned by Lee. The two oldest boys told me that after they had been fighting for eight days, during four of which they were in the corral, from whence the water had been cut off, Bishop Haight , of Cedar City, came into the corral, and told the emigrants that the Indians did not want anything but their cattle, and that if they would lay down their arms their lives would be spared. They did so, and started to go to Santa Clara, when they were attacked by a mixed party of whites and Indians , and all killed except the children. The boy, Miram stated, that after the massacre was over, he saw the Bishop of Coal Creek washing the paint from his face, which he had used to disguise himself as an Indian.

The man Hamblin seemed perfectly conversant with the circumstances of the massacre, and told me that at one time he had a good many of the cattle in his possession. A Mormon named Ira Hatch also told me that he found the only one man that escaped about one hundred miles from the Meadows, persuaded him to return with him, but when they had gone about 40 miles, the Indians murdered him in his presence.

There were 18 wagons, 820 head of cattle, and 143 persons in the train. It is supposed that there was also a great deal of money, as the Mormons say it was the richest train that ever crossed the plains. I believe Dr. Forney to be acquainted with all the circumstances I have narrated.

W. Mackall, Ass't. Adjutant-General, U.S.A., San Francisco, California .

The Massacre At Mountain Meadows , Harper's Weekly, August 8, 1859

The story of so horrible a human butchery as that which occurred at the Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, in the autumn of 1857, has by this time, no doubt, reached the States; but as no account which I have yet seen can in the slightest degree approximate to a description of the hideous truth, being myself now on the ground, and having an opportunity of communicating with some who were no doubt present on the occasion, I deem it proper to send you a plain and unvarnished statement of the affair as it actually occurred.

A train of Arkansas emigrants, with some few Missourians , said to number forty men, with their families, were on their way to California , through the Territory of Utah , and had reached a series of grassy valleys, by the Mormons called the Mountain Meadows, where they remained several days recruiting their animals. On the night of September 9, not suspecting any danger, as usual they quietly retired to rest, little dreaming of the dreadful fate awaiting and soon to overtake them. On the morning of the 10th, as, with their wives and families, they stood around their camp-fires passing the congratulations of the morning, they were suddenly fired upon from an ambush, and at the first discharge fifteen of the best men are said to have fallen dead or mortally wounded. To seek the shelter of their corral was but the work of a moment, but there they found but limited protection.

To enable you to appreciate fully the danger of their position I must give a brief description of the ground. The encampment, which consisted of a number of tents and a corral of forty wagons and ambulances, lay on the west bank of, and eight or ten yards distant from, a large spring in a deep ravine running southward; another ravine, also, branching from this, and facing the camp on the southwest; overlooking them on the northwest, and within rifle-shot, rises a large mound commanding the corral, upon which parapets of stone, with loopholes, have been built. Yet another ravine, larger and deeper, faces them on the east, which could be entered without exposure from the south and far end. Having crept into these shelters during the darkness of the night, the cowardly assailants fired upon their unsuspecting victims, thus making a beginning to the most brutal butchery ever perpetrated on this continent.

Surrounded by superior numbers, and by an unseen foe, we are told the little party stood a siege within the corral of five or seven days, sinking their wagon-wheels in the ground, and during the darkness of night digging trenches, within which to shelter their wives and children. A large spring of cool water bubbled up from the sand a few yards from them, but deep down in the ravine, and so well protected that certain death marked the trail of all who had dared approach it. The wounded were dying of thirst; the burning brow and parched lip marked the delirium of fever; they tossed from side to side with anguish; the sweet sound of the water, as it murmured along its pebbly bed, served but to heighten their keenest suffering. But what all this to the pang of leaving to a cruel fate their helpless children? Some of the little ones, who though too young to remember in after years, tell us that they stood by their parents, and pulled the arrows from their bleeding wounds.

Long had the brave band held together; but the cries of the wounded sufferers must prevail. For the first time, they are (by four Mormons) offered their lives if they will lay down their arms, and gladly they avail themselves of the proffered mercy. Within a few hundred yards of the corral faith is broken. Disarmed and helpless, they are fallen upon and massacred in cold blood. The savages, who had been driven to the hills, are again called down to what was denominated the "job," which more than savage brutality had begun.

Women and children are now all that remain. Upon these, some of whom had been violated by the Mormon leaders, the savage expends his hoarded vengeance. By a Mormon who has now escaped the threats of the Church we are told that the helpless children clung around the knees of the savages, offering themselves as slaves; but with fiendish laughter at their cruel tortures, knives were thrust into their bodies, the scalp torn from their heads, and their throats cut from ear to ear.

I am writing no tale of fiction; I wish not to gratify the fancy, but to tell a tale of truth to the reason and to the heart. I speak truths which hereafter legal evidence will fully corroborate. I met this train on the Platte River on my way to Fort Laramie in the spring of 1857, the best and richest one I had ever seen upon the plains. Fortune then beamed upon them with her sweetest smile. With a fine outfit and every comfort around them, they spoke to me exultingly of their prospects in the land of their golden dreams. Today, as then, I ride by them, but no word of friendly greeting falls upon my ear, no face meets me with a smile of recognition; the empty sockets from their ghastly skulls tell me a tale of horror and of blood. On every side around me for the space of a mile lie the remains of carcasses dismembered by wild beasts; bones, left for nearly two years unburied, bleached in the elements of the mountain wilds, gnawed by the hungry wolf, broken and hardly to be recognized. Garments of babes and little ones, faded and torn, fluttering from each ragged bush, from which the warble of the songster of the desert sounds as mockery. Human hair, once falling in glossy ringlets around childhood's brow or virtue's form, now strewing the plain in masses, matted, and mingling with the musty mould. Today, in one grave, I have buried the bones and skulls of twelve women and children, pierced with the fatal ball or shattered with the axe. In another the shattered relics of eighteen men, and yet many more await their gloomy resting-place.

Afar from the homes of their childhood, buried in the heart of almost trackless deserts, shut up within never-ending mountain barriers, cut off from all communication with their fellowmen, surrounded by overpowering numbers, harmless citizens of our land of justice and freedom, with their wives and families, as dear to them as our own to us, were coolly, deliberately, and designedly butchered by those professing to be their own countrymen.

I pause to ask one calm, quiet question. Are these facts known in the land where I was born and bred?

I have conversed with the Indians engaged in this massacre. They say that they but obeyed the command of Brigham Young , sent by letter, as soldiers obey the command of their chief; that the Mormons were not only the instigators but the most active participants in the crime; that Mor- mons led the attack, took possession of the spoil; that much of that spoil still remains with them; and still more, was sold at the tithing office of the Church.

Such facts can and will be proved by legal testimony. Sixteen children, varying from two to nine years of age, have been recovered from the Mormons. These could not be induced to utter a word until assured that they were out of the hands of the Mormons and safe in the hands of the Americans. Then their tale is so consonant with itself that it can not be doubted. Innocence has in truth spoken. Guilt has fled to the mountains. The time fast approaches when "justice shall be laid to the line, and righteousness to the plummet."

Mountain Meadow Massacre: Statement of one of the Few Survivors,
Daily Arkansas Gazette ,
September 1, 1875, Nancy Sophrona Huff Cate

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Survivor of a Massacre: Mrs. Betty Terry, Arkansas Gazette , September 4, 1938, reported by Clyde R. Greenhaw

Survivor of a Massacre: Mrs. Betty Terry of Harrison Vividly Recalls Massacre of Westbound Arkansas Caravan in Utah More Than 80 Years Ago

High in the Arkansas Ozarks stands a monument in the form of a historical marker for Caravan Springs, erected to a band of immigrants who, in the early spring of 1857, began here as ill-fated journey to California , the shining goal of their dreams.

Historical significance of the marker is contained in the inscription, which says: Caravan Spring. Near these springs in March, 1857, gathered a caravan of 150 men, women and children who here began their ill-fated journey to California . The entire party, with the exception of 17 small children, was massacred at Mountain Meadows, Utah , by a body of Mormons disguised as Indians .

The marker was sent to Harrison by the Arkansas Centennial Commission to be erected on Highway 7, at the entrance of the springs. The marker is cast iron and weighs 280 pounds. At the top is the Arkansas state flag.

In the farm home of her daughter, Mrs. Henry Holt, west of Harrison, Mrs. Betty Terry , 86, one of the two survivors of the ill-fated journey, is visiting. Mrs. Terry has been in Missouri the past two years. She arrived in Harrison this spring, to spend the remainder of her days in this, her native town. The only other known survivor of that ill-fated journey is Mrs. Terry's sister, Mrs. Sally Frances Gladden-Mitchell , 83, of Checotah, Oklahoma . Mrs. Terry was only five years old at the time, but she distinctly remembers the incident, and clearly recalls many details.

Mrs. Terry's brother, William Twitty Baker , lived near Harrison for many years, then finally settled at Marshall, Searcy County, where he was living at the time of his death in 1937.

A worn reference book owned by says briefly of the Mountain Meadow Massacre: In Utah , 350 miles south of Salt Lake City , September 7, 1857, about 140 men, women and children, emigrating from Arkansas and Missouri to Southern California , were fired upon by Indians , and, it is said, by Mormons disguised as Indians . They withstood the siege until the 11th, when, on promise of protection by John D. Lee , Mormon bishop and Indian agent, they left the shelter of their wagons. All over seven years of age were killed. Lee was executed for the crime with the Mormons suspected of complicity in it.

Mrs. Terry celebrated her 86th birthday anniversary March 7. Even at her advanced age, she never ceases to work, and with eyes still strong enough to see to read, write and sew, she pieces quilts for her children and has completed many handsome articles. She finished a quilt last winter and spent many days this spring tearing carpet strings. She has lived most of her life here, and has been an active member of the Baptist church since early girl hood. She continues to attend services regularly. Mr. Terry died 11 years ago. The couple reared nine children, three boys and six girls, five of whom are still living. An entry in the family bible reads, “Married, January 25, 1874, J.W. Terry to Martha Elizabeth Baker, both of Boone County, by the Rev. Calvin Williams.”

When kinsmen press her for a story she sometimes tells that of the massacre, saying, “The wagon train to California made up of folks from our neighborhood and Missouri , was said to be the richest and best equipped that ever started across the plains, with goods, wagons, buggies, carriages and hacks. There were 30 extra good teams of mules and horses in addition to a large number of extra horses, and about 600 to 800 head of cattle, and one of the finest blooded stallions that had ever been seen in the Ozarks at that time. Nearly a week was taken for the band to gather here. There were more than 200 in the train when it started out, but they split, part going a southern route and our division going on through the Utah way.

My father, mother, grandfather and several uncles and aunts were among those killed in the massacre. Our family had a larger number in the company than any other family and we had an extra wagon and provisions besides the one that carried the family. My sister and younger brother, William Twitty Baker , who was only seven months old, were spared. My sister and I were both kept in the family of John D. Lee until the soldiers came and rescued us a year later. My brother was being cared for in another Mormon family. I played with Brigham Young's youngest children. My grandmother remained at Harrison , and when word came that the children had been rescued, she went out to bring us back. On the way out we stopped and made camp many times to rest the weary, footsore cattle, scouts going ahead to select camp sites.

It took nearly six months, she recalled, for the immigrants to reach Mountain Meadows, which is located about 160 miles south of Salt Lake City . Camp was made at the spring at the west end of Mountain Meadows, Friday night, September 2 or 3.

Mountain Meadows is named for the beautiful mountains on the northern and southern borders. There was good grazing for the cattle and it was a good place to camp and rest, so the leaders of the caravan of immigrants decided to remain there several days before pushing on into the plains country.

Early on Monday morning, September 6, about the time that the earlier risers of the immigrants were moving about the camp near the spring, they were fired upon from ambush, Mrs. Terry said. An alarm was sounded, the entire party was aroused, and soon their more active men were organized with firearms and they succeeded in temporarily frightening away the intruders.

During the quiet that followed the first brief battle, all wagons were put into a circle, dirt was shoveled up under the wagon to serve as a breast works for fort like protection.

Several of the men left the corral to investigate the cause of the earlier firing, and these again were engaged in another battle at close range, causing several fatalities to the stronger and braver group of immigrants, but little loss to the enemy, who took advantage of the boulders and underbrush for shelter.

Preparations were made by the men in camp to conceal the women and children and prepare for battle. The siege continued at intervals of four to five days. Finally several white men, found to be Mormons and disguised in Indian garb, under the leadership of three white men, posing as government attaches, proposed to the wagon train group that if they would surrender their arms and ammunition they would be escorted back east to the nearest village of Cedar Valley. The immigrants surrendered all their arms and ammunition and reluctantly agreed to retrace their steps under escort toward Cedar Valley . When the party had traveled about one mile from the spring and campsite the Utah group called a halt, placed all children under seven years old in one wagon and sent them ahead. With the aid of a large number in hiding, they immediately opened fire on the unarmed immigrants, killing the entire band.

The 17 children were sent ahead to the eastern end of the mountain valley to the home of one Hamblin, from which place they were distributed among the Mormons. The children were recovered by the government in the early summer of 1859, and were returned to Arkansas to their relatives. Names of the 17 children were as follows: John Calvin Sorel [ John Calvin Miller ,] Lewis and Mary Sorel, Ambrose, Milum and William Tackitt , Francis Horn, Angeline, Annie and Nancy Saphrona Huff , Ephraim W. Huff, Chris and Tryphena  Fancher , Betsey and Jane Baker, William Welch Baker, Rebecca , Louisa and Sarah Dunlap.

Mrs. Terry sadly related that she never knew what became of her older sister, Vina. She was the prettiest of the three Baker girls, she said, and had beautiful long black hair. She was eight years old. The last time she remembers seeing her sister, she was being led away as a captive. "I do not know whether she was killed or what ever happened to her". Just before the last attack on the immigrants, Mrs. Terry said she heard her father tell her mother to get up and put the children in the wagon. That was the last time she saw her mother, she said. ‘I distinctly remember the group disguised as Indians . There was not a real Indian in the group, for they went to the creek and washed the paint from their faces.”

“How was your grandmother able to identify and claim you?” Mrs. Terry was asked. “By clothing, and the sunbonnets which were quilted in a certain design still in our possession. My brother had a peculiar identification mark. The end of the index finger on each hand was smooth and glistening, without the sign of a finger nail, with but one joint to the finger, appearing much as a felon leaves a finger.” She explained that this disfigurement of the index fingers was a birthmark. “Our aunt lived with us and worked for our mother for months preceding my brother's birth. She suffered terribly from a felon and complained much. Her felon was on an index finger. So when the brother was born, the two index fingers were marked as if from felons. He carried them that way through life and never had a felon.”

Before Caravan Springs are two huge flat rocks, where the family washing was done, she said: “They were long and broad and were on one side of the creek. Stately elm trees lined the creek banks, shading these rocks, where I spent many hours shedding tears.”

“I do hope they get the marker at the right spring,” she added. “Maybe I should go out there and point out the right place.'

A number of descendants, great grandchildren of the wealthy Jack Baker who helped finance the emigrant train, now live in Harrison. Relatives of the Beller family who were members of the company, live there also.

Martha Elizabeth Baker Terry Personal Account , date unknown

Six months had passed when we at last camped on the Jordan River in Utah . Our provisions were running low. The cattle were weary and footsore, but we were jubilant. At American Forks, a small settlement, attempts were made to re-provision. The Mormons met our offers with sullen shakes of their heads.

We went through Battle Creek, Provo, Springville, Spanish Fork, Salt Creek, and Fillmore, then we reached Mountain Meadows. Near the lower end the valley tapered to a mere three or four hundred yards, as a gap led out to the scorched sands of the desert beyond. A spring made this section of the meadow a natural camping ground. Here we halted to rest. The day before we were to start was spent in a final check. Every family was on ration. Most of us sought our blankets not long after sundown.

I awoke early, a coffee aroma permeated the wagons which had been drawn up in a helter-skelter fashion. Suddenly there was a rattle of gunfire from the hillside nearest our camp. Whooping savages tumbled down the slope and sliced off our milling stock. The men worked frantically, shoving the heavy schooners and carriages into the form of a huge corral. A few, armed with long rifles, stood on guard. The last wagon was in line when the main band of savages charged down the mountain side yelling and shooting. Rifles began to bark along the train. The attackers hesitated before the viciousness of the fire and fell back. The respite gave us time to dig in. Under Captain Fancher's direction the wheels of the wagon corral were locked together by means of chains. Others hurried out with picks and shovels and dug feverishly to throw up a breastwork. Even the women helped.

We were on a travel route and it appears that all we have to do was to stand the Indians off until help arrived.

The sun tortured us with intense heat. By midday it was almost unbearable, and we were almost out of water. Later in the day, the last brackish water was consumed.

On the evening of the third day the Indians made their most determined attack. Crouched low, they circled about the train, shooting inaccurately. The Meadow offered little cover and our assailants felt the lash of the corral sharpshooters. Back they went to the hillsides, carrying their wounded with them. The seige was on again.

The fourth day was the worst of all. The wounded were actually dying of thirst. The entire caravan was weak from lack of water.

The morning of the fifth day dawned. Our resistance was crumbling rapidly. Our ammunition was nearly gone. The stench of our unburied dead was in our nostrils. And always with us was the agony of thirst.

The cry of a sentry shook us from our stupor. Two men mounted on horses and bearing a white flag, were advancing towards us.

In a twinkling, hope transformed our ranks. We cheered weakly. The horsemen came on at a walk so slowly I thought they would never reach the corral. A square-made man with an air of authority dismounted, smiling at our greetings. He left his companion with the horses. Captain Fancher stepped forward. The stranger took Fancher's hand.  John D. Lee , he said, Indian Commissioner for this district .

Eagerly we crowded about him. He explained gravely that the Paiute Indians were rebellious and difficult to handle, but he believed he could persuade them to parlay. In a lengthy conference between Lee and the men of our band, he gained our complete confidence.

When the Indian Commissioner rode off our hope and prayer went with him. He was gone two hours.

He came back at a gallop, a wagon following his dust. He said, they've agreed to let you go if you'll surrender your arms. At first the men objected, then finally agreed to the terms. Slowly they filed to the wagon Lee had brought with him, rifles clattered in the bed.

John D. Lee smiled grimly and and nodded to the driver. The wagon rumbled off over the low rise. Mounting his horse, Lee spurred a short distance from the corral. He rose in his stirrups and shouted, Do your duty.

Bewildered, we stood there. The Indians , shrieking, shooting, and yelling, tumbled down the slopes triumphantly. For a moment the entire wagon train was frozen in immobility.

I started to follow my mother and stumbled. The last I saw of her, she was running toward our carriage with little Billy in her arms. And the Indians were upon us.

Now I could see that they weren't all Indians . Whites had painted themselves to resemble their savage companions. With bloodcurdling yells they leaped on the defenseless pioneers. I sought shelter under a wagon and peered out between the spokes.

I saw my father fall to the ground.

The Indians and their white companions killed and killed. The sight of blood sent them into a fanatical frenzy. One huge white kept shouting For Jehovah.

The fiends slackened their butchering only when there were no more victims. Dripping paint and blood, they stood panting, searching for any signs of life among the hacked and clubbed bodies.

A white man took me by the hand and led me to a wagon where several other children had been placed. I found my sister, Sarah Frances , there.

As we left, the Indians and whites were completing their looting. Some of the disguised Mormons were washing their paint off at the spring.

Our wagon creaked to the Hamblin ranch a mile away where it discharged its sobbing cargo. We were held at the ranch for several days while the Mormons debated on how to dispose of us.

Mountain Meadow Massacre Related by Rebecca Dunlap Evans , Fort Smith Elevator , August 20, 1897

The Butchery of a Train of Arkansans by Mormons and Indians

Almost forty years have rolled away since this country was horrified from Maine to California by the report of what is known in history as the Mountain Meadow Massacre. The details of this bloody crime, that for hellish atrocity has no parallel in our history, are familiar to very few of the present generation, although they were impressed indelibly upon the minds of our elders. To the majority of people the story of this massacre has almost become a myth buried in the obscurity of a forgotten past.

What, then, was the surprise of some of our townspeople a week or two ago when an elderly gentleman who was in the city trading, incidentally remarked that his wife was a survivor of the Mountain Meadows Massacre , and that he had rescued her from the Mormons while she was but an infant.

This old gentleman excited the curiosity of his auditors at once, being a very intelligent, interesting talker, but as his wife was waiting for him he did not have time to talk very much about the tragic drama in which his wife played such a thrilling part. In the course of his conversation, however, he said that his wife was the youngest of three sisters who survived the massacre, that he lived in Calhoun County and that he had brought his wife to this county on a visit to her eldest sister, Mrs. Rebecca Evans , who lived on a place belonging to Mrs. Lyle, about nine and one-half miles northeast of Monticello.

Learning that Mrs. Evans was about 7 years old at the time of the massacre, and thinking that she would be able to recall some particulars of that horrible butchery, in company with Dr. Tarrant of this city, we went out to call on her not long since. We found her living in an humble log house, with her husband and five children. They are merely tenants on Mrs. Lyle's place. Time has dwelt somewhat roughly with Mrs. Evans   and she does not look younger than her forty-six years imply.

Almost forty years have rolled away since this country was horrified from Maine to California by the report of what is known in history as the Mountain Meadow Massacre. The details of this bloody crime, that for hellish atrocity has no parallel in our history, are familiar to very few of the present generation, although they were impressed indelibly upon the minds of our elders. To the majority of people the story of this massacre has almost become a myth buried in the obscurity of a forgotten past.

What, then, was the surprise of some of our townspeople a week or two ago when an elderly gentleman who was in the city trading, incidentally remarked that his wife was a survivor of the Mountain Meadows Massacre , and that he had rescued her from the Mormons while she was but an infant.

This old gentleman excited the curiosity of his auditors at once, being a very intelligent, interesting talker, but as his wife was waiting for him he did not have time to talk very much about the tragic drama in which his wife played such a thrilling part. In the course of his conversation, however, he said that his wife was the youngest of three sisters who survived the massacre, that he lived in Calhoun County and that he had brought his wife to this county on a visit to her eldest sister, Mrs. Rebecca Evans , who lived on a place belonging to Mrs. Lyle, about nine and one-half miles northeast of Monticello.

Learning that Mrs. Evans was about 7 years old at the time of the massacre, and thinking that she would be able to recall some particulars of that horrible butchery, in company with Dr. Tarrant of this city, we went out to call on her not long since. We found her living in an humble log house, with her husband and five children. They are merely tenants on Mrs. Lyle's place. Time has dwelt somewhat roughly with Mrs. Evans   and she does not look younger than her forty-six years imply.

She is, however, a very pleasant lady and talked freely of the massacre through which she passed years ago, although she cannot speak even now without a great deal of emotion of this butchery of her loved ones; and an expression of horror appears at times upon her face, such as she must have felt when she saw on that fateful September day 120 of her people tomahawked and pierced with arrows, crushed with stones and mutilated with bullets and knives, victims of Mormon fanaticism and hatred.

Mrs. Evans says this train of emigrants left what was then Carroll County, Arkansas , in the summer of 1857. In the train she had a father and mother, five sisters, one brother, an uncle and an aunt and ten or twelve cousins. She says her father and uncle were well off and had $30,000 in money with them, besides a large number of fine stock. There were about forty heads of families in this train when it entered Utah , most of them hailing from Arkansas . It is said to have been one of the finest trains that ever crossed the plains. They were making their way to California . Mrs. Evans says they received hostile treatment from the time they entered Utah .

Early in September they came to the home of a prominent Mormon, Jacob Hamblin , on the northern slope of the Mountain Meadows. Here they were told that there was a large spring about four miles distant in the southern part of the Mountain Meadows. So the train, went on to the spring and encamped there for the night. After camping at this place for three days and nights, on the fourth day, in the morning just before light about sixty Mormons, disguised as Indians , and a number of Indians attacked the train. The Indians were ordered to stampede the cattle and drive them away from the train. They then commenced firing on the emigrants. The fire was returned by the emigrants, who had corralled their wagons. The Mormons and Indians had the train completely surrounded and they were cut off from the spring. For about eight days the siege lasted, the emigrants fighting like lions. The Mormons finding they could not whip them by fair fighting, decided to destroy them by treachery. Accordingly, John D. Lee , Haight and Higbee had their paint washed off, and dressing in their usual attire, took three wagons and drove down towards the emigrants' corral as if they were traveling on their ordinary business. Mrs. Evans says her 8-year-old sister, Mary Dunlap, who was dressed in white, went out towards them and waved a white handkerchief in token of peace. The Mormons in the wagons waved one in reply and advanced to the corral. The emigrants, no Indians being in sight at this time, came out, and walked [talked] with these leading Mormons for an hour or an hour and a half. The Mormons told the emigrants that the Indians were hostile, and that if they gave up their arms it would show the Indians that they did not want to fight. If the emigrants would do this the Mormons promised to pilot them back to the settlements.

Mrs. Evans , when asked if they did not suspect treachery, says that they did not, and if they did they were about famished from thirst, and were ready to accept almost any terms in order to get out of their distressing situation. The emigrants having agreed to these terms, delivered up their arms to the three Mormons with whom they had counseled. The women and children started back towards Hamblin's house, followed by the men. The Mormons, with the arms, came along by the side of the men. Mrs. Evans says after they had proceeded about a mile on their way back to Hamblin's house they came to a cluster of scrub oaks and sage bushes on both sides of the road. About this time Higbee , who was with them, gave the signal to fire by shooting off his pistol, when a volley poured in from each side and the butchering commenced. Who can picture the horrors of the awful scene? From every bush, demons of destruction leaped forth to revel in crime and in blood. The Mormons and Indians shot down in cold blood the defenseless men, women and children, then pierced them with bows and arrows, then cut their throats with knives. With savage whoops and yells, these devils pursued their victims in every direction. Innocent girls fell upon their knees and prayed for mercy, but their cries were unheeded. The massacre commenced about 5 o'clock in the evening. In one-half hour's time, 120 men, women and children lay cold in death, horribly mutilated and disfigured.

Mrs. Evans says that she ran and hid behind a sage bush when the massacre began. Two of her older sisters were killed right near her, and were lying dead by her side. She heard her baby sister crying and ran to find her. She found her entwined in her mother's arms, but that mother was cold in death. This sister, whose name was Sarah , and who was about a year old at this time, had been shot through her right arm, below the elbow, by a large ball, breaking both bones and cutting her arm half off. Seizing her sister in her arms, Mrs. Evans rushed back to the sage bush where she had been hiding. She remained here until she saw a white man, who proved to be Jacob Hamblin . She went up to him and begged him to save her and her little sisters. She says that Hamblin was the only white man that she saw who belonged to the massacring party. She remembers distinctly that Hamblin was dressed in a suit of green jeans. After the massacre was over, she saw quite a number of white men washing the paint from their faces.

Mrs. Evans says that she and her sister Louisa begged not to be separated from their baby sister, Sarah . Jacob Hamblin finally agreed to take the three sisters to his home. Just seventeen children survived this horrible massacre, the oldest of whom was not over 8 years of age. All of them were placed in one wagon, several of them being wounded, while the clothing of nearly all of them was bloody with the gore of their kindred. A son-in-law of John D. Lee drove the wagon to Hamblin's house, where all the children were kept that night. What a pitiful sight these orphans, some of them moaning in pain, all of them bereft of parents and kindred, must have presented, as they were driven away from the scene of this horrible butchery!

On the day after the massacre, Lee and the other Mormons started off with the rest of the children, leaving Rebecca , Louisa and Sarah Dunlap with Jacob Hamblin . After the lapse of several weeks, Mrs. Evans says she went back to the scene of the massacre with some Mormon girls. None of the dead bodies had been buried, but wild animals and buzzards were eating the flesh from their bones. She was only able to recognize one corpse and that one was Jack Baker , a very prominent character among the emigrants. She recognized him by his long beard. Mrs. Evans says the report they were kindly treated and well cared for while in hands of the Mormons, is false. To the contrary she says they were only half fed and half clothed and harshly treated.

Mrs. Evans and her sisters did not long remain at Mountain Meadows, but soon moved with Hamblin to the fort of Santa Clara. They remained in the hands of Hamblin for nearly two years, before they were rescued. The rescue of these children from the Mormons was an undertaking involving a great deal of difficulty and danger. United States Indian Agent Dr. Forney, Deputy Marshal Rogers and Capt. James Lynch, with a body of United States troops, took party in the rescue. The children were kept for some time in Salt Lake City . Captain Lynch then carried the children back to their homes in Arkansas and other states wherever they had relatives. He carried the three Dunlap girls back to Carroll (now Boone) county. Their uncle, James Dunlap, who was then living at Carrollton, took all three of them and treated them as his own children. Here they lived uneventful lives, attending school, and doing pretty much what other girls do, until Rebecca was 23 years of age, when, as usually happens, she, too, had her dreams of love fulfilled and was united in marriage to Mr. Evans, who carried her to Calhoun county to reside. There they lived until December 15, 1895, when they moved to Drew county, where they now reside. They have five children.

Louisa Dunlap was married to James Linton in Boone county in 1876. They have five children.

Sarah Dunlap , the youngest, has never recovered the use of her arm, which was shot during the massacre. She has also been afflicted with weak eyes most of her life. She went to the blind school in Little Rock, and remained until she graduated. During all these years the memory of Captain Lynch, who brought these girls away from the Mormons, had been cherished fondly by them. They were very much grieved to hear in January, 1893, that Captain Lynch was seriously ill at his home in Washington City. In this letter it was stated that Captain Lynch had signified his intention of leaving all his property to the survivors of the Mountain Meadows Massacre . Sarah , moved by a feeling of gratitude for all that Captain Lynch had done for them, immediately wrote to him, offering to come to Washington and wait upon him as his nurse. He, in the meantime, had grown better, and responded to her letter. A lively correspondence was then carried on between the two for about a year by which time Cupid had done his work. The little infant, now 37 years old, gave her hand and heart to the hero of her dreams who had rescued her from the Mormons thirty-five years before, and who was now 75 years old. They are now living happily together at Woodbury, Calhoun County, Arkansas .

And here we let the curtain drop. But before bringing this article to a close, it is proper to state that the seventeen survivors of this horrible massacre have never recovered one cent damages from the Mormons for the murder of their parents and relatives and the robbery of their property. Efforts are now being made to get a bill through congress which will afford them some slight recompense for the terrible disaster of forty years ago. Captain Thornton, of Camden, has the matter in charge, and we trust his efforts may prove successful.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre: An Episode on the Road to Zion , by Sara Frances "Sallie" Baker Mitchell , The American Weekly , September, 1940

I've been interested in the series of articles running in The American Weekly about the Mormons, specially what has been said about the Mountain Meadows Massacre , way back in September 1857.

I'm the only person still living who was in that massacre, where the Mormons and the Indians attacked a party of 137 settlers on the way to California , murdering everybody except 17 children, who were spared because they were all under eight years of age.

I was one of those children and when the killing started I was sitting on my daddy's lap in one of the wagons. The same bullet that snuffed out his life took a nick out of my left ear, leaving a scar you can see to this day.

Last November, I passed my 85th birthday and at the time of the massacre I wasn't quite three years old. But even when you're that young, you don't forget the horror of having your father gasp for breath and grow limp, while you have your arms around his neck, screaming with terror. You don't forget the blood curdling war whoops and the banging of guns all around you. You don't for­get the screaming of the other children and the agonized shrieks of women being hacked to death with tomahawks. And you wouldn't forget it, either, if you saw your own mother topple over in the wagon beside you, with a big red splotch getting bigger and bigger on the front of her calico dress.

When the massacre started, Mother had my baby brother, Billy , in her lap and my two sisters, Betty and Mary Levina, were sitting in the back of the wagon. Billy wasn't quite two, Betty was about five and Vina was eight.

We never knew what became of Vina. Betty saw some Mormons leading her over the hill, while the killing was still going on. Maybe they treated her the way the Dunlap girls were treated, later on I'm going to tell about the horrible thing that happened to them. And maybe they raised her up to be a Mormon. We never could find out.

Betty , Billy and I were taken to a Mormon home and kept there till the soldiers rescued us, along with the other children, about a year later, and carried us back to our folks in Arkansas . Captain James Lynch was in charge of the soldiers who found us, and I've got an interesting little thing to tell about him, too, when I get around to it.

But first I want to tell all I remember and all I've heard about the massacre itself, and what lead up to it.

My father was George Baker, a farmer who owned a fine tract of bottom land on Crooked Creek, near Harrison, Arkansas . He and my grandfather, like a lot of other men folks at that time in our part of the country, had heard so much about the California gold rush of 49 that they got the itch to go there. So my father and some of the other men from our neighborhood went out to California to look over the lay of the land and they came back with stories about gold that would just about make your eyes pop out.

There wasn't anything to do but for everybody in the family to pack up, bag and baggage, and light out for the coast. Everybody but Grandma Baker. She wouldn't budge. She put her foot down and said:

“ Arkansas is plenty good enough for me and Arkansas is where I'm going to stay.” Her stubbornness saved her life, too, because if she had gone along she would have been killed, just as were all the other grown ups, including my grandfather, my father and mother and several of my uncles, aunts, and cousins. Our family joined forces with other settlers from neighboring farms under the leadership of Captain Alexander Fancher , and the whole outfit was known as Captain Fancher's party.

It wasn't made up of riff raff. Our caravan was one of the richest that ever crossed the plains and some people have said that that was one of the reasons the Indians attacked our folks to get their goods.

We traveled in carriages, buggies, hacks and wagons and there were 40 extra teams of top notch horses and mules, in addition to 800 head of cattle and a stallion valued at $2,000. Altogether, the property in our caravan was valued at $70,000.

Captain Fancher's party spent the Winter getting ready and when Spring came and everything was all set to go, John S. Baker, who was related to us, was sick with erysipelas and couldn't travel. So he and his family, along with some of his wife's relatives, waited a few days and then set out to overtake us. A number of times they came across places where we had camped and found the coals from our campfires still warm, but they never did catch up with us, and that 's why they missed the Mountain Meadows Massacre but they ran into the tail end of the trouble, just the same, and had a terrible time themselves.

A lot has been said, both pro and con, about what caused the massacre. It wasn't just because we had a lot of property the Indians figured was well worth stealing. There were several other things that entered into it.

In the first place, the members of our party came from a section of the country not far from the district in Missouri and Illinois where the Mormons had been mighty badly treated. If you've been reading Mr. Robinson's articles in The American Weekly , you'll recall how the Mormons were driven out of Missouri into Illinois , where Joseph Smith, their Prophet and the founder of their religion, and his brother, Hyrum, were assassinated. Then they were driven out of Illinois and, after suffering all sorts of hardships crossing the plains, they finally got themselves established in Utah .

So, it is only natural that they should feel bitter about anybody who came from anywhere near the part of the country where they had had so much trouble. I'm sure nobody in our party had anything td do with the persecution of the Mormons in Missouri and Illinois, or anything to do with the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother. But that didn't make any difference. The word got around, somehow, that somebody in our party was bragging about having in his possession the very same pistol that was used to kill the Mormon Prophet, and that he even said he aimed to use it on Brigham Young , who had taken over the leadership of the Mormons.

So far as I know there wasn't a word of truth in that, but the rumor got around, right after we reached Utah , and it made a lot of Mormons see red. Then somebody started working the Indians up against us, by telling them our party had been poisoning springs and water holes, to kill their horses. Now that just isn't so, nobody in our party would do a thing like that. Even if they had been mean enough, they wouldn't have been such fools as to do a thing like that in a country filled with Indians that were none too friendly to begin with. Then there was the fact that our party came from the same general district where Parley Pratt, a Mormon missionary, had been murdered by J. H. McLean, because Pratt had run away with McLean 's wife and two small sons.

McLean didn't live in Arkansas . That just happened to be the place where he caught up with Pratt, after tracking him back and forth across the country. The McLeans lived in New Orleans , and in the Summer of 1854 Parley Pratt went there, hunting for new recruits, married women or unmarried women, it didn't seem to make much difference, so long as they would drop everything and follow him. I don't know why she did it, but Mrs. McLean listened to his arguments, took up with him, and ran away with him taking her two children with her.

Mrs. McLean took charge of the funeral. She got Blacksmith Wynn to order some boards, all planed and dressed, from a sawmill run by the father of John Steward, who was 16 at the time and afterwards became deputy sheriff of Crawford County, and the coffin was made out of them. Then young Steward hauled the body in the coffin out to the burial grounds in his daddy's ox cart. They didn't have any preacher. Mrs. McLean did the only talking that was done and among other things she said Pratt had been crucified.

After that, she went on to Salt Lake City , and nobody in our part of the country ever heard anything more about her. But early in 1857, just before our party set out for California , two Mormons showed up at Wynn's blacksmith shop and asked him a lot of questions. Then they turned back north, along the same route our party followed a few weeks later, and it certainly looks like those two Mormons found out that we were figuring on passing through Utah on our way to California and told the Danites, or Destroying Angels of the Mormons, to be on the lookout for us, because we were from the same district where Pratt was murdered.

At any rate, we sure did get a mighty unfriendly reception when we finally did reach Utah . By that time, the Mormons didn't have much use for anybody who wasn't a Mormon.

Off and on, ever since they took over Utah , the Mormons had been bickering with the Federal Government, insisting that they had a right to run everything to suit themselves. It finally got so bad President Buchanan issued an order removing Brigham Young as governor of the territory, and appointing Alfred Cumming to take his place. And just before we landed in Utah , the Mormons heard that Cumming was on his way out, backed up by an army of 2500 men. That made the Mormons mad as hornets, so mad, in fact, that Brigham Young issued a proclamation defying the Federal Government and proclaiming martial law, but the members of our party didn't know anything about that, and walked right into the hornet's nest.

When our caravan reached Salt Lake City in August, our supplies just about out, everybody tired and hungry, and our horses and cattle lean and badly in need of rest and a chance to graze, we were told to, move on and be quick about it. On top of that, the Mormons refused to sell us any food, that 's what I was told when I was growing up and I've always believed it was so.

So we had to move on, down to Mountain Meadows, in what is now Washington County, Utah . Mountain Meadows was a narrow valley, lying between two low ranges of hills, with plenty of fresh water, supplied by several little streams, and lots of grass for our stock to graze. So it looked like a good place for our party to rest up before tackling the 90 mile desert that lay just ahead. A lot has been written about what was going on among the Mormons while our party was resting at Mountain Meadows. Both sides of the question have been gone into pretty thoroughly, with a lot of arguments and evidence on each side, so anybody who wants to form his own opinion can took up the books on the subject and make his choice.

Some writers say that officials of the Mormon Church stirred the Indians up and kept egging them on till they attacked us, and then told their own folks to jump in and help the Indians finish up the job, after tricking our men into giving up their guns. But the Mormon writers insist that nobody with any real authority in the church organization knew what was going on till it was too late for them to stop it, even though they tried their best. They admit, though, that there were some Mormons mixed up in it, and years after it was over, they laid most of the blame on John D. Lee, who was a Mormon and an Indian agent. But I'll tell about that later.

On the morning of September 7, our party was just sitting down to a breakfast of quail and cottontail rabbits when a shot rang out from a nearby gully, and one of the children toppled over, hit by the bullet.

Right away, the men saw they were being attacked by an Indian war party. In the first few minutes of fighting, twenty-two of our men were shot down, seven of them killed outright. Everybody was half starved to death and I reckon the whole crowd would have been wiped out right then and there if Captain Fancher hadn't been such a cool-headed man.

He had things organized in next to no time. All the women and children were rounded up in the corral, formed by the wagons, and the men divided into two groups, one to throw up breastworks with picks and shovels and the other to fire back at the Indians .

The fighting kept up pretty regularly for four days and nights. Most of our horses and cattle were driven away. Our ammunition was running out. We were cut off from our water supply. Altogether, it looked pretty hopeless but I don't think our men would have ever surrendered if John D. Lee and his crowd hadn't tricked them.

According to the way I heard it, while we were trapped down there in the valley, just about perishing for lack of water and food, John D. Lee and some of the other Mormons held a strange kind of prayer meeting back in the woods, just out of sight of our camp. They knelt down and prayed for Divine instructions, and then one of them named John M. Higbee, who was a major in the Mormon militia, got up and said: “I have evidence of God 's approval of our mission.”

“He said all of our party must be put out of the way, and that none should be spared who was old enough to tell tales. Then they decided to let the Indians kill our women and older children, so no Mormon would be guilty of shedding innocent blood. They figured that more than likely all of our men were guilty of some sin or other, if it wasn't any thing worse than hating Mormons, and really should be killed, but maybe the women and older children were innocent of any wrong doing, and it seems Mormons prided themselves on being right scrupulous about shedding innocent blood.

Years later, when he was put on trial, John D. Lee insisted he was against the whole idea and tried to talk the others out of it, but that Major Higbee, Philip Klingensmith, who was a Mormon bishop, and some of the others told him he would have to go through with it, He said Higbee told him: “Brother Lee, I am ordered by President Haight to inform you that you shall receive a crown of Celestial glory for your faithfulness, and your eternal joy shall be complete.”

I don't know whether or not that 's true, but that 's what Lee said, and he claimed he had to follow orders because Haight was president of the Stake of Zion, or division of the church, at Cedar City .

But anyway, on the morning of September 11, John D. Lee and another Mormon came down toward our camp carrying a white flag and our men sent out a little girl dressed in white, to show that they were ready to come to terms.

Then Lee came on down to the camp and said the Indians had gone hog wild but that the Mormons would try to save us and take us all to Cedar City, the nearest big Mormon settlement, if our men would give up their guns.

Well, our men didn't have much choice. It was either stick it out and fight till the last of us was killed or starved, or else take Lee up on his proposition, even though it did sound fishy.

So the guns were all put in one wagon and sent on ahead. Then the wounded and the young children, including me, my two sisters and my baby brother were put in another wagon. My mother and father had been wounded during the fighting, so they were in the wagon with us children.

It 's funny how you will recall unimportant details, after so many years. I remember, for instance, that the blankets we had with us in that wagon were bright red and had black borders.

After the wagon I was in had set out, the women and the older children followed us on foot. Then the Mormons made the men wait until the women and children were a good ways ahead before starting the men out single file, about ten feet apart. I think my grandfather must have been in that procession. Betty and I never could find out for sure just when he was killed, all we could learn was that he was killed during the massacre.

Each of our men had an armed Mormon walking right by his side. They said that was because the Indians might start acting up again, but that wasn't the real reason, as you will soon see.
The line had been moving along slowly for some little distance, when all of a sudden the figure of a white man appeared in the bushes with Indians all around him. I've heard that he was Higbee and that he shouted: “Do your duty!”

Anyway, the Indians opened fire and then charged down with their tomahawks. Each Mormon walking along with our men wheeled around suddenly and shot the man next to him, killing most of them on the spot.

The women and older children screamed at the top of their lungs and scattered every which way, but the Indians ran them down. They poked guns into the wagon, too, and killed all of the wounded. As I have already said, my father and mother were killed right before our eyes.

One of the Mormons ran up to the wagon, raised his gun and said: “Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for Thy Kingdom that I do this.î Then he fired at a wounded man who was leaning against another man, killing them both with the same bullet.

A 14 year-old boy came running up toward our wagon, and the driver, who was a Mormon, hit him over the head with the butt end of his gun, crushing the boy's skull. A young girl about 11 years old, all covered with blood, was running toward the wagon when an Indian fired at her point blank.

In the midst of all the commotion, the two Dunlap girls I spoke about before, Ruth, who was 18, and Rachel, who was 16 made a wild dash for a clump of scrub oaks on the far side of a gully.

Hidden in the scrub oaks, they must have thought they were safe but they weren't. Their bodies were found later, and the evidence is that they suffered far worse than any of the other women.

John D. Lee confessed to a lot of things about the Mountain Meadows Massacre before he was finally executed for his part in it, but he never would admit that he had anything to do with what happened to the Dunlap girls. Just the same, a 16 year-old Indian boy, named Albert, who worked on the ranch of Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon who lived near the Meadows, said that he saw the whole thing and here 's the way he told it:

Albert said another Indian found the girls, and sent for Lee. At first, Lee wanted to kill them then and there, because they were old enough to tell tales,î but the Indian begged him to wait a while, because they were so pretty. Ruth was old enough to realize what that meant, so she dropped on her knees and pleaded with Lee to spare her, promising that she would love him all her life if he would.

But, according to Albert, Lee and that Indian mistreated those poor girls shamefully and then slit their throats.

I don't know whether or not Lee himself attacked the Dunlap girls and murdered them, or was directly responsible for what happened to them. But there doesn't seem to be much doubt that they were brutally mistreated by somebody, before being murdered just as Jacob Hamlin's Indian boy said they were. Hamblin was on his way back to his ranch from Salt Lake City at the time of the massacre and when he got home Albert told him about the Dunlap girls. Then the Indian boy led Hamblin to a clump of oak bushes not far from where the massacre took place and showed him the bodies of the two girls, stripped of all their clothing.

At Lee's second trial, Hamblin took the stand and testified that what he saw seemed to bear out Albert's story, and that later on he talked to the Indian who was supposed to have been with Lee at the time, and that his account of it was pretty much the same as Albert's.

There has been a lot of argument over how much part the Indians played in the massacre and how much of it was due to the Mormons, some people even saying that the Indians didn't have anything to do with it at all, and that some of the Mormons disguised themselves as Indians just to lay the blame on them. I can't say as to the truth of that but I do know that my sister Betty , who died only a few months ago, always insisted that she had seen a lot of the Mormons down at the creek after it was all over, washing paint off their faces, and that she some that some of them at least had disguised themselves as Indians .

At any rate, while the Indians , or a crowd of savage looking men that appeared to be Indians , went around making sure that all the grown ups were dead and giving a final shot to any who looked as if they had a spark of life left in them and also robbing the bodies of valuables well, while that was going on the Mormons rounded up all us children and took us off to their homes.

As I said, there were 17 of us, John Calvin Sorel, Lewis and Mary Sorel, Ambrose, Miriam and William Tagget, Francis Horn, .Angeline Annie and Sophronia Mary Huff, Ephriam W. Hugg, Charles and Triphenia Fancher, Rebecca, Louise and Sarah Dunlap and us three Baker children, Betty , Sallie and William Welch Baker. I remember that we were treated right well in the Mormon home where we lived until we were rescued.

I recall, too, that we had good food, and plenty of it. We had lots of rice and also honey right out of the comb. The only unpleasant thing that happened while we were there was when one of the older Mormon children in the house got mad at me and pushed me down stairs. I hurt my right hand, pretty badly and as a result of it I still have a long scar across the knuckles. That makes two scars I got from the Mormons.

The way Captain Lynch and his soldiers found us was by going around among the Mormons in disguise. I got to know him right well later on, and, he used to slap his leg and laugh like anything, as he told how he said to those Mormons: “You let those children go, or I'll blow you to purgatory.”

I never will forget the day we finally got back to Arkansas . You would have thought we were heroes. They had a buggy parade for us through Harrison . When we got around to our house, Grandma Baker, the one who refused to go to California , was standing on the porch. She was a stout woman and mighty dignified, too. When we came along the road leading up to the house she was pacing back and forth but when she caught sight of us she ran down the path and grabbed hold of us, one after the other and gave us a powerful hug.

Leah, our old Negro mammy, caught me up in her arms and wouldn't let me go. She carried me around all the rest of the day, even cooking supper with me in her arms. I remember she baked each of us children a special little apple turnover pie. We had creamed potatoes for supper that night, too, and they sure tasted good. I've been especially fond of creamed potatoes ever since. I remember I called all of the women I saw “mother.” I guess I was still hoping to find my own mother, and every time I called a woman “mother,” she would break out crying.

A good ways back I spoke of how the John S. Baker party set out behind our party but never could catch up with us, and now I want to tell what happened to them. At the time of the massacre, they were only about two days travel behind us, and somebody came along and told them about it. They were just about scared out of their wits, of course, so the next morning they broke camp early and set out to skirt around the Meadows and head on across the desert.

The women had just tied their sunbonnets to the covered wagon bows and taken off their shoes, as they usually did while traveling, when somebody shouted: “ Indians coming!”

I don't know whether they were some of the same Indians that were in on the Mountain Meadows Massacre , or another band that heard about it and decided [18] to do a little killing on their own hook.

But anyway, they opened fire and galloped around and around, whooping and yelling.

As near as I can recollect, the members of the John S. Baker party were: Mr. and Mrs. Baker; their young daughter, who later became Mrs. Perry Price and died a few years ago near Berryville, Arkansas ; their baby son, William Baker, who shouldn't be confused with my baby brother, Billy Baker r; Dal Weaver, Mr. Baker's uncle; Mrs. Dal Weaver; Dal's brother, Pink Weaver; two Weaver sisters; and three young men named Smith and their old mother.

Dal Weaver was shot and killed in the first attack and later robbed of $1,000 in gold he had in a money belt. One of his sisters was killed in the first attack, too, and a bullet hit little William Baker, inflicting a scalp wound, but he got over it. Several others were also wounded, but not seriously.
There were several wagons in the train and before the men could wheel them around and form a corral, one of the teams got away and lit out with its wagon. Some of the Indians took out after that wagon and when they captured it they found it had a couple of ten gallon kegs in it, one of whisky and the other of peach brandy. So that whole band of Indians took time out from the pleasure of killing for the pleasure of getting drunk.

That 's the only reason any of the John S. Baker party managed to escape,it gave them a chance to figure out a trick.

Meanwhile, one of the Smith brothers jumped on a horse and took out in the hope of getting help. but the Indians saw him and one of them lassoed him. The last anybody saw of him he was being dragged away.

When the Indians were all good and drunk they started to close in on the little party, huddled behind their wagons. But just as the Indians were about to pounce on them, the men ripped open all the feather beds they had, and threw a big cloud of feathers into the Indians faces, setting up a kind of smoke screen. Before the stupefied Indians had time to figure out what had happened, the grown folks in the party lit out for the bushes, carrying the children. Two of the Smith boys carried their old mother by making a pack saddle with their hands. I guess by that time the Indians were too drunk to follow them up.

Pink Weaver hurried on back down the trail as fast as he could, looking for help, and finally he ran across some of the soldiers sent out to back up Governor Cumming. Meanwhile, the others followed him, as best they could. When the soldiers finally located them they were so weak they could hardly walk. They were taken to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and cared for till they were able to travel on back to Arkansas .

In the Spring of 1859, Major James H. Carlton passed through Mountain Meadows and stopped there long enough to gather up the bones of the victims of the massacre. He found 34 skeletons and buried them in one place, under a heap of stones, and put up a cedar cross with these words on it: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

Later on, Captain R. P. Campbell passed through the Meadows and found 26 more skeletons, which he also buried there. That only accounts for about half of the victims. Nobody knows what became of the other bodies.

In later years, a granite slab was put up in the Meadows, and on it were these words: “Here one hundred and twenty men, women and children were massacred in cold blood in September, 1857. They were from Arkansas .”

Long after I had grown up and married and settled down, Captain Lynch, the man who rescued us, came to see me one day. He was in mighty high spirits and I could see right away he had something up his sleeve. He asked me if I remembered little Sarah Dunlap, one of the children he had rescued, and a sister of the two Dunlap girls who were killed. I said I sure did. Sarah was blind and had been educated at the school for the blind in Little Rock . I don't recall whether any injury she might have gotten in the massacre was what made her blind, but I do remember she grew up to be a really beautiful girl. Well, Captain Lynch said: “Guess what? I'm on my way to see Sarah.”

When he mentioned her name it looked like he was going to blow up with happiness. Then he told me why. He was on his way right then to marry Sarah, and he did. I guess he must have been forty years older than she was, but he sure was a spry man just the same. I never saw anybody could beat him when it came to dancing and singing.

Some time after the massacre, Federal Judge Cradlebaugh held an investigation and tried to bring to trial some of the Mormons. He was convinced were responsible for the crime, but he never got anywhere with it, and he was finally transferred from the district at his own request. Then the Civil War came on and nothing more was done about it until 1875.