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SARAH FRANCES (BAKER) GLADDEN MITCHELL'S
1940 ACCOUNT
Sarah Frances (Sallie) Baker was the daughter of George W. and Minerva
(Beller) Baker, and was three years old at the time of the Massacre. Her older sister,
Mary Elizabeth, age 5, and younger brother, William Twitty, age 9 months, also
survived the Mountain Meadows Massacre. She married Joseph Allen Gladden
in 1874. After Gladden's death in 1909, she married Manley C. Mitchell.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre ~
An Episode on The Road To Zion
By Mrs. Sallie Baker Mitchell
Sole Survivor
A Dark Chapter in the Mormons' Epic Struggle to Cling to Their
"Promised Land" as Told by One Who Lived Through the Tragedy
and Can Look Back On It with Intimate Understanding and Compassion
Transcription of News Article
Boston Advertiser - American Weekly,
June 16, 1940
Original News
Article
In a recent instalment of "The Road to
Zion," published in this magazine, Mr. Joseph E. Robinson, noted
Mormon pioneer and Utah legislator, gave a vivid and impartial account
of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which occurred 83 years ago in
southern Utah.
On that frightful occasion, a party of well-to-do settlers from
Arkansas, on their way to California, were attacked in a narrow valley
by Indians and Mormons and everyone murdered except 17 young children,
who were taken into Mormon homes and kept there until rescued about a
year later by Federal soldiers and returned to their relatives in
Arkansas.
One of those children was Mrs. Sallie Baker Mitchell, who will soon be
86 years old and who is now the sole survivor of that tragedy.
From the home of her daughter near Wainwright, Oklahoma, Mrs. Mitchell
has written for readers of The American Weekly her version of what led
up to the massacre, what happened on that dreadful day and what came
afterwards.
Her account is based upon her own memories and upon what she learned
from reading about the tragedy and discussing it with many of her
contemporaries, particularly her older sister, Mrs. Betty Baker Terry,
who was also one of the youthful survivors and who died only a few
months ago; and it is presented here as an intimate and remarkable
footnote to a dark chapter in American history, written by one who was
present at the time.
I've been interested in the series of
articles running in The American Weekly about the Mormons,
specially what's been said about the Mountain Meadows
Massacre, way back in September 1857.
I'm the only person still living who was in that massacre, where the
Mormons and the Indians attacked a party of 137 settlers on the way to
California, murdering everybody except 17 children, who were spared
because they were all under eight years of age.
I was one of those children and when the killing started I was sitting
on my daddy's lap in one of the wagons. The same bullet that snuffed
out his life took a nick out of my left ear, leaving a scar you can
see to this day.
Last November, I passed my 85th birthday and at the time of the
massacre I wasn't quite three years old. But even when you're that
young, you don't forget the horror of having your father gasp for
breath and grow limp, while you have your arms around his neck,
screaming with terror. You don't forget the blood-curdling war-whoops
and the banging of guns all around you. You don't forget the screaming
of the other children and the agonized shrieks of women being hacked
to death with tomahawks. And you wouldn't forget it, either, if you
saw your own mother topple over in the wagon beside you, with a big
red splotch getting bigger and bigger on the front of her calico
dress.
When the massacre started, Mother had my baby brother, Billy, in her
lap and my two sisters, Betty and Mary Levina, were sitting in the
back of the wagon. Billy wasn't quite two, Betty was about five and
Vina was eight.
We never knew what became of Vina. Betty saw some Mormons leading her
over the hill, while the killing was still going on. Maybe they
treated her the way the Dunlap girls were treated -- later on I'm
going to tell about the horrible thing that happened to them. And
maybe they raised her up to be a Mormon. We never could find out.
Betty, Billy and I were taken to a Mormon home and kept there till the
soldiers rescued us, along with the other children, about a year
later, and carried us back to our folks in Arkansas. Captain James
Lynch was in charge of the soldiers who found us, and I've got an
interesting little thing to tell about him, too, when I get around to
it.
But first I want to tell all I remember and all I've heard about the
massacre itself, and what lead up to it.
My father was George Baker, a farmer who owned a fine tract of
"bottom" land on Crooked Creek, near Harrison, Arkansas. He and my
grandfather, like a lot of other men folks at that time in our part of
the country, had heard so much about the California gold rush of '49
that they got the itch to go there. So my father and some of the other
men from our neighborhood went out to California to look over the lay
of the land and they came back with stories about gold that would just
about make your eyes pop out.
There wasn't anything to do but for everybody in the family to pack
up, bag and baggage, and light out for the coast. Everybody but
Grandma Baker. She wouldn't budge. She put her foot down and said:
"Arkansas is plenty good enough for me and Arkansas is where I'm going
to stay."
Her stubbornness saved her life, too, because if she had gone along
she would have been killed, just as were all the other grown-ups,
including my grandfather, my father and mother and several of my
uncles, aunts, and cousins.
Our family joined forces with other settlers from neighboring farms
under the leadership of Captain Alexander Fancher, and the whole
outfit was known as "Captain Fancher's party."
It wasn't made up of riff-raff. Our caravan was one of the richest
that ever crossed the plains and some people have said that that was
one of the reasons the Indians attacked our folks -- to get their
goods.
We traveled in carriages, buggies, hacks and wagons and there were 40
extra teams of topnotch horses and mules, in addition to 800 head of
cattle and a stallion valued at $2,000. Altogether, the property in
our caravan was valued at $70,000.
Captain Fancher's party spent the Winter getting ready and when Spring
came and everything was all set to go, John S. Baker, who was related
to us, was sick with crysipelas and couldn't travel. So he and his
family, along with some of his wife's relatives, waited a few days and
then set out to overtake us. A number of times they came across places
where we had camped and found the coals from our campfires still
warm, but they never did catch up with us, and that's why they missed
the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- but they ran into the tail-end of the
trouble, just the same, and had a terrible time themselves.
A lot has been said, both pro and con, about what caused the massacre.
It wasn't just because we had a lot of property the Indians figured
was well worth stealing. There were several other things that entered
into it.
In the first place, the members
of our party came from a section of the country not far from the
district in Missouri and Illinois where the Mormons had been mighty
badly treated. If you've been reading Mr. Robinson's articles in The
American Weekly, you'll recall how the Mormons were driven out of
Missouri into Illinois, where Joseph Smith, their Prophet and the
founder of their religion, and his brother, Hyrum, were assassinated.
Then they were driven out of Illinois and, after suffering all sorts
of hardships crossing the plains, they finally got themselves
established in Utah.
So it ís only natural that they should feel bitter about anybody who
came from anywhere near the part of the country where they had had so
much trouble. I'm sure nobody in our party had anything to do with the
persecution of the Mormons in Missouri and Illinois, or anything to do
with the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother. But that
didn't make any difference. The word got around, somehow, that
somebody in our party was bragging about having in his possession the
very same pistol that was used to kill the Mormon Prophet, and that he
even said he aimed to use it on Brigham Young, who had taken over the
leadership of the Mormons.
So far as I know there wasn't a word of truth in that, but the rumor
got around, right after we reached Utah, and it made a lot of Mormons
see red. Then somebody started working the Indians up against us, by
telling them our party had been poisoning springs and water holes, to
kill their horses. Now that just isn't so -- nobody in our party would
do a thing like that. Even if they had been mean enough, they wouldn't
have been such fools as to do a thing like that in a country filled
with Indians that were none too friendly to begin with.
Then there was the fact that our party came from the same general
district where Parley Pratt, a Mormon missionary, had been murdered by
J. H. McLean, because Pratt had run away with McLean's wife and two
small sons.
McLean didn't live in Arkansas. That just happened to be the place
where he caught up with Pratt, after tracking him back and forth
across the country.
The McLeans lived in New Orleans , and in the Summer of 1854 Parley
Pratt went there, hunting for new recruits- married women or unmarried
women, it didn't seem to make much difference, so long as they would
drop everything and follow him. I don't know why she did it, but Mrs.
McLean listened to his arguments, took up with him and ran away with
him taking her two children with her…
McLean was away from home at the time, and when he came back and found
out what had happened he was fighting mad. It was bad enough to have
her run away with another man, any man, let alone somebody who already
had I don't know how many wives. But what made him frantic was the
thought of his two sons being raised way off somewhere in a household
filled with somebody else's children.
So he sold out everything he owned, which took him about three months,
and then hit the trail, swearing he would never rest easy till he
found Parley Pratt and got his sons back.
When McLean landed in Salt Lake City [sic -New York City?], he
discovered that Brigham Young had sent Pratt to San Francisco, to
round up some more converts, and that the missionary had taken Mrs.
McLean and the boys with him. I don't know why he did that, unless he
figured that McLean was on his trail and that was the only way to hang
on to them.
At any rate, McLean took out after him, but when he reached San
Francisco, he learned that Pratt had doubled back across the plains,
taking Mrs. McLean and the boys along, in a wagon.
With hostile Indians lurking all over the plains, it was a dangerous
business crossing the country in those days, even in a big party. So I
reckon Parley Pratt wouldn't have set out with just one wagon unless
he had a mighty good reason for running ahead -- and that reason seems
to have been Mr. McLean, on horseback.
McLean kept gaining on him and finally overtook him at Fort Gibson,
near what was then the boundary between Indian Territory and Arkansas.
But McLean didn't start shooting right away. He wanted to be
law-abiding, if he could, so he got a warrant for Pratt's arrest and
had him brought before John B. Ogden, the United States commissioner
at Van Buren, Arkansas.
Pratt didn't testify. But Mrs. McLean took the stand and said she had
followed Pratt of her own free will and become a Mormon without any
special urging.
That settled it. Commissioner Ogden said there wasn't enough evidence
to hold Pratt and he'd have to let him go, but Pratt was so scared he
asked the commissioner to lock him up in jail till morning, which was
done.
In those days, Van Buren wasn't much more than a steamboat landing at
the head of navagation on the Arkansas River, but it had a pretty fair
tavern, and that was where Mrs. McLean and the boys put up for the
night. She slipped out after supper, though, and went over to the
jail, to have a talk with Pratt. about his plans for making a getaway
the next morning.
Practically everybody in the town was on McLean's side, and he
probably could have worked up a mob and broken into the jail, if he
had wanted to. But he was the kind of man who would rather deal out
his own brand of justice, single handed, once the courts had turned
him down.
Pratt lit out the next morning about daylight. He didn't even wait to
eat any breakfast. A horse was all saddled and waiting for him and he
struck out along the old stage route toward Little Rock.
McLean followed him for miles and finally caught up with him deep in
the woods, near a blacksmith shop run by Tealy Wynn. After shouting to
him to defend himself, McLean opened fire.
I've heard it said that Mormon leaders like Parley Pratt believed that
bullets couldn't hurt them, but why they should entertain such notions
is a mystery to me. At any rate, Pratt didn't try to get away, or
defend himself, and McLean kept on shooting till his pistol was empty
-- without hitting either Pratt or the Mormon's horse.
Pratt could have shot McLean after that, or outrun him. But for some
reason he didn't seem to want to do either thing. He just sat there
till McLean galloped up to him, pulled a Bowie knife and stabbed him
to death.
Then McLean rode back to Van Buren, got his sons away from Mrs, McLean
and took the next steamboat for New Orleans.
Mrs. McLean took charge of the funeral. She got Blacksmith Wynn to
order some boards, all planed and dressed, from a sawmill run by the
father of John Steward, who was 16 at the time and afterwards became
deputy sheriff of Crawford County, and the coffin was made out of
them. Then young Steward hauled the body in the coffin out to the
burial grounds in his daddy's ox-cart. They didn't have any preacher.
Mrs. McLean did the only talking that was done and among other things
she said Pratt had been crucified.
After that, she went on to Salt
Lake City, and nobody in our part of the country ever heard anything
more about her. But early in 1857, just before our party set out for
California, two Mormons showed up at Wynn's blacksmith shop and asked
him a lot of questions. Then they turned back north, along the same
route our party followed a few weeks later, and it certainly looks
like those two Mormons found out that we were figuring on passing
through Utah on our way to California and told the Danites, or
Destroying Angels of the Mormons, to be on the lookout for us, because
we were from the same district where Pratt was murdered.
At any rate, we sure did get a mighty unfriendly reception when we
finally did reach Utah. By that time, the Mormons didn't have much use
for anybody who wasn't a Mormon.
Off and on, ever since they took over Utah, the Mormons had been
bickering with the Federal Government, insisting that they had a right
to run everything to suit themselves. It finally got so bad President
Buchanan issued an order removing Brigham Young as governor of the
territory and appointing Alfred Cumming to take his place. And just
before we landed in Utah, the Mormons heard that Cumming was on his
way out, backed up by an army of 2500 men.
That made the Mormons mad as hornets, so mad, in fact, that Brigham
Young issued a proclamation defying the Federal Government and
proclaiming martial law -- but the members of our party didn't know
anything about that, and walked right into the hornet's nest.
When our caravan reached Salt Lake City in August -- our supplies just
about out, everybody tired and hungry, and our horses and cattle lean
and badly in need of rest and a chance to graze -- we were told to
move on and be quick about it. On top of that, the Mormons refused to
sell us any food -- that ís what I was told when I was growing up and
I've always believed it was so.
So we had to move on, down to Mountain Meadows, in what is now
Washington County, Utah. Mountain Meadows was a narrow valley, lying
between two low ranges of hills, with plenty of fresh water, supplied
by several little streams, and lots of grass for our stock to graze.
So it looked like a good place for our party to rest up before
tackling the 90-mile desert that lay just ahead.
A lot has been written about what was going on among the Mormons while
our party was resting at Mountain Meadows. Both sides of the question
have been gone into pretty thoroughly, with a lot of arguments and
evidence on each side, so anybody who wants to form his own opinion
can took up the books on the subject and make his choice.
Some writers say that officials of the Mormon church stirred the
Indians up and kept egging them on till they attacked us, and then
told their own folks to jump in and help the Indians finish up the
job, after tricking our men into giving up their guns. But the Mormon
writers insist that nobody with any real authority in the church
organization knew what was going on till it was too late for them to
stop it, even though they tried their best. They admit, though, that
there were some Mormons mixed up in it, and years after it was over,
they laid most of the blame on John D. Lee, who was a Mormon and an
Indian agent. But I'll tell about that later.
On the morning of September 7, our party was just sitting down to a
breakfast of quail and cottontail rabbits when a shot rang out from a
nearby gully, and one of the children toppled over, hit by the bullet.
Right away, the men saw they were being attacked by an Indian
war-party. In the first few minutes of fighting, twenty-two of our men
were shot down, seven of them killed outright. Everybody was half
scared to death and I reckon the whole crowd would have been wiped out
right then and there if Captain Fancher hadn't been such a cool-headed
man.
He had things organized in next to no time. All the women and children
were rounded up in the corral, formed by the wagons, and the men
divided into two groups, one to throw up breastworks with picks and
shovels and the other to fire back at the Indians.
The fighting kept up pretty regularly for four days and nights. Most
of our horses and cattle were driven away. Our ammunition was running
out. We were cut off from our water supply. Altogether, it looked
pretty hopeless but I don't think our men would have ever surrendered
if John D. Lee and his crowd hadn't tricked them.
According to the way I heard it, while we were trapped down there in
the valley, just about perishing for lack of water and food, John D.
Lee and some of the other Mormons held a strange kind of prayer
meeting back in the woods, just out of sight of our camp. They knelt
down and prayed for Divine instructions, and then one of them named
John M. Higbee, who was a major in the Mormon militia, got up and
said:
"I have evidence of God ís approval of our mission."
He said all of our party must be
"put out of the way," and that none should be spared who was old
enough to "tell tales." Then they decided to let the Indians kill our
women and older children, so no Mormon would be guilty of "shedding
innocent blood." They figured that more than likely all of our men
were guilty of some sin or other, if it wasn't any thing worse than
hating Mormons, and really should be killed, but maybe the women and
older children were innocent of any wrong-doing, and it seems Mormons
prided themselves on being right scrupulous about "shedding innocent
blood."
Years later, when he was put on trial, John D. Lee insisted he was
against the whole idea and tried to talk the others out of it, but
that Major Higbee, Philip Klingensmith, who was a Mormon bishop, and
some of the others told him he would have to go through with it, He
said Higbee told him:
"Brother Lee, I am ordered by President Haight to inform you that you
shall receive a crown of Celestial glory for your faithfulness, and
your eternal joy shall be complete."
I don't know whether or not that ís true, but that ís what Lee said,
and he claimed he had to follow orders because Haight was president of
the Stake of Zion, or division of the church, at Cedar City .
But anyway, on the morning of September 11, John D. Lee and another
Mormon came down toward our camp carrying a white flag and our men
sent out a little girl dressed in white, to show that they were ready
to come to terms.
Then Lee came on down to the camp and said the Indians had gone hog
wild but that the Mormons would try to save us and take us all to
Cedar City, the nearest big Mormon settlement, if our men would give
up their guns.
Well, our men didn't have much choice. It was either stick it out and
fight till the last of us was killed or starved, or else take Lee up
on his proposition, even though it did sound fishy.
So the guns were all put in one wagon and sent on ahead. Then the
wounded and the young children, including me, my two sisters and my
baby brother were put in another wagon. My mother and father had been
wounded during the fighting, so they were in the wagon with us
children.
It ís funny how you will recall unimportant details, after so many
years. I remember, for instance, that the blankets we had with us in
that wagon were bright red and had black borders.
After the wagon I was in had set out, the women and the older children
followed us on foot. Then the Mormons made the men wait until the
women and children were a good ways ahead before starting the men out
single file, about ten feet apart. I think my grandfather must have
been in that procession. Betty and I never could find out for sure
just when he was killed, all we could learn was that he was killed
during the massacre.
Each of our men had an armed Mormon walking right by his side. They
said that was because the Indians might start acting up again, but
that wasn't the real reason, as you will soon see.
The line had been moving along slowly for some little distance, when
all of a sudden the figure of a white man appeared in the bushes with
Indians all around him. I've heard that he was Higbee and that he
shouted: "Do your duty!"
Anyway, the Indians opened fire and then charged down with their
tomahawks. Each Mormon walking along with our men wheeled around
suddenly and shot the man next to him, killing most of them on the
spot.
The women and older children screamed at the top of their lungs and
scattered every which way, but the Indians ran them down. They poked
guns into the wagon, too, and killed all of the wounded. As I have
already said, my father and mother were killed right before our eyes.
One of the Mormons ran up to the wagon, raised his gun and said:
"Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for Thy Kingdom that I do
this."
Then he fired at a wounded man who was leaning against another man,
killing them both with the same bullet.
A 14-year-old boy came running up toward our wagon, and the driver,
who was a Mormon, hit him over the head with the butt end of his gun,
crushing the boy's skull. A young girl about 11 years old, all covered
with blood, was running toward the wagon when an Indian fired at her
point blank.
In the midst of all the commotion, the two Dunlap girls I spoke about
before, Ruth, who was 18, and Rachel, who was 16 made a wild dash for
a clump of scrub oaks on the far side of a gully.
Hidden in the scrub oaks, they must have thought they were safe -- but
they weren't. Their bodies were found later, and the evidence is that
they suffered far worse than any of the other women.
John D. Lee confessed to a lot of things about the Mountain Meadows
Massacre before he was finally executed for his part in it, but he
never would admit that he had anything to do with what happened to the
Dunlap girls. Just the same, a 16-year-old Indian boy, named Albert,
who worked on the ranch of Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon who lived near the
Meadows, said that he saw the whole thing and here ís the way he told
it:
Albert said another Indian found the girls, and sent for Lee. At
first, Lee wanted to kill them then and there, because they were "old
enough to tell tales," but the Indian begged him to wait a while,
because they were so pretty. Ruth was old enough to realize what that
meant, so she dropped on her knees and pleaded with Lee to spare her,
promising that she would love him all her life if he would.
But, according to Albert, Lee and that Indian mistreated those poor
girls shamefully and then slit their throats.
I don't know whether or not Lee himself attacked the Dunlap girls and
murdered them, or was directly responsible for what happened to them.
But there doesn't seem to be much doubt that they were brutally
mistreated by somebody, before being murdered, just as Jacob Hamblin's
Indian boy said they were.
Hamblin was on his way back to his ranch from Salt Lake City at the
time of the massacre and when he got home Albert told him about the
Dunlap girls. Then the Indian boy led Hamblin to a clump of oak bushes
not far from where the massacre took place and showed him the bodies
of the two girls, stripped of all their clothing.
At Lee's second trial, Hamblin took the stand and testified that what
he saw seemed to bear out Albert's story, and that later on he talked
to the Indian who was supposed to have been with Lee at the time, and
that his account of it was pretty much the same as Albert's.
There has been a lot of argument over how much part the Indians played
in the massacre and how much of it was due to the Mormons, some people
even saying that the Indians didn't have anything to do with it at
all, and that some of the Mormons disguised themselves as Indians,
just to lay the blame on them. I can't say as to the truth of that,
but I do know that my sister Betty, who died only a few months ago,
always insisted that she had seen a lot of the Mormons down at the
creek, after it was all over, washing paint off their faces, and that
she some that some of them, at least, had disguised themselves as
Indians.
At any rate, while the Indians, or a crowd of savage-looking men that
appeared to be Indians, went around making sure that all the grown-ups
were dead and giving a final shot to any who looked as if they had a
spark of life left in them and also robbing the bodies of valuables --
well, while that was going on the Mormons rounded up all us children
and took us off to their homes.
As I said, there were 17 of us -- John Calvin Sorel, Lewis and Mary
Sorel, Ambrose, Miriam and William Tagget, Francis Horn, Angeline,
Annie and Sophronia Mary Huff, Ephriam W. Hugg, Charles and Triphenia
Fancher, Rebecca, Louise and Sarah Dunlap and us three Baker children,
Betty, Sallie and William Welch Baker.
I remember that we were treated right well in the Mormon home where we
lived until we were rescued.
I recall, too, that we had good food, and plenty of it. We had lots of
rice and also honey right out of the comb. The only unpleasant thing
that happened while we were there was when one of the older Mormon
children in the house got mad at me and pushed me down stairs. I hurt
my right hand, pretty badly and as a result of it I still have a long
scar across the knuckles. That makes two scars I got from the Mormons.
The way Captain Lynch and his soldiers found us was by going around
among the Mormons in disguise. I got to know him right well later on,
and, he used to slap his leg and laugh like anything, as he told how
he said to those Mormons:
"You let those children go, or I'll blow you to purgatory."
I never will forget the day we finally got back to Arkansas. You would
have thought we were heroes. They had a buggy parade for us through
Harrison.
When we got around to our house, Grandma Baker, the one who refused to
go to California, was standing on the porch. She was a stout woman and
mighty dignified, too. When we came along the road leading up to the
house she was pacing back and forth but when she caught sight of us
she ran down the path and grabbed hold of us, one after the other and
gave us a powerful hug.
Leah, our old Negro mammy, caught me up in her arms and wouldn't let
me go. She carried me around all the rest of the day, even cooking
supper with me in her arms. I remember she baked each of us children a
special little apple turn-over pie. We had creamed potatoes for supper
that night, too, and they sure tasted good. I've been specially fond
of creamed potatoes ever since.
I remember I called all of the women I saw "mother." I guess I was
still hoping to find my own mother, and every time I called a woman
"mother," she would break out crying.
A good ways back I spoke of how the John S. Baker party set out behind
our party but never could catch up with us, and now I want to tell
what happened to them.
At the time of the massacre, they were only about two days travel
behind us, and somebody came along and told them about it. They were
just about scared out of their wits, of course, so the next morning
they broke camp early and set out to skirt around the Meadows and head
on across the desert.
The women had just tied their sunbonnets to the covered wagon bows and
taken off their shoes, as they usually did while traveling, when
somebody shouted:
"Indians coming!"
I don't know whether they were some of the same Indians that were in
on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, or another band that heard about it
and decided to do a little killing on their own hook.
But anyway, they opened fire and galloped around and around, whooping
and yelling.
As near as I can recollect, the members of the John S. Baker party
were: Mr. and Mrs. Baker; their young daughter, who later became Mrs.
Perry Price and died a few years ago near Berryville, Arkansas; their
baby son, William Baker, who shouldnít be confused with my baby
brother, Billy Baker; Dal Weaver, Mr. Baker's uncle; Mrs. Dal Weaver;
Dal's brother, Pink Weaver; two Weaver sisters; and three young men
named Smith and their old mother.
Dal Weaver was shot and killed in the first attack and later robbed of
$1,000 in gold he had in a money belt. One of his sisters was killed
in the first attack, too, and a bullet hit little William Baker,
inflicting a scalp wound, but he got over it. Several others were also
wounded, but not seriously.
There were several wagons in the train and before the men could wheel
them around and form a corral, one of the teams got away and lit out
with its wagon. Some of the Indians took out after that wagon and when
they captured it they found it had a couple of ten-gallon kegs in it
-- one of whisky and the other of peach brandy. So that whole band of
Indians took time out from the pleasure of killing for the pleasure of
getting drunk.
That ís the only reason any of the John S. Baker party managed to
escape,it gave them a chance to figure out a trick.
Meanwhile, one of the Smith brothers jumped on a horse and took out in
the hope of getting help. but the Indians saw him and one of them
lassoed him. The last anybody saw of him he was being dragged away.
When the Indians were all good
and drunk they started to close in on the little party, huddled behind
their wagons. But just as the Indians were about to pounce on them,
the men ripped open all the feather beds they had, and threw a big
cloud of feathers into the Indians faces, setting up a kind of "smoke"
screen. Before the stupefied Indians had time to figure out what had
happened, the grown folks in the party lit out for the bushes,
carrying the children. Two of the Smith boys carried their old mother
by making a pack-saddle with their hands. I guess by that time the
Indians were too drunk to follow them up.
Pink Weaver hurried on back down the trail as fast as he could,
looking for help, and finally he ran across some of the soldiers sent
out to back up Governor Cumming. Meanwhile, the others followed him,
as best they could. When the soldiers finally located them they were
so weak they could hardly walk. They were taken to Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, and cared for till they were able to travel on back to
Arkansas.
In the Spring of 1859, Major James H. Carlton passed through Mountain
Meadows and stopped there long enough to gather up the bones of the
victims of the massacre. He found 34 skeletons and buried them in one
place, under a heap of stones, and put up a cedar cross with these
words on it: "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
Later on, Captain R. P. Campbell passed through the Meadows and found
26 more skeletons, which he also buried there. That only accounts for
about half of the victims. Nobody knows what became of the other
bodies.
In later years, a granite slab was put up in the Meadows, and on it
were these words: "Here one hundred and twenty men, women and children
were massacred in cold blood in September, 1857. They were from
Arkansas."
Long after I had grown up and married and settled down, Captain Lynch,
the man who rescued us, came to see me one day. He was in mighty high
spirits and I could see right away he had something up his sleeve. He
asked me if I remembered little Sarah Dunlap, one of the children he
had rescued, and a sister of the two Dunlap girls who were killed. I
said I sure did. Sarah was blind and had been educated at the school
for the blind in Little Rock. I don't recall whether any injury she
might have gotten in the massacre was what made her blind, but I do
remember she grew up to be a really beautiful girl. Well, Captain
Lynch said:
"Guess what? I'm on my way to see Sarah."
When he mentioned her name it looked like he was going to blow up with
happiness. Then he told me why. He was on his way right then to marry
Sarah -- and he did. I guess he must have been forty years older than
she was, but he sure was a spry man just the same. I never saw anybody
could beat him when it came to dancing and singing.
Some time after the massacre, Federal Judge Cradlebaugh held an
investigation and tried to bring to trial some of the Mormons. He was
convinced were responsible for the crime, but he never got anywhere
with it, and he was finally transferred from the district at his own
request. Then the Civil War came on and nothing more was done about it
until 1875.
All over the country, there was still so much feeling about the
massacrethat it was finally decided to put the blame on John D. Lee --
at least,that's the way I've always heard it. So a United States
marshal went out toarrest him. The marshal had a lot of trouble
locating him and had to trackhim around for quite a while, but after
several weeks, somebody told him theplace to look was at a house on
the outskirts of a little town called Panguitch, where one of Lee's
wives was supposed to be living.
So the marshal and a couple of his deputies went up to the house, and
right away they saw a number of men and half-grown boys around, and it
looked like they were in for trouble. The marshal asked a young man
where they could find John D. Lee and the young man said:
"He's my father. I'm Sam Lee."
"I don't care if he's your grandmother," the marshal replied. "I'm
going to search the house and I want you to come with me."
Sam Lee said he couldn't do it because he had to go down to the
threshing machine, to see his brother Alma, and with that he turned
away. The marshal pulled his pistol but Sam told him to go ahead and
shoot. About that time up came Alma Lee.
"This officer has come to arrest father," Sam said.
"Oh, is that all?" replied Alma. "I thought it was a dogfight."
Sam and Alma whispered to each other a few moments and then Sam said
he would go into the house with the marshal while he searched it. But
Lee wasn't in the house, so the marshal started on to the stable lot
and when he did, Sam looked worried.
The marshal went on out to the lot and walked around a log pen, filled
with straw. He peeped through a hole and saw a face partly covered by
straw. He was sure it was Lee's face. When he turned around, Henry
Darrow, one of Lee's sons-in-law, was standing right behind him.
"Somebody's in that pen," the marshal said.
"I reckon not," replied Darrow.
"I'm sure of it," said the marshal.
"Well, then it must be one of the children."
One of the deputies was a little ways off with his rifle ready. The
other one was way up by the house and when the marshal waved to him to
come on down to the lot, he didn't move. That made the marshal look
closer. Then he saw the reason. A couple of guns were pointed through
chinks in the house.
The marshal pulled his pistol.
"Come out of there, Lee." he said. "I've come to arrest you."
Lee didn't say anything.
"All right," the marshal stuck
the muzzle of his pistol through a crack in the pen, and then turned
to the deputy who was nearest him. "Go in there and disarm Lee, and I
promise you that if a single straw moves, I'll blow his head off, for
my pistol's not a foot form his head."
the deputy started to go into the pen when Lee called out.
"Hold on boys, don't shoot. I'll come out."
And he did. After that they all went up to the house and the marshal
sent out and bought some wine and gave everybody a drink, including
the women. One of Lee's daughters was crying but she took a glass of
wine and said;
"Here's hoping father gets away from you."
"Drink hearty miss," the marshal said.
Then Lee apologized for not offering him anything to eat, so they all
had breakfast. By that time quite a crowd of Mormons had gathered
outside the house and one of Lee's sons took him aside and told him
they would rescue him if he said so. Lee told the marshal about it,
and the marshal said:
"If trouble commences, I will shoot those nearest us, and make sure of
them, and then keep it lively while it lasts."
"Well," Lee replied, "I don't want anything like that to happen, so
I'll tell the boys to behave themselves."
The marshal didn't have any more trouble after that and took Lee on
back to the jail at Beaver City, Utah.
I understand that at Lee's first trial there were seven Mormons and
five "Gentiles" on the jury and that that was the reason the jury
disagreed.
I've heard too that the leaders of the church were afraid the
prosecution might bring out something that would put the blame on some
of the other Mormons, so it was mighty hard for the Government to make
out a case at that first trial. But when Lee was put on trial again in
September 1876, the prosecution let everybody see right away that if
Lee was convicted that would be the end of it. So they got all the
witnesses they needed. And he was convicted and sentenced to be shot.
They took him to the scene of the massacre for the execution. That was
on the morning of March 23, 1877, and before the execution, Lee went
around with the marshal and some of the spectators and pointed out
places where different things had happened during the massacre. But he
didn't tell anything of any importance.
Then a coffin was taken out of a covered wagon and put over near the
mound of stones that covered the grave of the victims. An army blanket
was fastened around the wheels of the wagon and eight holes cut in it.
Eight soldiers were stationed behind the blanket. Five had rifles that
were loaded and three held blanks, but no one knew whether or not his
rifle was loaded.
After the marshal read the death warrant, he asked Lee if he wanted to
say anything. Lee replied that he never meant to do anything wrong and
claimed that he had been sacrificed in the interest of the church.
"But I'm not afraid to die," he continued "I never expect to get in
any worse place than I am now in, nor any worse condition. I have only
one regret at dying, and that is leaving my wives and children on the
mercies of a cold world. I am ready for my doom!"
After a preacher had knelt down and prayed, Lee shook hands with
everybody nearby and then sat on the end of the coffin. Sitting there
on the coffin he obligingly posed for a photographer who had come
along with the party to take his picture. Then the marshal walked up
and said, "The time has come."
"Don't tie my hands, marshal," Lee said, "and don't bind my eyes."
"If I leave your hands free you might dodge." the marshal objected.
"No, I won't!" Lee replied, so the marshal didn't tie his hands but a
bandage was put on his eyes. Then a white piece of paper was pinned
over his heart for a target. At the last minute, Lee called out:
"Take good aim, boys. Hit my heart, and don't mangle my body."
The marshal gave the order to fire -- the rifles cracked, and Lee fell
across his coffin, lifeless.
Also See:
Sarah Frances (Baker)
Gladden's 1893 Account
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