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Date: February 03, 2016 05:37PM
(Posted by: steve benson, Date: Aoril 17, 2007)
Virginia Tech's Atrocious Murder Spree Notwithstanding, The Mountain Meadows Massacre Appears To Remain
Virginia Tech's atrocious murder spree notwithstanding, the Mountain Meadows Massacre appears to remain standing as the largest U.S. domestic gunshot murder crime committed against civilians in the nation's history.
While the massacre of some 33 innocent victims at Virginia Tech is truly a gruesome and horrible atrocity, contrary to current media reports it does not appear to represent the single deadliest gunshot mass murder committed against civilians on American soil in U.S. history.
That notorious distinction still, unfortunately, seems to belong to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, perpetrated by fanatical Mormon conspirators, arguably under orders from (or at least with the ultimate sanction of) then-LDS Church president Brigham Young.
Below are excerpted accounts strongly indicating that a significant number, if not a majority, of the Mountain Meadows Massacre victims appear to have been killed by gunfire:
"Single-file, the [Arkansas] immigrants [were] marched out of their haven. Marching beside them was a group of about 30 armed Mormons. When the women had gone about 500 yards, the men who were still able to walk followed them out, each man with a 'bodyguard' next to him. The youngest children and the wounded men were loaded into a wagon driven by a Mormon.
"Gibbs provides some of the best insight into the mood of the procession and the thoughts the immigrants must have had as they walked to their doom. 'The arrangements were made and carried out with all the precision of a legalized execution. There can be not the slightest doubt that the men knew the meaning of the peculiar formation of the procession. If there were danger of an attack by the Indians why was it, they thought, that they were not permitted to retain their firearms and aid in the protection of their wives and children? But, through unparalleled treachery, they were then powerless, and there was probably the hope that those so dear to them might be spared. That no word of protest was spoken is the strongest commendation of their heroism and evidence of their resignation.' . . .
"The final massacre took a surprisingly short time, considering so many people had to be killed individually. The macabre parade marched nearly a mile before Major Higbee halted the procession and ordered 'Do your duty!' Immediately, shots rang out as each Mormon turned on the immigrants who had given themselves over for protection.
"[Samuel] Knight then shot a man with his rifle; he shot the man in the head," Lee recalled. 'Knight also brained a boy that was about fourteen years old. The boy came running up to our wagons, and Knight struck him on the head with the butt end of his gun, and crushed his skull. By this time many Indians reached our wagons, and all of the sick and wounded were killed almost instantly. I saw an Indian from Cedar City, called Joe, run up to the wagon and catch a man by the hair, and raise his head up and look into his face; the man shut his eyes, and Joe shot him in the head. The Indians then examined all of the wounded in the wagons, and all of the bodies, to see if any were alive, and all that showed signs of life were at once shot through the head.'
"Survivors, witnesses, and participants all told similar stories of cold-blooded murder, cruelty, and inhumanity. 'The Mormon apostate refugees . . . were 'blood atoned' by the ritual slitting of throats,' [Sally] Denton writes in her book. "'I wouldn't do this to you,' a wounded apostate pleaded with the man he recognized as a Cedar City elder. 'You would have done the same to me or just as bad,'" she reports the man saying as he drew his knife across his victim's throat.
"Two sisters, Rachel and Ruth Dunlap, attempted to flee and made it about 30 yards to a copse of trees, where they hid. An Indian participating in the slaughter saw them and brought them back to Lee, who ordered them slain.
"Divining the sentence pronounced by Lee, the elder girl dropped to her knees and with clasped hands cried out: 'Spare me, and I will love you all my life!' But she died, as her sister had died, and at Lee's hands," Gibbs wrote. For the rest of his life, Lee vehemently denied killing the girls.
"Within a matter of minutes, the extermination of more than 120 men, women and children was over."
*****
"The Mountain Meadows massacre was a mass killing of Arkansas emigrants by Mormon militia and Paiutes on Friday, September 11, 1857.
"The murders took place at Mountain Meadows, a stopover along the Old Spanish Trail in southwestern Utah. Sources estimate that between 100 and 140 men, women and children were killed. . . .
"On Friday, September 11, two Mormon militiamen approached the Fancher party wagons with a white flag and were soon followed by Indian agent and militia officer John D. Lee. Lee told the battle-weary emigrants he had negotiated a truce with the Paiutes, whereby they could be escorted safely to Cedar City under Mormon protection in exchange for leaving all their livestock and supplies to the Native Americans.
"Accepting this, they were split into three groups. Seventeen of the youngest children along with a few mothers and the wounded were put into wagons, which were followed by all the women and older children walking in a second group. Bringing up the rear were the adult males of the Fancher party, each walking with an armed Mormon militiaman at his right.
"Making their way back northeast towards Cedar City, the three groups gradually became strung out and visually separated by shrubs and a shallow hill. After about 2 kilometers the prearranged order, 'Do Your Duty!' was given. Each Mormon then turned and killed the man he was guarding.
"All of the men, women, older children and wounded were massacred by Mormon militia and Paiutes who had hidden nearby. A few who escaped the initial slaughter were quickly chased down and killed. Two teenaged girls, Rachel and Ruth Dunlap, managed to clamber down the side of a steep gully and hide among a clump of oak trees for several minutes. They were spotted by a Paiute chief from Parowan, who took them to Lee. Eighteen-year-old Ruth Dunlap reportedly fell to her knees and pleaded, 'Spare me, and I will love you all my life!' (Lee denied this).
"50 years later, a Mormon woman who was a child at the time of the massacre recalled hearing LDS women in St. George say both girls were raped before they were killed."
*****
"Thus it was that on September 11, a flag of truce was carried to the Baker-Fancher party by William Bateman. He was met outside the camp by one of the emigrants, a Mr. Hamilton, and an arrangement was made for John D. Lee to speak to the emigrants. Lee described to them a plan to get them through the hostile Indians.
"The plan involved the emigrants giving up their arms, loading the wounded into wagons, and then being followed by the women and the older children, with the men bring up the rear of the company in a single-file order. In return for compliance with these terms, the white men would give the emigrants safe conduct back to Cedar City where they would be protected until they could continue their journey to California.
"The emigrants agreed, the wagons were brought forward and loaded with the wounded and the weapons, and the procession started toward Cedar City. Within a short distance, one armed white man was positioned near each of the Baker-Fancher party adults, ostensibly for protection. When all was in place, a pre-determined signal was given and each of the armed white men turned, shot, and killed each of the unarmed Baker-Fancher party members.
"Within three to five minutes the entire massacre of men, women, and older children was completed. The only members of the original party remaining were those children judged to be under eight years old, numbering about 17 persons."
*****
" . . . [W]ritten accounts [of the Mountain Meadows Massacre] generally claim the women and older children were beaten or bludgeoned to death by Indians using crude weapons, while Mormon militiamen killed adult males by shooting them in the back of the head.
"However, [Univeristy of Utah forensic anthropologist Shannon] Novak's partial reconstruction of approximately 20 different skulls of Mountain Meadows victims show:
"--At least five adults had gunshot exit wounds in the posterior area of the cranium--a clear indication some were shot while facing their killers/ One victim's skull displays a close-range bullet entrance wound to the forehead;
"--Women also were shot in the head at close range. A palate of a female victim exhibits possible evidence of gunshot trauma to the face, based on a preliminary examination of broken teeth;
"--At least one youngster, believed to be about 10 to 12 years old, was killed by a gunshot to the top of the head.
"Other findings by Novak from the commingled partial remains of at least 29 individuals--a count based on the number of right femurs in the hundreds of pieces of bone recovered from the gravesite--back up the historical record;
"--Five skulls with gunshot entrance wounds in the back of the cranium have no "beveling," or flaking of bone, on the exterior of the skull. This indicates the victims were executed with the gun barrel pointing directly into the head, not at an angle, and at very close range;
"--Two young adults and three children--one believed to be about 3 years old judging by tooth development--were killed by blunt-force trauma to the head. Although written records recount that children under the age of 8 were spared, historians believe some babes-in-arms were murdered along with their mothers . . . "
*****
"Utah state law required that the bones [of victims unearthed at the Mountain Meadows Massacre site] 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.
"To Shannon Novak, the bones could provide information that incomplete or biased histories could not. 'Prior to this analysis, what was known about the massacre was often based on second-hand information, polemical newspaper accounts, and the testimony of known killers,' said Novak. 'Furthermore, what had come to be merely an abstract historical event, the 'tragedy at Mountain Meadows,' now became a mass murder of specific men, women, and children with proper names an histories.'
"The analysis of the remains questioned the accuracy of the historical accounts and stirred up many emotions. After five weeks, Novak's analysis was cut short by an order from the governor of Utah, Mike Leavitt, that the bones be re-interred in time for the September anniversary."
*****
"Four miles south of Harrison in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas stands a historical marker dedicated to 'The Boone County Caravan.' The plaque refers to one of the worst mass murders in the history of the United States, an event virtually unknown to all but descendants of the victims and perpetrators.
"The inscription reads: 'Near this spring in September 1857 gathered a caravan of 150 men, women and children who here began the ill-fated journey to California. The entire party, with the exception of 17 small children, was massacred at Mountain Meadows, Utah, by a body of Mormons disguised as Indians."
*****
"Dr. Shannon Novak, a University of Utah forensic anthropologist, has worked long hours pouring over the physical evidence of remains found in the old burial site. Among other revelations, she found some (including women and children) has been shot point blank between the eyes and not in the back, as earlier accounts had claimed."
*****
"In all, 120 men, women and children of the wagon train were killed. 17 children under the age of 10 were considered 'too young to tell,' and were spared. Brevet Jamor J.H. Carleton noted in his investigation of the tragedy 'that about one third of the skulls were shot through with bullets and about one third seem to be broken with stones.'"
*****
"On Sept. 11, 1857, a group of California-bound pioneers camping in southern Utah were murdered by a Mormon militia and its Indian allies. The massacre lasted less than five minutes, but when it was over, 120 men, women and children had been clubbed, stabbed or shot at point-blank range. Their corpses, stripped of clothes and jewelry, were left to be picked apart by wolves and buzzards.
"It was one of the worst American civilian atrocities of the 19th century. 'The whole United States rang with its horrors,' Mark Twain recalled years later. . . .
"The massacre stands out not only for its gruesomeness but also for the act of treachery that preceded it. After enduring a four-day gun battle with their attackers, the pioneers accepted a truce that turned out to be a deadly ploy. Promised safe passage from the area in exchange for surrendering their weapons, the besieged group complied only to be systematically slaughtered. Seventeen children, all under 7 years old, were spared. . . ."
*****
"'All accounts agree that it [the Mountain Meadows Massacre] was quickly over,' wrote Mormon historian Juanita Brooks in her landmark 1950 study, "The Mountain Meadows Massacre."
"'Most of the emigrant men fell at the first volley, and those who started to run were quickly shot down by Mormons or by Indians. . . . '
"No Knives: Novak's study of the bones . . . found no evidence of sharp-force trauma, such as that caused by a blow from a knife or hatchet.
"The researcher notes that 'skeletal trauma only records lesions that penetrate to the bone.'
"The majority of gunshot wounds were in the heads of young adult males, although one child, aged 10-15, also was shot in the head. That gunshot victim 'suggests the killing of women and children may have been more complicated than accounts described in the diaries,' wrote Novak . . .
"Another indication of women and children being executed is the fractured palate of a female, aged 18-22. The pattern of the bone fracture, along with the blackened and burned crowns of the woman's teeth, is consistent with a gunshot wound.
"Suggestions that most emigrant men were shot in the back of the head and from the rear while fleeing also are questioned by bullet trajectories through the skulls. Six individuals were shot in the head from behind, while five were shot in frontal assaults.
"Recognizing the new scientific evidence is bound to prompt a reassessment of long-held views of Paiute Indian involvement in the massacre, Novak cautioned: 'Obviously, skeletal trauma cannot corroborate ethnically who was responsible for the shooting and whom for the beating.'
"No Role: Still, Paiute leaders say the forensic evidence supports their oral traditions that tribal members had little or no role in the killings. In 1998, tribal researchers interviewed elders about the massacre and the Utah divisions of History and Indian Affairs recently published some of those accounts in the new book edited by Cuch, 'A History of Utah's American Indians.'
"'Many Paiute leaders (among others) believe and claim that, contrary to most published accounts, Indians did not participate in the initial attack on the wagon train nor in the subsequent murder of its inhabitants,' wrote Weber State University cultural anthropologist Ron Holt and Paiute Tribe Education Director Gary Tom. 'Accounts collected by the Paiute Tribe call into question this recounting of events, claiming that in great part Paiutes have been wrongfully blamed for assisting in something that was not of their making.'"