B.
THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS
MASSACRE.
THE persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long—and
which they consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern
themselves—they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to
repay. The now almost forgotten "Mountain Meadows massacre"
was their work. It was very famous in its day. The whole United
States rang with its horrors. A few items will refresh the reader's
memory. A great emigrant train from Missouri and Arkansas
passed through Salt Lake City and a few disaffected Mormons
joined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for their
escape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by the
Mormon chiefs. Besides, these one hundred and forty-five or one
hundred and fifty unsuspecting emigrants being in part from
Arkansas, where a noted Mormon missionary had lately been
killed, and in part from Missouri, a State remembered with
execrations as a bitter persecutor of the saints when they were few
and poor and friendless, here were substantial additional grounds
for lack of love for these wayfarers. And finally, this trin was rich,
very rich in cattle, horses, mules and other property—and how
could the Mormons consistently keep up their coveted
resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the "spoil" of an
enemy when the Lord had so manifestly "delivered it into their
hand?"
Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book,
"The Mormon Prophet," it transpired that—
"A `revelation' from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee
or God, was dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee
and J. D. Lee (adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to
raise all the forces they could muster and trust, follow those cursed
Gentiles (so read the revelation), attack them disguised as Indians,
and with the arrows of the Almighty make a clean sweep of them,
and leave none to tell the tale; and if they needed any assistance
they were commanded to hire the Indians as their allies, promising
them a share of the booty. They were to be neither slothful nor
negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in sending the teams
back to him before winter set in, for this was the mandate of
Almighty God."
The command of the "revelation" was faithfully obeyed. A
large party of Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians,
overtook the train of emigrant wagons some three hundred miles
south of Salt Lake City, and made an attack. But the emigrants
threw up earthworks, made fortresses of their wagons and
defended themselves gallantly and successfully for five days!
Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the
sort of scurvy apologies for "Indians" which the southern part of
Utah affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of
them.
At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military
strategy. They retired to the upper end of the "Meadows," resumed
civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed,
drove down in wagons to the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag
of truce! When the emigrants saw white men coming they threw
down their guns and welcomed them with cheer after cheer! And,
all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, they lifted a little
child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag of truce!
The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President
Haight and Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr.
Cradlebaugh, who served a term as a Federal Judge in Utah and
afterward was sent to Congress from Nevada, tells in a speech
delivered in Congress how these leaders next proceeded:
"They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and
represented them as being very mad. They also proposed to
intercede and settle the matter with the Indians. After several
hours parley they, having (apparently) visited the Indians, gave the
ultimatum of the savages;
which was, that the emigrants should march out of
their camp, leaving everything behind them, even their guns. It
was promised by the Mormon bishops that they would bring a
force and guard the emigrants back to the settlements. The terms
were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of saving the lives of
their families. The Mormons retired, and subsequently appeared
with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were marched out,
the women and children in front and the men behind, the Mormon
guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about
a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were
almost all shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only
escaped, who fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred
and fifty miles before they were overtaken and slaughtered. The
women and children ran on, two or three hundred yards further,
when they were overtaken and with the aid of the Indians they
were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all the emigrant
party, were spared, and they were little children, the eldest of them
being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of September,
1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and
bloody murders known in our history."
The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this
occasion was one hundred and twenty.
With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court
and
proceeded to make Mormondom answer for the massacre. And
what a spectacle it must have been to see this grim veteran,
solitary and alone in his pride and his pluck, glowering down on
his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory, deriding them by turns,
and by turns "breathing threatenings and slaughter!"
An editorial in the Territorial
Enterprise of that day says of him and of the occasion:
"He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a
Jackson; but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges,
while threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack
on the U.S. troops intimated, if he persisted in his course.
"Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were
discharged with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then,
sitting as a committing magistrate, he
commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, made
arrests in every quarter, and
created a consternation in the camps of the saints greater than any
they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom was born. At
last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping to save
their necks; and developments of the most starling character were
being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the
many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during
the past eight years."
Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been
supported in his work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of
Mormon guilt in this massacre and in a number of previous
murders, would have conferred gratuitous coffins upon certain
citizens, together with occasion to use them. But Cumming was
the Federal Governor, and he, under a curious pretense of
impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demands of
justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish his
protest against the use of the U.S. troops in aid of Cradlebaugh's
proceedings.
Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great
massacre with the following remark and accompanying summary
of the testimony—and the summary is concise, accurate and
reliable:
"For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt
the guilt of Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the
testimony is here collated and circumstances given which go not
merely to implicate but to fasten conviction upon them by
`confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ:'
"1. The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the
affair, as shown by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and
Deputy U.S. Marshall Rodgers.
"2. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it
in his Report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure
to make any allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several
years after the occurrence
"3. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the
Mormon Church and State, when this affair was brought to the
ordeal of a judicial investigation.
"4. The failure of the Deseret
News, the Church organ, and the only paper then published in the
Territory, to notice the massacre until several
months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were
engaged in it.
"5. The testimony of the children saved from the
massacre.
"6. The children and the property of the emigrants found in
possession of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the
very day after the massacre.
"7. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene
of the massacre: these statements are shown, not only by
Cradlebaugh and Rodgers, but by a number of military officers,
and by J. Forney, who was, in 1859, Superintendent of Indian
Affairs for the Territory. To all these were such statements freely
and frequently made by the Indians.
"8. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Capt. 2d Dragoons, who
was sent in the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers
on the road to California and to inquire into Indian
depredations."