THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE:—“I WILL REPAY, SAITH THE LORD.”  
I feel myself utterly incompetent to tell the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre—it is so shocking, so fiend-like. And yet it must be told.
While the work of “Reformation” was going on, and when the United States troops were constantly expected in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, a large train of emigrants passed through Utah on its way to California. The train consisted of one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty persons, and they came chiefly from Arkansas. They were people from the country districts, sober, hard-working, plain folks, but well-to-do, and, taken all in all, about as respectable a band of emigrants as ever passed through Salt Lake City.
Nothing worthy of any particular note occurred to them until they reached the Valley—that was the point from which they started towards death.
My old friend Eli B. Kelsey travelled with them from Fort Bridger to Salt Lake City, and he spoke of them in the highest terms. If I remember rightly he said that the train was divided into two parts—the first a rough-and-ready set of men—regular frontier pioneers; the other a picked community, the members of which were all more or less connected by family ties. They travelled along in the most orderly fashion, without hurry or confusion. On Sunday they rested, and one of their number who had been a Methodist preacher conducted divine service. All went well until they reached Salt Lake City, where they expected to be able to refit and replenish their stock of provisions; but it was there that they first discovered that feeling of enmity which finally resulted in their destruction.
Now it so happened that the minds of the Saints in Salt Lake City were at that time strongly prejudiced against the[248] people of Arkansas, and for a most unsaintly reason. The Apostle Parley P. Pratt was one of the earliest converts to Mormonism, and who so ably defended his adopted creed with his pen and from the platform, had not very long before been sojourning in Arkansas, and had there run away with another man’s wife. This was only a trifle for an “Apostle” to do, and the husband—Mr. McLean—might have known it. But he was a most inconsiderate man, and was actually offended with the amorous Apostle for what he had done. He pursued him and killed him, for in those rough parts it was considered that the Apostle did wrong in marrying the man’s wife. Nobody, however, took any notice of the matter or brought the murderer to trial. The Mormon people, of course, took the side of the Apostle Parley P. Pratt. Sensitive themselves to the highest degree concerning their wives and daughters, they considered McLean a sinner for doing just exactly what any Saint would have certainly done. Their opinion, however, would have been a matter of consequence only to themselves, had not such fatal consequences resulted from it. Reasoning without reason, they argued that McLean was the enemy of every Mormon, and every Mormon was the enemy of McLean; McLean was protected in Arkansas—therefore every man from Arkansas was an enemy of the Mormons;—an enemy ought to be cut off—therefore it was the duty of every Mormon to “cut off”—if he could—every Arkansas man.
This appears to have been the tone of thought which actuated the minds of the leaders of the people at the time when this emigrant train arrived in the City.
Weary and footsore they encamped by the Jordan River, trusting there to recruit themselves and their teams, and to replenish their stock of provisions. The harvest in Utah that year had been abundant, and there was nothing to hinder them from obtaining a speedy and full supply. Brigham Young was then Governor of Utah Territory, Commander-in-Chief of the Militia, and Indian Agent as well: he was therefore responsible for all that took place within his jurisdiction. It was his duty to protect all law-abiding persons who either resided in or travelled through the country. The emigrants, so far from being protected, were ordered to break up their camp and move on; and it is said that written instructions were sent on before them, directing the people in the settlements through which they would have to pass to have no dealings with them. This, considering their need of provisions, was much the same as condemning them to certain death.
[249]
Compelled to travel on, they pursued their journey slowly towards Los Angeles. At American Fork they wished to trade off some of their worn-out stock and to purchase fresh—they also desired to obtain provisions. There was abundance of everything from the farm and from the field, for God had very greatly blessed the land that year; but they could obtain nothing. They passed on, and went through Battle Creek, Provo, Springville, Spanish Fork, Payson, Salt Creek, and Fillmore, and their reception was still the same,—the word of the Mormon Pontiff had gone forth, and no man dared to hold communion or to trade with them. Now and then, some Mormon, weak in the faith or braver or more fond of money than his fellows, would steal into the camp, in the darkness of the night, bearing with him just what he was able to carry; but beyond this they could procure nothing. Their only hope now lay in the chance of holding out until they could push through to some Gentile settlement where the word of the priestly Governor of Utah was not law. Through fifteen different Mormon settlements did they pass, without being able to purchase a morsel of bread. With empty waggons and on short allowance, they pushed on until they reached Corn Creek, where, for the first time in saintly Utah, they met a friendly greeting from the Indians, and purchased from them thirty bushels of corn, of which they stood very greatly in need.
At Beaver they were again repulsed, and at Parowan they were not permitted to enter the town—they were forced to leave the public highway and pass round the west side of the fort wall. They encamped by the stream, and tried as before to obtain food and fresh cattle, but again to no purpose. The reason why they were refused admission to the town was probably because the militia was there assembled under Colonel Wm. H. Dame—which militia afterwards assisted in their destruction, for which preparations were even now being made.
They made their way to Cedar City, the most populous of all the towns of Southern Utah. Here they were allowed to purchase fifty bushels of tithing wheat, and to have it ground at the mill of that infamous scoundrel John D. Lee, upon whose memory will rest the eternal curses of all who have ever heard his name. It was, however, no act of mercy, the supplying of this corn. The sellers of it knew well enough even then that it would return to them again in the course of a few days. After all, they had but forty days’ rations to[250] carry them on to San Bernardino, in California—a journey of about seventy days. Scanty kindness—miserable generosity!—fifty bushels of corn for a seventy days’ journey, for men, women, and young children, and at least one little one to be born on the road.
They remained in Cedar City only one day, and so jaded were their teams that it took them three days to travel thence to Iron Creek, a distance of twenty miles; and two days were occupied in journeying fifteen miles—the distance between Iron Creek and the Meadows.
The morning after they left Iron Creek, the Mormon militia followed them in pursuit, intending, it is supposed, to assault them at Clara Crossing. That this was no private outburst, and that, on the contrary, it was done by authority, is evident from sworn testimony to the effect that the assembling of those troops was the result of “a regular military call from the superior officers to the subordinate officers and privates of the regiments.... Said regiment was duly ordered to muster, armed and equipped as the law directs, and prepared for field operations.” A regular military council was held at Parowan, at which were present President Isaac C. Haight, the Mormon High Priest of Southern Utah, Colonel Dame, Major John D. Lee, and the Apostle George A. Smith.
No military council, whether of the militia or the ordinary troops of the line, would dare to determine upon such an important matter as the cutting off of an emigrant train of one hundred and thirty persons without receiving permission from superior authority. Brigham Young was in this case the superior authority—he was the Commander-in-Chief of the Militia:—the inference is obvious. I do not, of course, say that he gave the order for this accursed deed, but that it was his business to bring the criminals to justice no one can doubt or deny.
The regiment, which started from Cedar City under the command of Major John D. Lee, the sub-agent for Indian affairs in Southern Utah, was accompanied by baggage-waggons and the other paraphernalia of war excepting only heavy artillery, which in this case would have been useless. But, at the same time, a large body of the Piede Indians had been invited to accompany them.
An order came from head-quarters to cut off the entire company except the little children. The emigrants were utterly unprepared, and the first onslaught found them defenceless. Accustomed, however, to border warfare, they immediately[251] corralled their waggons and prepared for a siege—their great misfortune was that they had not any water—Major John D. Lee, finding the emigrants resolute, sent to Cedar City and Washington City for reinforcements, which duly arrived.
The next morning, Major John D. Lee assembled his troops, including the auxiliaries which he had summoned, about half a mile from the entrenchment of the fated emigrants, and then and there informed them, with all the coolness which such an infamous scoundrel alone could muster, that the whole company was to be killed, and only the little children who were too young to remember anything were to be spared.
The unfortunate emigrants did not know who their foes were. They saw Indians, or men who were so coloured that they looked like Indians, and they saw others who were more than strangers to them, but they had no clue to the cause of their detention. To them all was mystery. That Indians should attack them was quite within the bounds of probability, although there was at that time no cause for such an outrage; but that such an attack should be persistent, and should be carried on under the peculiar circumstances in question, was, to say the least, highly improbable.
Who could rightly tell a story so fearful as this? The emigrant train—men, women, and children fainting and famishing for want of bread and meat. In their pockets was money wherewith the necessaries of life might have been bought, and the generous hand of the Almighty had that year been open so wide, and had scattered those necessaries so liberally, that nothing but the wickedness of man towards his fellow could have created a dearth. But so it was that darkness and the fear of death—a fearful death even at the door—was all those poor emigrants had standing before their eyes. What right had the Mormon militia to be pursuing, to be hanging about the skirts of any body of emigrants? Their very presence was in itself unauthorized—criminal. The emigrants supposed that they were surrounded by Indians, and expected the cruellest treatment in case of resistance not only death, but the outrage and shocking atrocities of savages. They did not know that the red men who threatened their lives and the lives of their helpless wives and infants were brought together at that spot for that same purpose by the counsel of Mormon authorities. They did not know that so many of the appearing red-skins were only painted devils,[252] mocks of humanity, wretches who under the mask of a red-skin’s colour were eager to perpetrate the foulest of offences—scoundrels a thousand times damned in the opinion of men, and by the decree of God.
Day after day went by, and the poor creatures began to despair—who can wonder? The brave men cared little for their own lives; but there was something fearful in the thought that their darling ones would be scalped, and torn in pieces, and brutally outraged! Who can wonder that they resolved to sell life as dearly as they possibly could? They might at least die in defence of those they loved.
So day followed day. The agony of the unhappy men and women who were thus besieged, and were in daily, hourly peril of the most frightful of all deaths, can be imagined—not told. Meanwhile, what were those atrocious scoundrels doing who were lying in wait for their blood? Some of them were tricked out as Indians; some were in their own proper dresses; and, moreover, real Utes were there. The unhappy victims could not possibly escape—there was time for the murderers to do their work leisurely. Between chance shots, which were intended to, and did, carry death with them, they amused themselves with “pitching horse-shoe quoits:”—such heartlessness is almost beyond conception.
In terrible need of water, they thought that even the Indians, who they supposed were their assailants, might possibly respect a token of truce; so they dressed two little girls in white and sent them down to the well. But the fiends—the Mormon militia—shot them down. In the day of doom, the blood of those babes will testify more heavily against Major John D. Lee, and Isaac C. Haight, and Colonel Dame, and George A. Smith, and the other wretch who plotted and contrived that fearful iniquity, than any of the base and cowardly crimes which have for years and years blackened their contemptible and miserable souls.
They could not possibly advance. Their corn would not last long. They were famishing for water. How long they could hold out was evidently only a matter of time. Had the train consisted only of me............