I know the church teaches one story, but what really happened?

At the MMM site in S. Utah there are two signs. One at the large rock pile and another on top of a hill a little to the west.

The one a little to the west tells how the wagon train was surrounded and the men and boys were escorted to the top of the hill. When they heard the noise of the rifles killing the un armed women and children in the camp behind them, the men and boys turned to look.
That was the "signal" for their escorts to shoot them. The escorts, all mormon men acting under BYs orders killed the boys and men at point blank. Their bodies were then stacked up and covered with rocks or buried in shallow graves.

The wagon train was dispersed among the murderers along with the cattle and other animals.

There were some children,4 to 9 years old that survived. Their relatives came out from Arkansas at their own expense and took the children home to Arkansas. As far as I know, the property the children would have inheirited by being survivors of a massecare, was never given to them. Not even a buck for an oxen tail.

Others here have reported seeing the nice dishes and other things stolen from the Francher party being displayed at family reunions of the murderers even to this day.

The murderers of the Francher party did NOT go inactive...they are alive and well and have large families that live in Utah and Nevada and have propsered into the current times.

Only one man was hung for the crime: a Mr. Lee. He was made the scrapegoat for the murders.

There were 17 children spared because they were "under the age of accountability" (not yet 8 years old). There would have been more spared, but in order to shoot some of the women, they "had" to shoot through the babies they were clutching--I supposed that today they would call that "collateral damage." The Mormon attackers, led by local (area around St. George) senior priesthood leaders (bishops and stake presidents), felt that the people had to be destroyed because they believed that Young wanted it that way, that they were somehow in part responsible for killing the beloved Parley P. Pratt, who had stolen the wife of a jealous man who then enacted prairie justice and shot Pratt. They had all kinds of supposed "reasons." But the killers were made up of local church-going Mormons, many who were members and officers of the local militia, the Nauvoo Legion.

Lee was tried twice. The first time was a no-go because Young, who was an accessory after-the-fact, told people not to deliver a guilty verdict. The church interfered with every aspect of the trial. But the second time it began to be clear that the church would never be able to allow a hung jury again, and that Utah would not get statehood. Meanwhile, Young had excommunicated Lee because of the embarrassment of it all and to make it look like something was being done, but Lee stayed stalwart in his support for the church and Young. (Lee had retreated out into the desert with a couple of his wives.)

The second time it came to trial, Brigham Young ensured that the jury found Lee guilty. Eventually, in 1877 (20 years after MMM happened), Lee was taken out to the site of the murders and shot dead while sitting on his casket (as opposed to being hung). They hauled him around a few days before trying to put his temple clothes on him (even though he was no longer a member), but his body had decomposed so much, they just lay the clothing across his body.

The sad thing is that the church has never been even apologetic about it all, still blames it mostly on the Indians and such, and still tries to weasel out of all responsibility. I believe that in 1998 or 1999 or whenever it was that they made the new monument, Hinckley spoke and said something like, "...and let us speak of this no more." Former BYU president and general authority Rex E. Lee, descendant of of John D. Lee, felt very strongly that John D. should be posthumously exonerated and that the church should remain strictly unapologetic for what happened.

The thing that really kicked off the Mountain Meadows Massacre was the zeal caused by the 1853 Mormon Reformation, a knee-jerk reaction to so many displeased Utah immigrants who, tired of living a hardscrabble life under tyrant dictator Brigham Young, were jumping ship and leaving Utah. Young demanded that the members re-commit and all get rebaptised. Then he installed the doctrine of Blood Atonement, which, as in Islam, set up death as the penalty for apostasy (i.e., absconding from Utah). The doctrine dictated that blood actually had to be spilt, preferably by beheading. So, believe it or else, Utah set up beheading as a form of capital punishment. There was a lot of throat-slitting, too, as a form of punishment. (This became the premise for killing the Lafferty woman and her small daughter back in the 1970s.)

Fun stuff. And they named a university after this guy.

This is becoming an especially relevant story in my life because of personal developments.

Please, experts on Mountain Meadows that are open to direct contact identify yourselves. Especially family of the victims or residents of Arkansa.

The interesting nuance I am seeing in LDS discussions is 6 and under as opposed to 8 and under. To me this is a way they can plausibly deny an association with LDS leadership.

I also think this is a great case on the impossibility of getting a Mormon to be held accountable as a Church leader. Mormons refuse to accept that the LDS Church behaves with institutional interest/evil. It was Lee acting as a rogue, forget that he was a Stake President in Mormon frontier Utah and the adopted son of Brigham Young. Rogue wave.

Those Jack Nicholson fans will know "A Few Good Men". To me this is one of those plausible deniability stories. No one in Utah Territory behaved outside the blessing of Brigham Young, to think otherwise is to be complicit. They just can't handle truth, obedience is their biochemistry. How did I come from that egg?

The Army also erected a cairn of rocks with a cross, which Brigham Young had torn down. I'm currently reading a book about it. Its chilling, both what the Mormons did then and continued to do in denying, lying, whitewashing, blaming the victims, and trying to cover it up. The speech Hinckster made at the site was infuriating. What an asshole that man was.

The coat always stuck with me. He paused on the way to the spot he was supposed to stand for his firing squad. He says someone could probably use this coat - no need to ruin it. Lee takes it off and puts it on his own coffin. Then goes off to be the BY's scape goat.

People died, Brigham lied.

Juanita Brooks wrote what's typically considered the most even-handed treatment of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. You can get it at amazon.com for about $15. I've got a first edition of it somewhere in my library, and the breadth of scholarship at the time it was written (1950) is quite impressive.

Link's here:
http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Meadows-Massacre-Juanita-Brooks/dp/0806123184/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369134445&sr=8-1&keywords=mountain+meadows+massacre

I have a research paper that I wrote on it for my college class.

To the OP - how lazy are you?

I'm sure there's a lot of apologist crap out there. BY was perfect. The church is perfect. John D. Lee was apostate in the end so we'll tell it as if he single handedly killed them all.

And if I remember right, the Church ex'd Juanita Brooks for writing that book. But I cannot remember for sure if she was ever rebaptized. MMM was such a tragedy and Brigham Young should had been shot too for his involvement.

but David O McKay to his credit told them to leave here alone. Maybe cuz Fawn Brodie was his niece he had a soft spot for those who question and stir things up. Brooks died in the faith.

As an external observer here's how I view what happened:

Brigham Young was a pre-Jim Jones style megalomaniac who still had enough touch with reality to know what he could and could not get away with. The motive was simple -- theft. Mormon men got dressed up as Indians, attacked a well-equipped wagon train and shot and killed all of the men, women and children who could remember. Young controlled Utah with an iron hand and nothing of that magnitude could take place without his consent.

Short summary from the sources I have read...

Two months before the wagon train hit the massacre area, Young was having a sit down with local indian chiefs inquiring about the cattle of this train people heard was coming through. Young 'allegedly' gave them consent to take the cattle.
The following events took place so I still have problems with Young planning this though.
The critics claim Young inspired the Indians to steal the cattle even though one of the chiefs is said to tell Young he taught them never to steal.
Young sent messages to the elders in Cedar City and encouraged them to plan out this massacre, to kill women, men, babies and children. The elders agreed to do the massacre and practiced performing the massacre for at least 6 weeks.
Now it gets interesting.
A couple days before the massacre the leader that had been practicing this massacre with his men for 6 weeks suddenly had doubts as to what he was to do. The men that were to perform this massacre argued over what was to be done INSPITE of the fact they had received a command from Young 6 weeks earlier to kill everyone.
So the leader sent a rider to Young asking if they should massacre the people or just take the cattle.
Young gets the message and changes his mind/commandment about killing everyone and writes a message telling the leader not to kill everyone but to leave them alone and to let them pass through unmolested.
On the same day Young gets the message, the leader decides waiting for a reply from his prophet wasn't important anymore, that what Young had to say didn't matter to him. So he decided to take it upon himself and kill all the people and except for a handful that's what they did.
Now the acting gets really good. After the massacre, Lee rides back to SLC and counsels Young about what happened and tells him all about the massacre. Young pretending this was a surprise to him, that the massacre actually happened, the massacre he planned and commanded to be carried out, what does he tell Lee? He tells Lee he has to go and pray about the matter to the Lord to see what the Lord will tell him what to do!
Get it? A massacre that Young planned out two months in advance that he then decided shouldn't happen now has to pray about what to do in the aftermath.
Did the MMM happen? Yes it sadly did. Does anyone know the four w's? Not really.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2013 01:23PM by chucky.

Man, you know less about this than you do Native American migrations and pre-Columbian Old World/New World contacts...

Here's my "remedial correction" on this one:

Item: The meeting between Young and the Southern Utah Chiefs took place on September 1st. The immigrants were murdered on September 11th.

Item: The source for the claim that BY "sent messages" to Cedar City rests with John D. Lee's "Confessions" (everything else is just a lot of rumors). What is known is that George A. Smith left Great Salt Lake City just as the Fancher/Baker Party arrived here and subsequently carried the message that all of the pioneer settlers were forbidden from trading with the emigrants in the wake of Johnston's Army approaching from the East (I see no mention of this fact. Did you overlook or never learn it?). The timeable wasn't two months because the wagon train arrived the first week in August, 1857.

Item: Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt was murdered in Indian Territory right near Arkansas in the spring of 1857. He was never charged in Arkansas courts, and all of the F/B emigrants were from Arkansas.

Item: James Haslam was sent to carry the message to Salt Lake after the attacks on the train had begun. It wasn't the leader who had second thoughts, it was other Mormons...

Item: Several here are close friends with Will Bagley and meet with him regularly. A year ago Will revealed to rodolfo and myself the existence of a letter detailing that the Young compound had knowledge that a wagon train in Southern Utah was imperiled. This was at the same time that Stewart Van Vliet, Johnston's advance liaison officer was meeting with Young. Haslam arrived from Cedar City at the same time.

Item: Lee does journey to Salt Lake to give Young the details, but his diary notes that Young warned him to say nothing to anyone, not even Heber C. Kimball. Philip Klingensmith, the first massacre participant to "come forward" also speaks to Young.

Young brought his entourage to the massacre site much later, and under is eye, the rock cairn that Carleton's men had erected was torn down. He was heard to say, "Vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little."

That's enough for now. I'll give my friend Twinker below a little horn honk on the rest...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2013 07:59PM by SL Cabbie.

until 1950 (exact ?) when a book (1st Ed.) Mountain Meadows Massacre was published ... written by one Juanita Leone Leavitt Pulsipher Brooks <1/15/1898 - 8/26/1989> (she was widowed & re-married) the MMM was effectively covered-up by TSCC.

Since then, a flood of research / books has told the story, with remarkably few contradictions.

Brooks lived & taught in Southern Utah close to where the MMM happened, she was shunned by her LDS friends for her efforts.

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

when I heard of her death (on NPR), that piqued my interest in the MMM; I cried like a baby when I understood what happened.
I soon wrote tscc telling them that they should re-name BYU after her; BY Lied, JB TOLD THE TRUTH.
note: her research / book was sponsored - financed somewhat by relatives of John Doyle Lee, who was scape-goated by LDS, Inc.

Long may her memory live in the hearts & minds of people who Love the Truth.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2013 02:33PM by guynoirprivateeye.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362876/

Ironically my favorite teacher in Utah, Eric Young, wrote and directed this. He was an amazing internpersonal communication teacher-- an ex-mo in Utah, teaching about the value of honesty and having REAL self awareness and REAL relationships.

Blood of the Prophets. Of all the books written, his is the most complete.

Also, Sally Denton's American Massacre and Jon Krakhaur's Under the Banner of Heaven.

And if you want more detail than that, read Innocent Blood also by Will Bagley. All the important documents are reproduced including those that tried to give a cover story maligning the emigrants. By following the chronology, the cover story, the connections to the rest of the history of the LDS church and Brigham Young's reign of terror, you will understand why Brigham Young certainly knew of and very likely ordered the massacre.

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Prophets-Brigham-Massacre-Mountain/dp/0806136391

http://www.utlm.org/booklist/titles/innocentblood_xb294.htm

http://www.amazon.com/American-Massacre-Tragedy-Mountain-September/dp/0375726365

http://historytogo.utah.gov/people/juanitabrooks.html

(Brooks has two seminal volumes on the subject)

http://www.amazon.com/House-Mourning-Biocultural-Mountain-Massacre/dp/1607811693

And here's a link from one of RFM trouble all-time great troublemakers...

http://www.salamandersociety.com/interviews/willbagley/

This should keep you occupied, BG. By the time I attended the 2002 presentation, I'd been researching the story for two years; trying to learn what happened was how I first happened upon this site.

And a note to "Gentlestrength" above: Most of the old-timers in RFM have my contact info. Let them know you're interested (and prepare to receive the usual blood oaths of secrecy), and they'll probably be happy to forward your e-mail addy to me...

Whoops! Forgot one! Be a boring class if all we did was read books. Here's Brian Patrick's magnificent video documentary on the subject...

http://www.buryingthepast.com/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2013 08:15PM by SL Cabbie.

The only priority in any candidness on the church's part is shrewdly posing Brigham Young as having tried to stop the massacre.

I believe it's true that Young sent a rider with a message to let the wagon train go.
The church squeezes all the juice they can out of this turnip.

They largely IGNORE:

That Young started the hysteria called the "Utah War" to begin with. As a mormon child I was taught Johnston's Army was intent on genocide. Not true. They were only intent on restoring US control over US territory and US civilians. There was a peaceful solution to the "Utah War" before it ever started, but Brigham Young refused the terms...that a Washington-appointed governor replace him as theocratic governor. Young defied the same US army he had raised a battalion for a few years earlier, which marched in the war that won the entire southwest including most of "Deseret" for the US from Mexico. Very disingenuous of Young.

And, that Young, even if he would have stopped the massacre if he could...obstructed justice.

The church is so transparently disingenous, and only protecting their claim to "authority". Their interest in the MMM is that it makes Brigham Young look bad. They're fine with local mormons as scapegoats and in some ways the church is leading the way on condemning them...as Brigham Young supposedly did.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2013 04:47PM by amos2.

What would accountability in the Mormon church look like? I haven't seen it myself, so I will have to imagine.

Not joking here. It's squishy as hell, I have no knowledge of their owning up to an institutional wrongdoing. I've seen some scapegoating, but not very much of that either.

The Mormon church is perfect--the people are flawed, at the lowest ecclesiastical level accepted by the complaintant.

I had a discussion of this accountability thing concerning the LDS and the MMM with someone once. Personally I don't see it. And I will never understand someone today apologizing for the actions of someone that died 50 years ago or a century ago. I think it's a politically correct far left wing thinking idea for people today, that have no connection to one or more incidents that took place before they were even alive to apologize for the actions of dead people.
Like the Southern Baptist church today apologizing for the 18th century SBC that observed slavery because it was in the Bible, it was in the laws of the land and forms of slavery were brought from England to this country and it was a normal part of American life beginning in the 13 colonies. But the modern far left liberal wing SBC thought they should feel embarrassed and bad and disgusted for all those dead 18th century SBC people so they apologized for their behavior.
So I said to him you think what the SBC did was good, so if I did your family line and found out you had an ancestor that owned slaves, would you put on a sack cloth and darken your face with ashes and on the busiest street corner carry a sign high that read "My ancestor owned slaves so I'm apologizing to all black people". He thought that was a crazy idea...lolol...

No one alive today has any liability for it. Descendants of the massacrers don't owe the descendants of victims an apology.

However, the government and institutions with inherited liability cannot simply say so what, that was in the past.

And, I admit, my own interest in the MMM is not to see justice. Justice can't be served anyway. My interest is in how it effects the church's claims on prophetic/priesthood authority, and how the church has spun the massacre over the years to protect that.

They're still spinning it. Why? Because it makes Brigham Young look bad. If Brigham Young was bad, that weakens the church's claims, thus weakening it's power to manipulate people to pay into it today.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2013 01:02PM by amos2.

Yeah, I find the comments dismissive of my post. You seem to think "sorry" is being asked for, here's some money.

Accountability could be more about the way an institution behaves to protect the decision makers. It is a universal struggle and until we get people to allow their institution to be held accountable rather than looking for the scapegoat we will will not advance past this major impediment.

I see such criticisms as far too respectful of institutions. Any chance corporations are people too? I mean people own them, so they must be people right?

Not dismissive. People are asking/demanding that the LDS chiefs admit to accountability for Young and all his associates actions connected directly/indirectly to the MMM slaughter.
These people want to see the modern LDS chiefs bend the knee and say in one or more ways, their church was/is responsible for the murder/slaughter of the MMM. They want to hear those chiefs beg for forgiveness for a horrible atrocity committed at a time when things were hanging by a thread of lunacy on both accounts.
They want to hear even if there is no actual direct convincing evidence those chiefs admit all was Young's fault and doing for the MMM slaughter.
So let's say they did all of that. Now what? Less criticism? *e** no, anti's would only now claim they did it because of public pressure and weren't really sincere or such in their admittance and that nothing had changed, that Young was still the murderer they claimed him to be.
I have a question. The saints were in the territory for ten years. If Young was such a vicious murdering blood atonement anti-gentile monster as so many MMM sites claim, why did he wait ten years to massacre this wagon train? Dozens of wagon trains moved through that area for the previous nine plus years. Young could have taken out a less conspicuous wagon train to merit out his blood atonement upon. He could have taken out several wagon trains by sending groups of riders to different parts of the US where wagon trains were far in between towns, alone on the frontier and easy to massacre.
That is the message people have been stating for recent decades, Young wanted to slaughter something so he choose this wagon train. But why plan the slaughter of a wagon train for September of 1857 during a time period when he learned on July 24th, 1857 that 2500 troops were approaching Utah territory?
Say what you will of Young, but he kept that entire church together by his genius. And now with the US Army on the way 2500 strong, he has a stupid fart thought to massacre a wagon train thinking he'll get away with it and doing it won't harm the church he helped to keep together when it should have came to pieces and self destructed?
Young wasn't an idiot. Young wasn't stupid. Young had a brilliant mind and I'm to be convinced in a flash of anger or hate or blood lust he decided to toss the dice and see if his church would remain after slaughtering a wagon train of men, women and children?
I said it before, we don't have all the info and we never will. Too many unanswered questions and too few answers.

I think Mormons should be honest. That is something they require.

I did not have evidence that Joseph Smith made up the First Vision, but I smelled the stink.

I believe Brigham Young controlled Utah. There is evidence that he was impulsive, greedy, and indulgent. He was also under the impression he was above accountability.

So the Mormon church is never accountable to some. Except for good things. When does the Mormon church take responsibility for bad things--is it ever a corporate, institutional issue, or just ill-advised, aw-shucks Mormon individuals messing up.

A few scholars have expressed admiration for the genius of Smith and Young.

Here's a great quote from the genius of Young!

“Our religion will not clash with nor contradict the facts of science in any particular.”
― Brigham Young

I left out another link...

http://www.kensandersbooks.com/shop/rarebooks/32150.html

Some of us have studied the actual history and not the Paul Bunyanesque fables the LDS Church has passed off as history over the years.

You should also read accounts of the handcart scam; Young diverted a group of rescuers headed for the Willy and Martin companies to "retrieve" a steam engine and some "groceries" he'd cached up in Wyoming. That shipment consisted of liquor...

Young was little more than a Mafia boss who bypassed the Catholic Church and the Pope for ecclesiastical authority. The number of "unsolved" murders in Utah Territory at the time was horrible, and his group of thugs included Bill Hickman and Orrin Porter Rockwell as well as his inner circle that included Hosea Stout and Daniel Wells.

One more link...

http://signaturebooks.com/2010/02/reminiscences-of-early-utah/

This last individual was an early mayor of Salt Lake City and later a Utah Supreme Court Justice after statehood was achieved.

You guys all have it wrong and are being decieved by Stan. I learned all about this in Seminary. John Lee, a master of disguise, dressed himself up to look like a tribe indians and single handedly massacred the entire wagon train. Anti-mormons and followers of the devil have siezed on this as an opportunity to try and embarass the mormon church and implicate the rightous prophet Brigham Young. Thats the entire story and includes all the relevant facts.

why would any one be confused about what happened at MMM.
LDs Inc has made an official declaration about it !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XN74XBuqoc