Can anyone help me as to WHY it happened?
Why did the mormons not want the immigrants passing through?

There is quite a bit of good info on the internet on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre

http://www.religioustolerance.org/lds_mass.htm

http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=431

The locals were very poor, the Fanchers had a lot of expensive equipment, as much as $300,000 worth.

They came from Arkansas, where Parley Pratt had been murdered - by a man whose wife he'd married and she was taking his kids too.

There was a culture of fear and violence, spawned by BY. The feds were coming, outsiders all looked like spies, and the Danites were active.

The locals were barely surviving and existed in a world of strict obedience that even today's TBMs would find stifling. They did what they were told.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2011 06:01AM by Heresy.

ta.

I was just wondering if there is a 'real' version of the events and a 'church' version.

As TSCC is very good at twisting history.. church states that BY didn't know and had nothing to do with it for starters..

It was shortly after the scandal of the monument reconstruction in 1999 that the Salt Lake Tribune ran a story, and I finally got an inkling of why Mormons have wanted this one covered up.

In a nutshell, news of Johnston's Army approaching had put Utah on a bit of a war footing, and the Fancher/Baker Train arrived in Great Salt Lake City in August, 1857, shortly after word reached Brigham Young of the death of Parley P. Pratt at the hands of Hector Mclean in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) near Arkansas. Pratt had been apprehended helping Mclean's estranged wife, Eleanor, kidnap her children. He was held briefly in an Arkansas court then released and Mclean followed him...

Mclean was never arrested, charged, or tried for the crime...

Young dispatched George A. Smith to the Southern Utah settlements with word not to sell any provisions to emigrants...

The Fancher Train had originally been planning on taking the "northern route' to California, but were persuaded to turn south instead (their leader, Alexander Fancher had been through Utah twice before and taken that route at least once on his way to California).

The wagon train was attacked by Mormons dressed as Indians (and probably a few Indians); John D. Lee was one of the architects of that event, and then William Dame of Cedar City gave the order that the Arkansans were to be decoyed from their barricaded position under a flag of truce, and the slaughter ensued after they had traveled perhaps a mile under an armed Mormon guard. The group of mostly women and children had been disarmed...

That much is pretty much not subject to challenge... I think the two best books on the subject are Will Bagley's "Blood of the Prophets" and Bagley and David Bigler's, "Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre." Juanita Brooks earlier volume, "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" is also a useful introduction... Here are some links...

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Prophets-Brigham-Massacre-Mountain/dp/0806134267

http://www.amazon.com/Innocent-Blood-Essential-Narratives-Mountain/dp/0870623621

http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Meadows-Massacre-Juanita-Brooks/dp/0806123184

As to your question, it's pretty obvious Brigham Young was using the threat of an Indian War--and exaggerated Eastern fears of the "savages"--in an attempt to prevent his being replaced as territorial governor...

He was essentially "running a bluff" and claiming that only he could prevent the closure of the Overland Migration Route...

Mormons, of course, play the "persecution" card and claim the massacre originated with local Southern Utahans inflamed by the rhetoric of "The Reformation," and said they misunderstood BY's "orders."

Of course it was only when the charade fell apart that LDS leaders even admitted Mormon involvement. Young's depostion on the subject given at John D. Lee's first trial (in 1875) claimed that he had only vague thirdhand knowledge of the event; in fact Lee and Bishop Philip Klingensmith had briefed him about the entire matter within weeks...

So my answer to the question is the reason they didn't want them passing through was because Brigham Young ordered them not to let them pass in order to a) avenge Pratt's murder, b) make a statement to the U.S. Government about who "ruled" Utah, and c) allow the Southern Utahans--and the church--to enrich themselves with the plunder. The Fancher/Baker wagon train may have been the single richest wagon train to cross the Plains in the era 1846-1868...

Mormon apologists and the faithful will disagree, of course...

I'll let my friend have the last word since he's been a source of illumination to me on the subject (even though I was researching it before his book was published).

http://www.cesnur.org/2002/slc/bagley.htm

>The atrocity at Mountain Meadows did not happen because its victims stumbled into a typically violent Western confrontation or poisoned a spring or called the Mormons names. I struggled for five years to come up with a coherent explanation of this event, and much to my surprise, I found compelling evidence that this mass murder was a calculated act of misdirected retribution, which Brigham Young sanctioned as a righteous act of vengeance. In May 1861, the Mormon prophet himself explained to John D. Lee why it had to be done: “Pres. Young said that the company that was used up at the Mountain Meadows were the Fathers, Mothers, Brothers, Sisters & connections of those that Murdereds the Prophets. They Merited their fate, & the only thing that ever troubled him was the lives of the Women & children, but that under the circumstances [this] could not be avoided.”

>Two early Mormon practices - the Oath of Vengeance and Blood Atonement - help us understand what happened on that grim Friday afternoon 145 years ago - and why.

I truly believe early Mormons were less mentally stable than average, more easily influenced by leaders, more gullible, more easily worked into a frenzy, more xenophobic, etc. The saner elements had been filtered out by the time the church arrived in its isolated empire where all the mental instability then fed on and reinforced itself.

Good info.

Not only it tells the story of MMM but describes American West eloquently.

at least the best story we have with limited info.

documentary on the subject

http://www.buryingthepast.com/

tscc would NEVER allow it to see the light of day.
Some say that BY was 'too smart' to order the MMM;

a) Given his weird sayings, I don't believe that
b) There is little denial that he called ALL the Shots in Ut; that he 'set the stage' for it with rhetoric is nearly undeniable.

Also, there were claims that the immigrants may have foolishly claimed to be responsible or associated with the deaths of JS and/or Parley Pratt.

AFTER the MMM tells a story, with as much volume as the actual event; the LDS divided up the goods (incl. abt 600 head of Prime cattle), prolly would have kept the children if not 'forced' to give them up...

SAD for EVERYONE Concerned; the Morg will NEVER live this down!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2011 11:59AM by guynoirprivateeye.

One thing not mentioned in the wikipedia article, but I recall from the "Blood of the Prophets" book, was that Brigham Young was asking the Federal Government for money to protect wagon trains from the dangerous indians. So he had some motive to order or suggest a fake-indian attack, although he may not have intended for all of the wagon train to be slaughtered. That may have happened because members of the wagon train spotted white men among the attackers.

Sadly, we will never know as much as we ought to know, since the church was fairly effective in preventing the truth from coming out. That's one thing everyone can agree on.

blaming Indians.

The moral leadership of this man just never fails to scrape bottom.

Locals claim that the indians were (marginally) involved...

In some of the modern accounts (research ?), it's said that the Indians killed the women & children, while the Mos killed the men.

So Sad that we'll never know ALL THE DETAILS...

The majority of deaths that were investigated appear to have been from gunshot wounds -- not likely to have been dealt by indians.

Here's my list in priority (strictly my opinion):

1) BY ordered the massacre to atone for the recent murder of Parley P. Pratt (Pratt was killed in NW Arkansas in May 1857, the MMM occurred in Sep 1857). Spilling the blood (even if it was not the actual perpetrators) was the only way, in BY's mind, of atoning for PPP...and JS to a much lesser extent. PPP was a "son" to BY and he left SLC on Sep 11, 1856 on a journey to help his last [plural] wife Eleanor McLean regain possession of her children. The PPP story is fascinating and is intrinsically tied with the MMM (in my humble opinion).

2) BY ordered the massacre as a result of news received July 24, 1857. On the ten-year anniversary of their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and two thousand guests and their families were celebrating Pioneer Day at Silver Lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon, southeast of Salt Lake City. About noon that day, five horsemen, led by Salt Lake City Mayor Abraham O. Smoot, interrupted the celebration with news that 2,500 federal troops had been dispatched to Utah to put down the so-called “Mormon rebellion”, and that Utah’s federal mail contract had been cancelled. Brigham Young instructed the Saints to prepare to defend themselves ( http://jamesgammellchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/03/utah-war.html ) ....The cancellation of the mail contract was no small matter. In the previous year (1856), the Mormon emigrant migration via handcarts had its most horrific incident with the loss of over 200 people in the Martin and Willie handcart companies....
"In 1856 the Mormon Church bid for and received a four-year contract for monthly mail service between Independence, Missouri, and Salt Lake City. Wagons, animals, feed, stations, and men were quickly lined up, and mail service commenced February 8, 1857. Soon the church was preparing to carry freight as well. The first permanent stations or settlements were set up at Genoa, about 100 miles west of Omaha, and on Deer Creek (just west of Deer Creek in what is now Glenrock, Wyoming). Other stations were begun at the Horseshoe Creek stage station (2 miles due south of what is now Glendo, Wyoming,at La Bonte Creek (10 miles south of Douglas, Wyoming), Devil's Gate (near the Gate, just south of the Sweetwater River and abandoned Wyoming Highway 220), and at Rocky Ridge (a very remote and difficult place to visit today). The Mormons also made use of other existing stations at Fort Laramie, Sweet Water (known today as Burnt Ranch, just south of the Sweetwater River, and Fort Bridger. The proposed sites at Horseshoe Creek, La Bonte Creek, Deer Creek, Devil's Gate, and Sweetwater River were surveyed into 640-acre or one square-mile rectangles--160 rods by 640 rods, or 2 miles by 1/2-mile sections."

"The main objective was eventually to have stations every 50 miles--the daily distance attainable by mule teams. Such stations would also be aids to Mormon emigrants by stocking and providing grain and other basic supplies, where hay and other crops could be raised. Then suddenly the contract was canceled because of the political influence of rival mail contractors and all the Mormon mail and freight stations were closed for good." ( http://heritage.uen.org/companies/Wcb1e25eb5d595.htm ) The cancellation of the mail contracts would have most certainly sent BY into a rage.

3) BY ordered the massacre as a warning to other Gentile invaders. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War for a partial explanantion.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2011 09:49AM by jw the inquizzinator.

Not to quibble or anything but the excavation described above unearthed the remains of 28 victims. They were re-buried five weeks later by orders of Michael O. Leavitt, then governor of Utah, whose family owned lands near the site and whose ancestor, Dudley Leavitt was among the murderers. But there was considerable time and energy expended in analyzing the remains beforehand...

Here are a couple of more links...

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/massacre/meadows.html

>Utah state law required that the bones be studied, a job that went to forensic anthropologist Shannon Novak from the University of Utah. Novak and her colleagues found entrance and exit holes in the skulls of men that could only have come from gunshots fired at close range, while most women and children found died of blunt force. In her analysis of more than 2,600 bone fragments, Novak found no evidence of knives used to scalp, behead, or cut the throats, as well as no evidence of trauma from arrows. Although the study cannot determine what weapons Paiutes might have used in the massacre (if they were involved), it brings up the possibility that white men murdered all of the victims, contradicting John D. Lee's testimony accusing Native Americans of slaughtering the women and children.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mountainmeadows/carletonreport.html

http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/1850s/1902Carl.htm

And when I was re-checking links early this a.m. for my reply above, I happened on this one...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juanita_Brooks

>Juanita Pulsipher Brooks. . . was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history, including books related to the Mountain Meadows massacre, to which her ancestor Dudley Leavitt was sometimes linked.

Sometimes linked? Ancestor? He was her frickin' grandfather, fer cryin' out loud...

More Mormonites infesting with Wiki with their dissembling and disinformation...

The evidence against much Indian involvement in the initial attack (Lee's "Confessions" are the source of the charge against the Paiutes) is twofold: a) The Indians in Southern Utah owned perhaps five firearms among all of the various bands in that area, and the initial volley killed or seriously wounded most of the adult males of the party; b) the Paiute oral tradition is that they were not involved (although some obviously were, particularly near the end); it was pine nut season, and many would've been scattered in the hills searching for this important foodstuff...

Edit: The board software put this in the wrong spot, and as is obvious, I intended it as a respectful addendum to Rebeckah's post above...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2011 03:59PM by SL Cabbie.

http://1857massacre.com/MMM/142-year-old-wound.htm

http://1857massacre.com/MMM/passiveroll.htm

http://www.americanheritage.com/content/what-happened-mountain-meadows?nid=60739

Snippet from the above link:

"...Reconstructing some 18 different skulls from 2,605 pieces of bone from 28 victims, including women and children, the scientists produced the first physical evidence in a long and disputed history. The investigation “suggests the killing of women and children may have been more complicated than [in previous] accounts,” Dr. Novak wrote in her final study, presented last October to the Midwest Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology Association. Among other revelations, the examinations disclosed that some of the victims, including several women and at least one child, had been killed while facing their executioners head-on, by point-blank gunshots between their eyes, rather than by being shot in the back while fleeing, as earlier accounts had claimed."

"Further, it became evident that the murders had been committed by white men rather than by the Paiute Indians commonly blamed for all the attacks on the women and children. And it was especially clear that John D. Lee, the one man ever held accountable for the crime, could not possibly have acted alone in a mass murder of this magnitude. Paiute leaders say the new forensic evidence supports their own oral histories that the tribe has been wrongfully blamed."

"Novak’s examination was still not completed in crucial aspects, including DNA testing, when the bones were reburied, under orders from Governor Leavitt. Marian Jacklin, a U.S. Forest Service archeologist, was one of the many who fought the state’s decision to halt the inquiry. “Those bones could tell the story and this was their one opportunity,” she said. “I would allow my own mother’s bones to be studied in a respectful way if it would benefit medicine or history.”..."

By "little forensic study" I merely meant that the time they were allowed was woefully short. It's always bothered me too. Why do Mormons think people won't believe that they're trying to hide something when they obviously want to hide it?