Sept 11
As we approach the upcoming September 11 anniversary, it is important to note that the original significance of this date is unknown to most people now living. Overshadowed by more recent events and the history of the event itself a victim of many years of unrelenting, dedicated, and revisionist historical whitewashing by the zealot religious perpetrators, participants, adherents, and their followers, descendants, and apologists.
It was the worst mass murder of citizens on US soil ever recorded. Carried out by religious extremists in the name of God and at the behest of their spiritual leader. A leader who controlled every aspect of their lives: religious, civil and military.
The group, a former ally of the US, at one point had its followers enlisted and financed by the US government to assist in a war against a foreign adversary in a separate foreign country. Eventually, tensions over real and perceived religious persecutions led this leader and his group to denounce the United States or America, its government, and its people.
For many years they required, under penalty of death by a ‘blood oath’, an “Oath of Vengeance” from their adherents against the United States and its people;
“You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation.” (Wikipedia: Oath of Vengeance)
One of the faithful perpetrators and leaders of the Sept 11 mass murder later wrote in his confession;
"I believed then as I do now, that it was the will of every true [believer], at that time, that the enemies of the [faith] should be killed as fast as possible, and that as this lot of people had men amongst them that were supposed to have helped kill the Prophets…., the killing of all of them would be keeping our oaths and avenging the blood of the Prophets."[ (Wikipedia: Confession, J D Lee)
They took refuge in an isolated, desolated, and largely uninhabited desert mountain region which became their fortress. Intent on establishing a nation being governed by their own religious laws they set up their own religious, civil, and military authorities. Armed and trained their own militia that would eventually harass, threaten, and even challenge the US Armed forces.
Offended by differences of secular and religious ideologies and the encroachment of US and military on what they perceived as their religion and God-given territories, their leader incited them to various forms of forms of resistance including attacks up US military and civilians resulting in a number of deaths.
Frustrated by the inability to directly stop or engage the US government or military and wanting to demonstrate a show of force, the leader, and his militia resorted to orchestrating an act of terrorism placing his followers under marshal law.
Days before the attack the leader summoned the local indigenous leaders of the region and, in return for their support in the attack, offered them the spoils gleaned from the relatively wealthy American citizens who were the intended victims.
Sept 11, 1857 - The 160th anniversary of the Mormon Mountain Meadow Massacre - Sept 11, 2017
On this date in southern Utah, the Mormons committed the worst act of terrorism and mass murder against innocent US citizens on US soil. Killing more than 130 men women and children of the Baker-Fancher wagon train. Settlers en-route from Arkansas to California.
An infamous distinction that would stand until the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 took the lives of 168. Incidentally perpetrated by another self-styled militia sympathizer who hated the US government and sought vengeance against it and its citizens.
The wagon train had stopped to rest at the Mountain Meadow along the Old Spanish Trail before proceeding across the desert of the Southwest to California. Without warning the Mormons, disguised as Indians ambushed the encircled wagons and over the next five days killed approximately a dozen defenders and gravely injured 17 more.
Mormon Bishop and military leader (as well as Indian agent, constable, AND judge) John D Lee approached the besieged immigrants under a flag of truce. Lee told the settlers that he personally arraigned a truce with the ‘supposed’ Paiutes and upon their surrender and the surrender of their weapons, the Mormons would provide safe armed passage out of the area.
The settlers had little choice but to accept this arrangement as they already had many dead and wounded as well as running out of provisions.
The weapons were seized and placed in one wagon, the wounded in another, and children under the age of eight were separated into another. In Mormon doctrinal orthodoxy, children under the age of eight are considered innocent and were thus to be spared in the impending act of treachery.
In single-file, the men led the surrender march each accompanied by a Mormon male armed with a firearm. The women and older children followed also guarded. About a mile from the camp they reached the brush adjacent to the creek, the column was halted and Maj. John Higbee gave the order to his men: “Mormons, do your duty”. Whereupon the militiamen accompanying the male settlers shot each one point-blank. Women and children were also shot and those who escaped the first volley scattered and were run down and either shot or hacked to death by Mormons who had been hiding in the brush disguised as Indians and waiting for the planned ambush.
Although the Mormons tried to lay blame on the Paiutes, to this day, many historians remain unconvinced that there were any Indians involved in the massacre. There is reason to believe however that they eventually gained possession of some the wagon train’s horses, cattle, and other livestock as well as some of the valuables and provisions. As was promised to them previously by Mormon Prophet and leader Brigham Young in return for their participation and/or cooperation.
The Mormons helped themselves to anything of value that was left of the wagon train, justifying their theft the victims’ property in part by claiming compensation for the care of the orphaned children.
To this day, most Mormons remain blissfully ignorant of this dark chapter of their history. They claim that anything negative in their past is the result persecution by others who are trying to “tear down the Church and its leaders”.
Most Mormons who are aware of the Mountain Meadow Massacre at all try to dismiss it by claiming that there is no proof that Brigham Young ordered it. While this may be true, [No written order has ever been produced. One Mormon historic researcher once admitted that, having found evidence so damaging to the church, that “it was consigned to the flames”] it ignores the fact that there is proof that Brigham Young incited his followers to this end by sending his people ahead of this wagon train whipping the faithful into a hysterical war-fever. In addition to promising the visiting Southern Utah Indian chiefs their reward when they met with him.
He most certainly was an accessory before the fact:
Judge Cradlebaugh publicly charged Brigham Young as an instigator to the massacre and therefore an "accessory before the fact”. Faithful Mormon judges ran interference on behalf of Young to shield him from federal prosecution. (Wikipedia, Mountain Meadow Massacre)
His actions afterward betray his intent as well as his contempt and disdain towards the victims by the cover up and whitewashing of the crime and his part in it. He sacrificed his own adopted son John D Lee as a scapegoat to be the only person convicted and executed for his part in leading the Mormon militia.
Even more damning for Brigham Young is his action as an accessory after the fact. After the Massacre, there was no effort to properly bury bodies of the victims. Most of them lay where they fell and if they were covered at all their bones were dug and scattered by animals. Many were stripped of their clothes and their bodies lay exposed as sun-bleached skeletal remains with only pieces of their hair attached or tangled in the brush.
They remained exposed to the elements this way for two years until after details trickled out to California of the events of the tragedy. The Federal government sent Major James Carleton to investigate in 1859.
In Carleton's investigation, at Mountain Meadows he found women's hair tangled in sage brush and the bones of children still in their mothers' arms.[18] Carleton later said it was "a sight which can never be forgotten." After gathering up the skulls and bones of those who had died, Carleton's troops buried them and erected a cairn and cross. (Wikipedia, Mountain Meadow Massacre)
Two years later the monument was destroyed in 1861 when Young brought an entourage to Mountain Meadows. Wilford Woodruff, who later became President of the Church, claimed that upon reading the inscription on the cross, which read, "Vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord. I shall repay", Young responded, "it should be vengeance is mine and I have taken a little." (Wikipedia, Mountain Meadow Massacre) His followers then destroyed the monument.
After studying this horrific tragedy for nearly ten years, I had the opportunity to visit the Mountain Meadow Massacre Site. I was with my oldest son. We were fortunate to meet a couple at the parking lot who had come from Arkansas and had family connections to the Fancher-Baker wagon train.
Because we were driving a truck and trailer, this couple offered to give us a ride from the parking lot to the two separate monuments. The first monument is on a hill overlooking the meadow. It has a fitting memorial naming those murdered and was supplied and erected by their descendants.
We then drove down the hill to the actual grave site. This monument has a stone and iron fence surrounding a rock cairn built to resemble the one erected by Major James Carlton in 1859 and subsequently destroyed by Brigham Young in 1861. It is a solemn, fitting and well-maintained burial site occupying space over a common grave.
However, as we walked around reading the bronze plaques embedded in the stone, while in the company of people with connections to those buried beneath our feet, I felt a deep sense of embarrassment and a rising sense of anger.
The plaques were not there to truthfully interpret and tell the story of what had happened there. Nor did it seem intended to actually honour and memorialize the victims. They were placed there to honour the Mormon church for buying up, owning and maintaining the site. And further, they were there to honour Mormon leaders who “under their direction” had been benevolent benefactors overseeing the monument’s construction. It seemed egregiously self-servings and inappropriately tacky.
For more than 150 years the Mormons controlled this site, buying up the surrounding land and controlling the narrative to fabricate a historical fiction that absolves the church and its leaders of culpability in perpetrating this crime and excusing its adherents for their participation.
For those of us who experienced the Sept 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, think forward and imagine a time when the decedents of the attackers own the site in order to control their version of its history. I believe such a thought would outrage most people.
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In 2011, under pressure from the descendants of the victims and the public, the site was designated a National Historic Monument. An action that was long overdue. I strongly suspect that the Mormon church, despite relinquishing the site to the Federal government, made a deal to continue to control the narrative of its historical interpretation.
Today the Mormon church and its members are viewed at worst, as a harmless cult with strange doctrine and practices (sometimes divisive) and at best, as good neighbors. Far removed from incidents of terrorism or murder. They long for acceptance and continue to move toward the mainstream of Christian-American life.
If we are aware and informed of our past histories we can learn from them. In light of the dual significance of the upcoming September 11, 1857 & 2001 anniversaries, Muslims in the US have faced harsh resistance in American society after the attacks on the World Trade Center, including widespread condemnation in an effort to build a new mosque/cultural center within blocks of the WTC site in Manhattan.
Meanwhile, in 2004 the Mormons built a new temple adjacent to Central Park in Manhattan.
They continue to revere Brigham Young as a prophet of God.
Regards,
Iconoclast
Cognitive Dissident
iconoclastcognitivedissident@hotmail.com
Rus White
Bow Island, Alberta
https://www.facebook.com/rus.white.9