Cover of Harper's Weekly
13 August 1859 Issue
Artist Unknown
THE MASSACRE AT MOUNTAIN MEADOWS
The story of so horrible a human butchery as that which occurred at the
Mountain Meadows,
Utah
Territory, in the autumn of 1857, has by this time, no doubt, reached
the States; but as no account which I have yet seen can in the slightest
degree approximate to a description of the hideous truth, being myself
now on the ground, and having an opportunity of communicating with some
who were no doubt present on the occasion, I deem it proper to send you
a plain and unvarnished statement of the affair as it actually occurred.
A train of Arkansas emigrants, with some few Missourians, said to number
forty men, with their families, were on their way to California, through
the Territory of
Utah,
and had reached a series of grassy valleys, by the Mormons called the
Mountain Meadows, where they remained several days recruiting their
animals. On the night of September 9, not suspecting any danger, as
usual they quietly retired to rest, little dreaming of the dreadful fate
awaiting and soon to overtake them. On the morning of the 10th, as, with
their wives and families, they stood around their camp-fires passing the
congratulations of the morning, they were suddenly fired upon from an
ambush, and at the first discharge fifteen of the best men are said to
have fallen dead or mortally wounded. To seek the shelter of their
corral was but the work of a moment, but there they found but limited
protection.
To enable you to appreciate fully the danger
of their position I must give a brief description of the ground. The
encampment, which consisted of a number of tents and a corral of forty
wagons and ambulances, lay on the west bank of, and eight or ten yards
distant from, a large spring in a deep ravine running southward; another
ravine, also, branching from this, and facing the camp on the southwest;
overlooking them on the northwest, and within rifle-shot, rises a large
mound commanding the corral, upon which parapets of stone, with
loopholes, have been built. Yet another ravine, larger and deeper, faces
them on the east, which could be entered without exposure from the south
and far end. Having crept into these shelters during the darkness of the
night, the cowardly assailants fired upon their unsuspecting victims,
thus making a beginning to the most brutal butchery ever perpetrated on
this continent.
Surrounded by superior numbers, and by an unseen foe, we are told the
little party stood a siege within the corral of five or seven days,
sinking their wagon-wheels in the ground, and during the darkness of
night digging trenches, within which to shelter their wives and
children. A large spring of cool water bubbled up from the sand a few
yards from them, but deep down in the ravine, and so well protected that
certain death marked the trail of all who had dared approach it. The
wounded were dying of thirst; the burning brow and parched lip marked
the delirium of fever; they tossed from side to side with anguish; the
sweet sound of the water, as it murmured along its pebbly bed, served
but to heighten their keenest suffering. But what all this to the pang
of leaving to a cruel fate their helpless children? Some of the little
ones, who though too young to remember in after years, tell us that they
stood by their parents, and pulled the arrows from their bleeding
wounds.
Long had the brave band held together; but the cries of the wounded
sufferers must prevail. For the first time, they are (by four Mormons)
offered their lives if they will lay down their arms, and gladly they
avail themselves of the proffered mercy. Within a few hundred yards of
the corral faith is broken. Disarmed and helpless, they are fallen upon
and massacred in cold blood. The savages, who had been driven to the
hills, are again called down to what was denominated the "job," which
more than savage brutality had begun.
Women and children are now all that remain. Upon these, some of whom had
been violated by the Mormon leaders, the savage expends his hoarded
vengeance. By a Mormon who has now escaped the threats of the Church we
are told that the helpless children clung around the knees of the
savages, offering themselves as slaves; but with fiendish laughter at
their cruel tortures, knives were thrust into their bodies, the scalp
torn from their heads, and their throats cut from ear to ear.
I am writing no tale of fiction; I wish not
to gratify the fancy, but to tell a tale of truth to the reason and to
the heart. I speak truths which hereafter legal evidence will fully
corroborate. I met this train on the Platte River on my way to Fort
Laramie in the spring of 1857, the best and richest one I had ever seen
upon the plains. Fortune then beamed upon them with her sweetest smile.
With a fine outfit and every comfort around them, they spoke to me
exultingly of their prospects in the land of their golden dreams. Today,
as then, I ride by them, but no word of friendly greeting falls upon my
ear, no face meets me with a smile of recognition; the empty sockets
from their ghastly skulls tell me a tale of horror and of blood. On
every side around me for the space of a mile lie the remains of
carcasses dismembered by wild beasts; bones, left for nearly two years
unburied, bleached in the elements of the mountain wilds, gnawed by the
hungry wolf, broken and hardly to be recognized. Garments of babes and
little ones, faded and torn, fluttering from each ragged bush, from
which the warble of the songster of the desert sounds as mockery. Human
hair, once falling in glossy ringlets around childhood's brow or
virtue's form, now strewing the plain in masses, matted, and mingling
with the musty mould. Today, in one grave, I have buried the bones and
skulls of twelve women and children, pierced with the fatal ball or
shattered with the axe. In another the shattered relics of eighteen men,
and yet many more await their gloomy resting-place.
Afar from the homes of their childhood, buried in the heart of almost
trackless deserts, shut up within never-ending mountain barriers, cut
off from all communication with their fellowmen, surrounded by
overpowering numbers, harmless citizens of our land of justice and
freedom, with their wives and families, as dear to them as our own to
us, were coolly, deliberately, and designedly butchered by those
professing to be their own countrymen.
I pause to ask one calm, quiet question.
Are these facts known in the land where I was born and bred?
I have conversed with the Indians engaged in this massacre. They say
that they but obeyed the command of Brigham Young, sent by letter, as
soldiers obey the command of their chief; that the Mormons were not only
the instigators but the most active participants in the crime; that Mormons led the attack, took possession of the spoil; that much of that
spoil still remains with them; and still more, was sold at the tithing
office of the Church.
Such facts can and will be proved by legal testimony. Sixteen children,
varying from two to nine years of age, have been recovered from the
Mormons. These could not be induced to utter a word until assured that
they were out of the hands of the Mormons and safe in the hands of the
Americans. Then their tale is so consonant with itself that it can not
be doubted. Innocence has in truth spoken. Guilt has fled to the
mountains. The time fast approaches when "justice shall be laid to the
line, and righteousness to the plummet."
