Mormon History
Mark Twain on the Massacre - 1871
"I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it." Page 85
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 train 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."