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I could get no information of these emigrants of a date
anterior to this. Here seems to be given the first glimpse of their
number, character, and condition; and an authentic glimpse, too, if the
train destroyed was the one seen by the doctor, of which there can hardly
be any doubt. The doctor was confirmed in his belief that the train he saw
was the one destroyed, by many reasons. Among them one fact seemed to be
very convincing. He observed a carriage in the train in which some ladies
rode, to whom he made one or more visits as they journeyed along. There
was something peculiar in the construction of the carriage and its
ornaments its blazoned stag's head upon the panels, etc. This carriage, he
says, is now in the possession of the Mormons. Besides, he afterwards
heard as a fact that this train had been entirely destroyed.
The people who owned it would not have been likely to have
to sell such an important part of their means of transportation midway
their journey. The road upon which these emigrants were seen by Dr. Brewer
crosses the Rocky Mountains through the South Pass, and thence goes on
down into the Great Basin to
Salt Lake City, and thence Southward along
the western base of the Wasatch Mountains to what is called the rim of the
basin. Here the "divide" is crossed, when it descends upon the valley of
the Santa Clara affluent toward the Colorado [River.] Fillmore City is upon one of
the many streams which run westward down from the Wasatch Mountains into
the basin. It is about 140 miles from
Salt Lake City; then upon another
stream, 90 miles farther south, is Prawn [Parowan] City; then upon still
another stream, 18 miles south of Parowan, is Cedar City; then to
a settlement on Pinto Creek is 24 miles; thence to
Hamblin's
house, on the northern slope of the Mountain Meadows, 6 miles.
From
Hamblin's house over the rim of the basin to the
southern point of the Mountain Meadows, where there is a large spring, is
4 miles, 1,000 yards. This swell of land or watershed, called the rim of
the basin, runs west across nearly midway the valley called the Mountain
Meadows. This valley runs north and south; its northern portion is drained
into the basin, its southern toward the Santa Clara. Down on the Santa
Clara is a Mormon settlement called "The Fort": here some 30 families
reside. It is 34 miles from Mountain Meadows. East of Cedar City, say 18
miles, on the east slope of the Wasatch Range, drained by Virgin River, is
the town of Harmony, of 100 families; and farther down the Virgin River,
12 miles from "The Fort," on the Santa Clara, is Washington City, also of
100 families. The Santa Clara joins the Virgin River near Washington
City.
The Pah Vent
Indians live near Fillmore City. The
Pah Ute
Indians are scattered along from Parowan southward to the Colorado.
The train of emigrants proceeding southward from Fillmore
toward the Mountain Meadows are next seen, so far as my inquiries go, by a
Mr.
Jacob Hamblin, a leading Mormon, who has charge of "the Fort," on the
Santa Clara, and resides there in the winter season, but who has a cattle
ranch and a house, where he lives in the summer time, at the Mountain
Meadows. I here give what he said, and which I wrote down sentence by
sentence, as he related it. He told me he had given the same information
to Judge Cradlebaugh:
"About the middle of August,
1857, I started on a visit to Great
Salt Lake City. At Corn Creek, 8 miles
south of Fillmore City, I encamped with a train of emigrants who said they
were mostly from
Arkansas. There were, in my opinion, not over 30 wagons.
There were several tents, and they had from 400 to 500 head of horned
cattle, 25 head of horses, and some mules.
This information I got in
conversation with one of the men of the train. The people seemed to be
ordinary frontier homespun people, as a general thing. Some of the
outsiders were rude and rough and calculated to get the ill will of the
inhabitants. Several of the men asked me about the condition of the road
and the disposition of the
Indians, and where there would be a good place
to recruit their stock.
I asked them how many men they
had. They said they had between forty and fifty "that would do to tie to."
I told them I considered if they would keep a good lookout that the
Indians did not steal their animals, half that number would be safe, and
that the Mountain Meadows was the best place to recruit their animals
before they entered upon the desert, I recommended this spring, and the
grazing about here, four miles south of my house, as the place where they
should stop. The most of these men seemed to have families with them. They
remarked that this one train was made up near
Salt Lake City of several
trains that had crossed the plains separately, and being Southern people,
had preferred to take the southern route. This was all of importance that
passed between us, and I went on my journey and they proceeded on theirs.
On my way back home, at Fillmore City, I heard it said that that Company,
meaning the train referred to, had poisoned a small spring at Corn Creek,
where I had met them.
There was some considerable
excitement about it among the citizens of Fillmore and among the Pah-Vent
Indian who live within 8 miles of that place. I was told that eighteen
head of cattle had died from drinking the water; that six of the Pah-Vents
had been poisoned from eating the flesh of the cattle that died, and that
one or two of these
Indians had also died. Mr. Robinson, a citizen of
Fillmore, whose son was buried the day I got there, said that the boy had
been poisoned in 'trying out' the tallow of the dead cattle. I am
satisfied that he believed what he said about it. I thought at the time
that the spring had been poisoned as stated. I encamped that night with a
company from Iron County, who told me that the Company from
Arkansas had
all been killed at Mountain Meadows except seventeen children.
I afterwards met, between Beaver
and Pine Creek, Colonel
Dame of Parowan, who confirmed
what these people from Iron County had said. He further stated that the
Indians were collecting on the Muddy with a determination to 'wipe out'
another company of emigrants which was several days in rear of the first.
He mentioned that the
Indians had supplied themselves with arms and
ammunition from the train destroyed at the Meadows. After consulting with
him, he advised me to go forward and spare no pains in trying to prevent
their carrying their purpose into execution, and he gave me an order to
press into service any animal I might require for that purpose. I got a
horse at Beaver about 8 o'clock that evening, and the next evening at
Pinto Creek, 83 miles distant, I met Mr. Dudley
Leavitt
from the settlements on the
Santa Clara.
I told him what I had heard. He
told me it was true, and that all the
Indians in the Southern Country were
greatly excited and "All Hell" could not stop them from killing or from at
least robbing the other train of its stock. He further stated that several
interpreters from the Santa Clara had gone on with this last grain. I told
him to return and get the best animal he could find on my ranch and go on
as fast as he could and endeavor to stop further mischief being done. That
is, if the
Indians ran off the stock of the train, for himself and all the
interpreters to go and recover it, if possible, and prevent further
depredation. He left me under these instructions.
The next morning, which, I
think, was the 18th of September 1857, I arrived at my ranch, 4 miles from
the Meadows. Here I had left my family. I found at the ranch three little
white girls in the care of my wife, the oldest six or seven years of age,
the next about three, and the next about one. The youngest had been shot
through one of her arms below the elbow by a large ball, breaking both
bones and cutting the arm half off. My wife, having a young child of her
own, and these three little orphans besides, my home appeared to be
anything but cheerful. About one or two o'clock that day I came down to
the point where the massacre had taken place, in company with an Indian
boy named Albert, who had been brought up in my family.
The boy told me that the
inhabitants from Cedar City had come down and buried the murdered people
in three large heaps, which he pointed out to me; the boy showed me two
girls who had run some ways off before they were killed. The wolves had
dug open the heaps, dragged out the bodies, and were then tearing the
flesh from them. I counted 19 wolves at one of these places. I have since
learned from the people who assisted in burying the bodies that there were
107 men, women and children found dead upon the ground. I am satisfied
that all were not found. The most of the bodies were stripped of all their
clothing, were then in a state of putrefaction, and presented a horrible
sight. There was no property left upon the ground except one white ox,
which is still at my ranch.
The following summer, when the bones had lost their flesh, I reburied
them, assisted by a Mr. Fuller.
The
Indians have told me that
they made an attack on the emigrants between daylight and sunrise as the
men were standing around the camp fires, killing and wounding 15 at the
first charge, which was delivered from the ravine near the spring close to
the wagons and from a hill to the west. That the emigrants immediately
corralled their wagons and threw up an entrenchment to shelter themselves
from the balls. When I first saw the ditch, it was about 4 feet deep and
the bank about 2 feet high. The
Indians say they then ran off the stock
but kept parties at the spring to prevent the emigrants from getting to
the water, the emigrants firing upon them every time they showed
themselves, and they returned the fire. This was kept up for six or seven
days. The
Indians say that they lost but one man, killed and three or four
wounded.
At the end of six or seven days,
they say, a man among them who could talk English called to the emigrants
and told them if they would go back to the settlements and leave all their
property, especially their arms, they would spare their lives, but if they
did not do so they would kill the whole of them. The emigrants agreed to
this and started back on the road toward my ranch. About a mile from the
spring there are some scrub-oak bushes and tall sage growing on either
side of the road and close to it. Here a large body of
Indians lay in
ambush, who, when the emigrants approached, fell upon them in their
defenseless condition and with bows and arrows and stones and guns and
knives murdered all, without regard to sex or age, except a few infant
children, seventeen of which have since been recovered.
This is what the
Indians told me
nine days after the massacre took place. From the position of the bodies
this latter part of their story seems to be corroborated, and I should
judge that the women and children were in advance of the men when the last
attack upon them was made. When I buried the bones last summer, I observed
that about one third of the skulls were shot through with bullets and
about one third seem to be broken with stones.
The train I sent Leavitt to protect had gotten as far as the canyon, 5 miles below the
Muddy, when the
Indians made a descent upon its loose stock, driving off,
as the immigrants have since said, 200 head of cattle.
Leavitt and the
other interpreters recovered between 75 and 100 head, which were brought
to my ranch. Of these the
Indians afterwards demanded and stole some 40
head, and last January I turned over to Mr. Lane from
California, the
balance.
These are all the facts within my knowledge connected with
the destruction of the one and the passing along of the other of these two
trains."
Mrs.
Hamblin is a simple-minded person of about 45, and
evidently looks with the eyes of her husband at everything. She may really
have been taught by the Mormons to believe it is no great sin to kill
gentiles and enjoy their property. Of the shooting of the emigrants, which
she had herself heard, and knew at the time what was going on, she seemed
to speak without a shudder, or any very great feeling; but when she told
of the 17 orphan children who were brought by such a crowd to her house of
one small room there in the darkness of night, two of the children cruelly
mangled and the most of them with their parents' blood still wet upon
their clothes, and all of them shrieking with terror and grief and
anguish, her own mother heart was touched. She at least deserves kind
consideration for her care and nourishment of the three sisters, and for
all she did for the little girl, "about one year old who had been shot
through one of her arms, below the elbow, by a large ball, breaking both
bones and cutting the arm half off."
A Snake
Indian boy, called Albert Hamblin, but whose
Indian
name was a word which meant "hungry," who is now about 17 or 18 years of
age, says that Mr.
Jacob Hamblin brought him beyond where
Camp Floyd is
situated and that he has lived with Mr.
Hamblin about six years here and
about three years up north. He was sent by Mr.
Hamblin to my camp at
Mountain Meadow on the 20th day of May 1859, and in speaking of the
massacre at this place related what follows in very good English:
"In the first part of September
a year and a half ago, I was at Mr.
Hamblin's
ranch 4 miles from here. My business was to herd the sheep. I saw the
train come along the road and pass down this way. It was near sundown. I
drove the sheep home and went after wood, when I saw the train encamp at
this spring from a high point of land where I was cutting wood.
When the train passed me, I saw
a good many women and children. It was night when I got home. Another
Indian boy, named John, who lives at the Vegas and talked some English,
was with me. He lived with a man named Sam Knight, at Santa Clara. After
the train had been camped at the spring three nights, the fourth day in
the morning, just before light, when we were all abed at the house, I was
waked up by hearing a good many guns fired. I could hear guns fired every
little while all day until it was dark. Then I did not know what had been
done. During the day, as we, John and I, sat on a hill herding sheep, we
saw the
Indians driving off all the stock and shoot some of the cattle; at
the same time we could see shooting going on down around the train;
emigrants shooting at the
Indians from the corral of wagons, and
Indians
shooting at them from the tops of the hills around. In this way they
fought on for about a week."
I asked an
Indian what he was killing those people for. He
was mad, and told me unless I kept 'my mouth shut' he would kill me. Three
men came down from Cedar City to our house while the fighting was going
on. They said they came after cattle. Other men passed to and from Santa
Clara to our house during the nights. The three men from Cedar City stayed
about the house a while "pitching horseshoe quoits" while the fighting was
on, when they afterwards went back to Cedar City. Dudley Leavitt came up
from Santa Clara in the night while the emigrants were camped here; but he
did not see them. He went on to Cedar City to buy flour. When he got to
the house we told him the emigrants were fighting here. One afternoon,
near night, after they had fought nearly a week, John and I saw the women
and children and some leave the wagons and go up the road toward our
house. There were no
Indians with them.
John and I could see where the
Indians were hid in the oak bushes and sage right by the side of the road
a mile or more on their route; and I said to John, I would like to know
what the emigrants left their wagons for, as they were going into "a worse
fix than ever they saw." The women were on ahead with the children. The
men were behind, altogether 'twas a big crowd. Soon as they got to the
place where the
Indians were hid in the bushes each side of the road, the
Indians pitched right into them and commenced shooting them with guns and
bows and arrows, and cut some of the men's throats with knives. The men
run in every direction, the
Indians after them yelling and whooping. Soon
as the women and children saw the
Indians spring out of the bushes, they
all cried out so loud that John and I heard them.
The women scattered and tried to
hide in the bushes, but the
Indians shot them down; two girls ran up the
slope towards the east about a quarter of a mile; John and I ran down and
tried to save them; the girls hid in some bushes. A man, who is an Indian
doctor, also told the
Indians not to kill them. The girls then came out
and hung around him for protection, he trying to keep the
Indians away.
The girls were crying out loud. The
Indians came up and seized the girls
by their hands and dresses and pulled and pushed them away from the doctor
and shot them. By this time it was dark, and the other
Indians came down
the road and had got nearly through killing all the others. They were
about half an hour killing the people from the time they first sprang out
upon them from the bushes.
Some time in the night
Tullis
and the
Indians brought some of the children in a wagon up to the house.
The children cried nearly all night. One little one, a baby, just
commencing to walk around, was shot through the arm. One of the girls had
been hit through the ear. Many of the children's clothes were bloody. The
next morning we kept three children and the rest were taken to Cedar City;
also the next morning the train of wagons went up to Cedar City with all
the goods. The
Indians got all the flour. Some of it I saw buried this
side of Pinto Creek. There were two yoke of cattle to each wagon as they
passed up. The rest of the stock had been killed to be eaten by the
Indians while the fight was going on, except some which were driven over
the mountains this way and that.
The
Indians stripped naked the dead bodies; that is all the
men; some of the women had their underclothes left. There were a good many
men who came over from Pinto Creek and about, and stayed around the house
while the fight went on. I saw
John D. Lee there about the house during
that time. He lives in Harmony -- and Richard Robinson, Prime Coleman, Amos
Thornton, Brother Dickinson, who all live at Pinto Creek. Thornton I saw
at the house. When father (John Hamblin) came back, I came down with him
onto the ground. The bodies were all buried then so we could not see them.
There were plenty of wolves around. The two girls had been buried also and
I did show them to father, the
Indians buried the bodies taking spades
from the wagons. The people from Cedar City came down three days later,
after the massacre, but the
Indians had buried all the bodies before they
came. This is all I know about it."
This Albert Hamblin is
nearly a grown man in point of size, and from appearance and bearing has
evidently had engrafted upon his native viciousness all the bad traits of
the community in which he lives. Two of the children are said to have
pointed him out to Dr. Forney as an Indian whom they saw kill their two
sisters.
His story is artfully made up, evidently part truth and
part falsehood. Leavitt could not have passed up from "The Fort" to Cedar
City without knowing where the emigrants were besieged, as the road runs
near the spring where the corral was, and between it and some hills
occupied by the Mormons and
Indians. That Albert stayed upon a
neighborhood hill "herding sheep" day after day while the fight lasted,
and then to the house of nights to go to sleep cannot be true. That
Mormons were passing and re-passing upon the road, day and night, and did
not know what was going on is simply absurd to one conversant with the
surroundings of the place.
In this
Indian's statement that some of the Mormons at the
house were "pitching horseshoe quoits," a glance is given at the fiendish
levity with which the murdering, day by day, of this artfully entrapped
party of gentile men, women and children was regarded. This "pitching of
horseshoe quoits" was during the time when dropping shots from the
Indians
and the other Mormon concealed around the springs and behind the crest of
hills kept back the perishing emigrants from water. There was time enough
for some to go up to Hamblin's house for refreshments. No danger of the
emigrants getting away. It was all safe in that quarter. "There is
time enough for us to have a game of quoits, the other boys will take care
of matters down there."
The general will hardly fail to observe the discrepancy
between Hamblin's statement and that of Albert in relation to the burial
of the two girls and in relation to the burial of the bodies of the others
who had been murdered. Hamblin says the people from Cedar City buried
them; Albert that the
Indians did it, taking spades from the wagons, not a
likely thing for bona fide
Indians to do. My own opinion is that the
remains were not buried at all until after they had been dismembered by
the wolves and the flesh stripped from the bones, and then only such bones
were buried as lay scattered along nearest the road.
Albert had evidently been trained in his statement. He gave
much of it after cross-questioning, keeping always the Mormons in the
background and the
Indians conspicuously the prominent figures and actors,
as Hamblin and his wife had endeavored to do. It was not until after I
told him that Hamblin and his wife had informed me that
John D. Lee and
other Mormons were there and had asked him how it was possible he had not
seen them, that he recollected about "Brother Lee" and "Brothers" Prime
Coleman, Amos Thornton, Richard Robinson, and "Brother" Dickinson from
Pinto Creek. He too had fallen into the general custom of the people and
called every man "brother."
I questioned other Mormons in relation to the massacre, but
many of them said they had moved from the northern part of the Territory
since it took place; others, that they were harvesting at Parowan, Cedar,
and at "The Fort," and knew nothing of it until it was all over. Even
"Brother" Prime Coleman said that he was harvesting near Parowan just
before that time with Brother Benjamin Nell, but when the massacre took
place he was down on the Muddy River with Brother
Ira Hatch
to keep down disturbances there among the
Indians.
He said that as he and
Hatch
were coming back they saw in the sand the tracks of three men who wore
fine boots. This was at Beaver Dams.
He and
Hatch were frightened at this sign, were afraid of
robbers, and did not stop, even for water, until they reached the Santa
Clara, 2 miles off. At Pine Valley, near Mountain Meadows, they first
heard of the massacre. There is no doubt but that all three of these men
were active participants in the butchering at the Meadows. The foregoing
is the Mormon story of the Massacre. As it took place on Hamblin's ranch
and within hearing of his family, it was impossible for them to be "out
harvesting" or "up north" or "down on the Muddy"; he himself had gone to
Salt Lake City. At least he says so; but even this, I think, needs proof.
Some account had to be made up, and the one most likely to be believed was
that the whole matter had been started by the
Indians and carried out by
them, because the emigrants had poisoned a spring near Fillmore City. Mr.
Rodgers, United States Deputy Marshal, who accompanied Judge Cradlebaugh
in his tour to the South, told me that the water in the spring referred to
runs with such volume and force "a barrel of arsenic would not poison
it."
While the Mormons say the
Indians were the murderers, they
speak with no sympathy of the sufferers, but rather in extenuation of
the crime by saying the emigrants were not fit to live; that besides
poisoning the spring "they were impudent to the people on the road, robbed
their hen roosts and gardens, and were insulting to the church; called
their oxen "Brigham Young," "Heber Kimball," etc., and altogether were a
rough, ugly set that ought to have been killed anyway."
But there is another side to this story. It is said that
some two years since Bishop Parley Pratt was shot in
Cherokee Nation near
Arkansas by the husband of a woman who had run off with that saintly
prelate. The Mormons swore vengeance on the people of
Arkansas, one of who
was this injured husband. The wife came on to
Salt Lake City after the
bishop was killed and still lives there.
About this time, also, the Mormon troubles with the United
States commenced, and the most bitter hostility against the Gentiles
became rife throughout
Utah among all the Latter-Day Saints. It will be
recollected that even while these emigrants were pursuing their journey
overland to
California, Colonel Alexander was following upon their trace
with two or more regiments of troops ordered to
Utah to assist, if
necessary, in seeing the laws of the land properly enforced in that
territory.
This train was undoubtedly a very rich one. It is said the
emigrants had nearly nine hundred head of fine cattle, many horses and
mules, and one stallion valued at $2,000; that they had a great deal of
ready money besides. All this the Mormons at
Salt Lake City saw as the
train came on. The Mormons knew the troops were marching to their country,
and a spirit of intense hatred of the Americans and towards our Government
was kindled in the hearts of this whole people by
Brigham Young, Orson
Hyde, and other leaders, even from the pulpits.
Here, opportunely, was a rich train of emigrants -- American
Gentiles. That is, the most obnoxious kind of Gentiles--and not only that,
but these Gentiles were from
Arkansas, where the saintly Pratt had gained
his crown of martyrdom. Is not here some thread which may be seized as a
clue to this mystery so long hidden as to whether or not the Mormons were
accomplices in the massacre? This train of
Arkansas Gentiles was doomed
from the day it crossed through the South Pass and had gotten fairly down
in the meshes of the Mormon spider net, from which it was never to become
disentangled.
Judge Cradlebaugh informed me that about this time
Brigham Young, preaching in the tabernacle and speaking of the trouble with the
United States, said that up to that moment he had protected emigrants who
had passed through the Territory, but now he would turn the
Indians loose
upon them. It is a singular point worthy of note that this sermon should
have been preached just as the rich train had gotten into the valley and
was now fairly entrapped; a sermon good, coming from him, as a letter of marque to these land pirates who listened to him as an oracle. The hint
thus shrewdly given out was not long in being acted upon.
From that moment these emigrants, as they journeyed
southward, were considered the authorized, if not legal, prey of the
inhabitants. All kinds of depredations and extortions were practiced upon
them. At Parowan they took some wheat to the mill to be ground. The bishop
replied, "Yes, but do you take double toll." This shows the spirit with
which they were treated. These things are now leaking out; but some of
those who were then Mormons have renounced their creed, and through them
much is learned which, taken in connection with the facts that are known,
served to develop the truth. It is said to be a truth that
Brigham Young
sent letters south, authorizing, if not commanding, that the train should
be destroyed.
A Pah-Ute chief, of the Santa Clara band, named "Jackson,"
who was one of the attacking party, and had a brother slain by the
emigrants from their corral by the spring, says that orders came down in a
letter from
Brigham Young that the emigrants were to be killed; and a
chief of the
Pah-Utes named Touche, now living on the Virgin River, told
me that a letter from
Brigham Young to the same effect was brought down to
the Virgin River band by a young man named Huntington [Oliver B.
Huntington], who, I learn, is an
Indian Interpreter and lives at present
at
Salt Lake City.
Jackson says there were 60 Mormons led by Bishop
John D. Lee, of Harmony, and a prominent man in the church named [Isaac C.]
Haight, who lives at Cedar City. That they were all painted and disguised
as
Indians.
That this painting and disguising was done at a spring in a
canyon about a mile northeast of the spring where the emigrants were
encamped, and that
Lee and
Haight led and directed the combined force of
Mormons and
Indians in the first attack, throughout the siege, and at the
last massacre. The Santa Clara
Indians say that the emigrants could not
get to the water, as besiegers lay around the spring ready to shoot anyone
who approached it. This could easily have been done. Major [Henry] Prince,
Paymaster, U.S.A., and Lieutenant Ogle, First Dragoons, on the 17th of
this month.,
stood at the ditch which was in the corral and placed some men at the
spring 28 yards distant, and they could just see the other men's heads,
both parties standing erect. This shows how vital a point the Assailants
occupied; how close it was to the assailed, and how well protected it was
from the direction of the corral.
The following account of the affair is, I think,
susceptible of legal proof by those whose names are known, and who, I am
assured, are willing to make oath to many of the facts which serve as
links in the chain of evidence leading toward the truth of this grave
question: By whom were these 120 men, women, and children murdered?
It was currently reported among the Mormons at Cedar City,
in talking among themselves, before the troops ever came down south, (when
all felt secure of arrest or prosecution), and nobody seemed to question
the truth of it -- that a train of emigrants of fifty or upward of men,
mostly with families, came and encamped at this spring at Mountain Meadows
in September 1857. It was reported in Cedar City, and was not, and is not
doubted--even by the Mormons--that
John D. Lee,
Isaac C.
Haight,
John M. Higbee (the first resides at Harmony, the last two at Cedar City),
were the leaders who organized a party of fifty or sixty Mormons to attack
this train.
They had also
all the
Indians which they could collect at Cedar City, Harmony and
Washington City to help them, a good many in number. This party then came
down, and at first the
Indians were ordered to stampede the cattle and
drive them away from the train. Then they commenced firing on the
emigrants; this firing was returned by the emigrants; one Indian was
killed, a brother of the chief of the Santa Clara
Indians, another shot
through the leg, who is now a cripple at Cedar City. There were without
doubt a great many more killed and wounded. It was said the Mormons were
painted and disguised as
Indians. The Mormons say the emigrants fought
"like lions" and they saw that they could not whip them by any fair
fighting.
After some days fighting the Mormons had a council among
themselves to arrange a plan to destroy the emigrants. They concluded,
finally, that they could send some few down and pretend to be friends and
try and get the emigrants to surrender.
John D. Lee and three or four
others, headmen, from Washington, Cedar, and Parowan (Haight and
Higbee
from Cedar), had their paint washed off and dressing in their usual
clothes, took their wagons and drove down toward the emigrant's corral as
they were just traveling on the road on their ordinary business. The
emigrants sent out a little girl towards them. She was dressed in white
and had a white handkerchief in her hand, which she waved in token of
peace. The Mormons with the wagon waved one in reply, and then moved on
towards the corral. The emigrants then came out, no
Indians or others
being in sight at this time, and talked with these leading Mormons with
the three wagons.
They talked with the emigrants for an hour or an hour and a
half, and told them that the
Indians were hostile, and that if they gave
up their arms it would show that they did not want to fight; and if they,
the emigrants, would do this they would pilot them back to the
settlements. The migrants had horses which had remained near their wagons;
the loose stock, mostly cattle, had been driven off--not the horses.
Finally the emigrants agreed to these terms and delivered up their arms to
the Mormons with whom they had counseled. The women and children then
started back toward Hamblin's house, the men following with a few wagons
that they had hitched up. On arriving at the Scrub Oaks, etc., where the
other Mormons and
Indians lay concealed,
Higbee, who had been one
of those who had inveigled the emigrants from their defenses, himself gave
the signal to fire, when a volley was poured in from each side, and the
butchery commenced and was continued until it was consummated.
The property was brought to Cedar City and sold at public
auction. It was called in Cedar City, and is so called now by the
Facetious Mormons, "property taken at the siege of Sebastopol." The
clothing stripped from the corpses, bloody and with bits of flesh upon it,
shredded by the bullets from the persons of the poor creatures who wore
it, was placed in the cellar of the tithing office (an official building),
where it lay about three weeks, when it was brought away by some of the
party; but witnesses do not know whether it was sold or given away. It is
said the cellar smells of it even to this day.
It is reported that
John D. Lee,
Haight,
and
Philip
Klingensmith
(the latter lives in Cedar City) went to
Salt Lake City immediately after
the massacre, and counseled with
Brigham Young about what should be done
with the property. They took with them the ready money they got from the
murdered emigrants and offered it to Young. He said he would have nothing
to do with it. He told them to divide the cattle and cows among the poor.
They had taken some of the cattle to
Salt Lake City merchants there.
Lee
told
Brigham that the
Indians would not be satisfied if they did not have
a share of the cattle.
Brigham left it to
Lee to make the distribution.
One or two of the Mormons did not like it that
Lee had this authority, as
they say he swindled them out of their share.
Lee was the smartest man of
the lot.
The wagons, carriages, and rifles, etc., were distributed
among the Mormons.
Lee has a carriage reported be one of them. The
Indians
have but few of the rifles.
Much of this seems to be corroborated by a man named
Whitelock, a dentist, now at Camp Floyd. Whitelock says he was told by a
Mormon, who acknowledged that he was present at the massacre, but who is
now in
California, "that orders to destroy the emigrants first came from
above" (Mormon Leadership) and that a party of armed men under the command of
a man named
John D. Lee, who was then a bishop in the church, but who has
since (as
Brigham Young says) been deposed, left the settlements of Beaver
City, north of Parowan, Parowan City, and Cedar City on what was called a
"secret expedition," and after an absence of a few days returned, bringing
back strange wagons, cattle, horses, mules and also household property.
There is legal proof that this property was sold at the
official tithing office of the church. Whitelock says that this man could
not report the details of the massacre without tears and trembling. He
said he was so horrified at these atrocities he fled away from
Utah to
California. The man said he saw children clinging around the knees of the
murderers, begging for mercy and offering themselves as slaves for life
could they be spared. But their throats were cut from ear to ear as an
answer to their appeal.
There are now wagons, carriages, and cattle in possession
of the Mormons which can be sworn to, it is said, as having belonged to
these emigrants by those who saw them upon the plains.
Two hundred and forty eight head of cattle were sold on the
Jordan River after the arrival of the Army to United States commissaries
by Mormons, and it is said that they can be traced as having come through
the hands of
Lee and [William H.] Hooper, who was Mormon Secretary of
State, and were without doubt the cattle taken from the emigrants. Others
are seen in the hands of the Mormons which are believed to have been
captured at the time of the massacre. The
Pah-Ute
Indians of the Muddy
River said to me that they know the Mormons had charged them with the
massacre of the emigrants, but said they, "where are the wagons,
the cattle, the clothing, the rifles, and other property belonging to the
train? We have not got or had them. No, you find all these things in the
hands of the Mormons." There is some logical reasoning in that, creditable
at least to the obscure minds of miserable savages, whatever be the truth.
But there is not the shadow of a doubt that the emigrants
were butchered by the Mormons themselves, assisted doubtless by the
Indians. The idea of letting the emigrants come on to an obscure quarter
of the Territory, amid the fastnesses of the mountains, with a formidable
desert extending from that point to
California, over which a stranger to
the country, without sustenance, escape with his life; to a point were the
Indians were numerous enough to lend assistance, and who could plausibly
be charged with the crime in case, in the future any people should give
trouble by asking ugly questions on the subject, exhibits consideration as
to future contingencies of which these miserable
Indians, at least are
entirely incapable.
Besides, "fifty men that would do to tie to" in a fight,
all well armed and experts in the use of the rifle, could have wiped out
ten times their number of
Pah-Ute
Indians armed only with the bow and
arrow.
Hamblin himself, their agent, informed that to his certain
knowledge in 1856 there were but three guns in the whole tribe. I doubt if
they had many more in 1857. The emigrants were to be destroyed with as
little loss to the Mormons as possible, and no one old enough to tell the
tale was to be left alive. To effect this the whole plans and operations,
from beginning to end, display skill, patience, pertinacity and forecast,
which no people here at the time were equal to except the Mormons
themselves.
Hamblin says three men escaped. They were doubtless herding
when the attack was made, or crept out of a corral by night.
The fate of one of these he had never learned. He must have
been murdered off the road or perished of hunger and thirst in the
mountains. At all events he never went through to
California or he would
have been heard from. One got as far as the Muddy River, ninety odd miles
from Mountain Meadows. There the
Indians cut his throat. The other got as
far as Las Vegas, 45 miles still farther towards
California, where he
arrived totally naked, some
Indians having stripped him of his clothes.
Hamblin said an acquaintance of his coming from that way had seen marks in
the sand where the
Indians had thrown him down and where there had been
struggling when he was stripped. The Las Vegas
Indians cut his throat
likewise. The Mormons had a fort at Las Vegas, now abandoned, but which
was occupied at that time.
Here is something which seems to point to the "tracks in
the sand of three men who wore fine boots" which brothers
Ira Hatch and
Prime Coleman saw at the Beaver Dams, and at which they became so
frightened that they didn't stop to get water, although there was none
other within 20 miles. During this "Siege of Sebastapol" or after the
final massacre, it was doubtless discovered that the three emigrants had
escaped, and Brothers
Hatch and Coleman, perhaps two Mormons named Young,
were sent in pursuit to cut them off on the desert or to get the
Indians
to do it. Hatch talks
Pah-Ute like a native, and is now an interpreter of
their language whenever needed. One of the Youngs, who now lives at Cotton
Farm, near the confluence of The Virgin and Santa Clara, tells this story
of the emigrants murdered on the Muddy:
"He and his brother, each on
horseback, and leading a third horse, were traveling from
California, as
he says, to
Utah. Just before they arrived at Muddy River they met one of
the emigrants on foot. He had been wounded; was unarmed and without
provisions or water. It was at daybreak. He had traveled already nearly
100 miles from the Mountain Meadows. He seemed to be terror stricken. His
mind was wandering. He talked incoherently about the massacre and his
purposes. Under the awful scenes he had witnessed, the pain of his wound,
and the privations he had endured his senses had given away. They told him
of the long deserts ahead of which, if he pursued his way, he would
certainly perish. They persuaded him to return with them; mounted him on
their lead horse, and so came on to the Muddy, where they stopped to
prepare breakfast. One of the Young's laid his coat, containing in its
pocket $500 all their money, on a bush. And commenced frying some cakes at
a fire which had been kindled.
The
Indians gathered around in great numbers. The chief
would seize the cakes from the pan as fast as they were done, and eat
them. At last one of the Youngs struck the chief with a knife, whereupon
all the
Indians rose to kill the three men. Young says he and his brother
drew their revolvers, and holding them on the
Indians, kept them at a
distance until they got to their horses, had mounted, and were out of
arrow shot. They then looked back for the emigrant who had seemed as he
sat abstracted by the fire, hardly to comprehend what was going on. He had
not left the spot where he sat. Three or four
Indians had him down and
were cutting his throat. They themselves, then made off, leaving coat,
money, and all their provisions."
This is their story, but the truth doubtless was the Youngs,
Hatch and Coleman, had followed up the man; had found him beyond the
Muddy, brought him back, and then set the
Indians upon him. The fate of
these three men seems to close the scenes of this terrible tragedy on all
the grown people of that fine train which was seen journeying prosperously
forward at O'Fallons Bluffs on the 11th of the preceding June. There were
doubtless atrocious episodes connected with the massacre of the women,
which will never be known. Mr. Rogers, the deputy marshal, told me that
Bishop
John D. Lee is said to have taken a beautiful lady away to a
secluded spot. There she implored him for more than life. She too, was
found dead. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear.
The little children whom we left this
John D. Lee
distributing at
Hamblin's
house after that sad night, have at length been gathered together and are
now at Indian Farm, 12 miles south of Fillmore City, or at
Salt Lake City in the custody for Dr. Forney, United States
Indian agent. They are 17 in number. Sixteen of these were seen by Judge Cradlebaugh, Lieutenant Kearney, and others, and gave the following
information in relation to their personal identity, etc. The children were
varying from 3 to 9 years of age, 10 girls, 6 boys, and were questioned
separately.
The first is a boy named Calvin, between 7 and 8 [John Calvin Miller,
6]; does not remember his surname; says he was by his mother [Matilda]
when she was killed, and pulled the arrows from her back until she was
dead; says he had two brothers older than himself, named James and Henry,
and three sisters, Nancy,
Mary
and Martha.
The second is a girl who does not remember her name. The
others say it is Demurr [Georgia Ann
Dunlap, 18 mos.].
The third is a boy named Ambrose Mariam Tagit [Emberson Milum Tackitt, 4]; says he had two brothers older than himself and one
younger. His father, mother, and two elder brothers were killed, his
younger brother was brought to Cedar City;
says he lived in Johnson County, but does not know what State; says it
took one week to go from where he lived with his grandfather and
grandmother who are still living in the States.
The fourth is a girl obtained of John Morris, a Mormon, at
Cedar City. She does not recollect anything about herself [Mary Miller, 4].
Fifth. A boy obtained of E. H. Grove [William "Joseph" Tillman
Miller, 1], says that the girl obtained of
Morris is named
Mary and is his sister.
The sixth is a girl who says her name is Prudence Angelina
[Prudence Angeline Dunlap, 5]. Had two brothers, Jessie [Thomas J., 17]
and John [John H., 16], who were killed. Her father's name was William
[Lorenzo Dow
Dunlap], and she had an Uncle Jessie [Jesse Dunlap, Jr.]
The seventh is a girl. She says her name is Francis Harris,
or Horne, remembers nothing of her family [Sarah Frances Baker, 3].
The eighth is a young boy, too young to remember anything
about himself [Felix Marion Jones, 18 mos.].
The ninth is a boy whose name is William W.
Huff [William Henry Tackitt, 19 mos.].
The tenth is a boy whose name is Charles Fancher
[Christopher "Kit" Carson
Fancher, 5].
The eleventh is a girl who says her name is Sophronia Huff
[Nancy Saphrona Huff
, 4].
The twelfth is a girl who says her name is Betsy [Martha Elizabeth Baker, 5].
The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth are three sisters
named Rebecca, Louisa and Sara Dunlap [Rebecca J.Dunlap, 6;
Louisa Dunlap, 4;
Sarah Elizabeth Dunlap, 1]. These three sisters were the children
obtained of
Jacob Hamblin.
I have no note of the sixteenth [Tryphena D. Fancher, 22
mos.].
The seventeenth is a boy who was but six weeks
old at the time of the massacre [William Twitty Baker,
9 mos.]
Hamblin's
wife brought him to my camp on the 19th of this month. The next day they
took him on to
Salt Lake City to give him up to Dr. Forney. He is a pretty little boy
and hardly dreamed he had again slept upon the ground where his parents
had been murdered.
These children, it is said, could not be induced to make
any developments while they remained with the Mormons, from fear, no
doubt, having been intimidated by threats. Dr. Forney, it is said, came
southward for them under the impression that he would find them in the
hands of the
Indians.
The Mormons say the children were in the hands of the
Indians and were purchased by them for rifles, blankets, etc., but the
children say they have never lived with the
Indians at all. The Mormons
claimed of Dr. Forney sums of money, varying from $200 to $400, for
attending them when sick, for feeding and clothing them, and for
nourishing the infants from the time when they assumed to have purchased
them from the
Indians.
Murders of the parents and despoilers of their property,
these Mormons, rather these relentless, incarnate fiends, dared even to
come forward and claim payment for having kept these little ones barely
alive; these helpless orphans whom they themselves had already robbed of
their natural protectors and support. Has there ever been an act which at
all equaled this devilish hardihood in more than devilish effrontery?
Never, but one; and even then the price was but "30 pieces of silver."
On my arrival at Mountain Meadows, the 16th of this month, I
encamped near the spring where the emigrants had encamped, and where they
had entrenched themselves after they were first fired upon. The ditch they
there dug is not yet filled up.
The same day Captain Reuben P. Campbell, United States
Second Dragoons, with a command of three companies of troops, came from
his camp at Santa Clara and camped there also. Judge Cradlebaugh and
Deputy Marshall Rogers had come down from Provo with Captain Campbell, and
had been inquiring into the circumstances of the massacre. The judge
cannot receive too much praise for the resolute and thorough manner with
which he pursues him investigation. On his way down past this spot, and
before my arrival, Captain Campbell had caused to be collected and buried
the bones of 26 of the victims. Dr. Brewer informed me that the remains of
18 were buried in one grave, 12 in another and 6 in another.
On the 20th I took a wagon and a
party of men and made a thorough search for others amongst the sage
brushes for a least a mile back from the road that leads to
Hamblin's
house.
Hamblin himself showed Sergeant Fritz of my party a spot on the
right-hand side of the road where had partially covered up a great many of
the bones. These were collected, and a large number of others on the left
hand side of the road up the slopes of the hill, and in the ravines and
among the bushes. I gathered many of the disjointed bones of 34 persons.
The number could easily be told by the number of pairs of shoulder blades
and by lower jaws, skulls, and parts of skulls, etc.
These, with the remains of two
others gotten in a ravine to the east of the spring, where they had been
interred at but little depth, 34 in all, I buried in a grave on the
northern side of the ditch. Around and above this grave I caused to be
built of loose granite stones, hauled from the neighboring hills, a rude
monument, conical in form and fifty feet in circumference at the base, and
twelve feet in height. This is surmounted by a cross hewn from red cedar
wood. From the ground to top of cross is twenty four feet. On the
transverse part of the cross, facing towards the north, is an inscription
carved in the wood. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." And
on a rude slab of granite set in the earth and leaning against the
northern base of the monument there are cut the following words:
"Here 120 men, women, and children were
massacred in cold blood early in September, 1857. They were from
Arkansas."
I observed that nearly every skull I saw had been shot through with rifle
or revolver bullets. I did not see one that had been "broken in with
stones." Dr. Brewer showed me one, that probably of a boy of eighteen,
which had been fractured and slit, doubtless by two blows of a bowie knife
or other instrument of that character.
I saw several bones of what must have been very small children. Dr. Brewer
says from what he saw he thinks some infants were butchered. The mothers
doubtless had these in their arms, and the same shot or blow may have
deprived both of life.
The scene of the massacre, even at this late day, was horrible to look
upon. Women's hair, in detached locks and masses, hung to the sage bushes
and was strewn over the ground in many places. Parts of little children's
dresses and of female costume dangled from the shrubbery or lay scattered
about; and among these, here and there, on every hand, for at least a mile
in the direction of the road, by two miles east and west, there gleamed,
bleached white by the weather, the skulls and other bones of those who had
suffered. A glance into the wagon when all these had been collected
revealed a sight which can never be forgotten.
The idea of the melancholy procession of that great number of women and
children, followed at a distance by their husbands and brothers, after all
their suffering, their watching, their anxiety and grief, for so many
gloomy days and dismal nights at the corral, thus moving slowly and sadly
up to the point where the Mormons and
Indians lay in wait to murder them;
these doomed and unhappy people literally going to their own funeral; the
chill shadows of night closing darkly around them, sad precursors of the
approaching shadows of a deeper night, brings to the mind a picture of
human suffering and wretchedness on the one hand, and of human treachery
and ferocity upon the other, that cannot possibly be excelled by any other
scene that ever before occurred in real life.
I caused the distance to be measured from point to point on the scene of
the massacre. From the ditch near the spring to the point upon the road
where the men attacked and destroyed, and where their bones were mostly
found, is one mile 565 yards. Here there is a grave where Captain Campbell's
command buried some of the remains. To the next point, also marked by a
similar grave made by Captain Campbell, and where the women and children
were butchered; a point identified from their bones and clothing have been
found near it, it is one mile, 1,135 yards. To the swell across the valley
called the Rim of the Basin, is one mile 1,334 yards. To
Hamblin's house
four miles, 1,049 yards.
Major Henry Prince, United States Army, drew a map of the ground about the
spring where the entrenchment was dug, and embracing the neighboring hill
behind which the Mormons had cover. On the crests of these hills are still
traces of some rude little parapets made of loose stones and loop holed
for rifles. Marks of bullets shot from the corral are seen upon these
stones. I enclose this map and also a drawing of the valley as it appears
looking northward from a point below the spring and another drawing giving
a near view of the monument. These latter are not so good as I could wish
for, but they will serve to give a tolerably correct idea of what they are
intended to represent. They were made by Mr. Moeller, who has lived many
years among the Mormons.
In pursuing the bloody thread which runs throughout this picture of sad
realities, the question how this crime, that for hellish atrocity has no
parallel in our history, can be adequately punished often comes up and
seeks in vain for an answer. Judge Cradlebaugh says that with Mormon
juries the attempt to administer justice in their Territory is simply a
ridiculous farce. He believes the Territory ought at once to be put under
martial law. This may be the only practical way in which even a partial
punishment can be meted out to these Latter-Day devils.
But how inadequate would
be the punishment of a few, even by death, for this crime for which nearly
the whole Mormon population, from
Brigham Young down, were more or less
instrumental in perpetrating.
There are other heinous crimes
to be punished besides this. Martial law would at best be but a temporary
expedient. Crime is found in the footsteps of the Mormons wherever they
go, and so the evil must always exist as long as the Mormons themselves
exist. What is their history? What their antecedents? Perhaps the future
may be judged by the past.
In their infancy as a religious
community, they settled in Jackson County,
Missouri. There, in a short time,
from the crimes and depredations they committed, they became intolerable
to the inhabitants, whose self preservation compelled them to ride and
drive the Mormons out by force of arms. At Nauvoo, again another
experiment was tried with them. The people of Illinois exercised
forbearance toward them until it literally "ceased to be a virtue." They
were driven thence as they had been from
Missouri, but fortunately this
time with the loss on their part of those two shallow imposters, but
errant miscreants, the brothers Smith.
The United States took no
wholesome heed of these lessons taught by
Missouri and Illinois. The
Mormons were permitted to settle amid the fastnesses of the Rocky
Mountains, with a desert on each side, and upon the great thoroughfare
between the two oceans. Over this thoroughfare our Citizens have hitherto
not been able to travel without peril to their lives and property, except,
forsooth,
Brigham Young pleased to grant them his permission and give them
his protection. "He would turn the
Indians loose upon them."
The expenses of the army in
Utah, past and to come (figure
that), the massacre at the Mountain Meadows, the unnumbered other crimes,
which have been and will yet be committed by this community, are but
preliminary gusts of the whirlwind our Government has reaped and is yet to
reap for the wind it had sowed in permitting the Mormons ever to gain
foothold within our borders.
They are an ulcer upon the body
politic. An ulcer which it needs more than cutlery to cure. It must have
excision, complete and thorough extirpation, before we can ever hope for
safety or tranquility. This is no rhetorical phrase made by a flourish of
the pen, but is really what will prove to be an earnest and stubborn fact.
This brotherhood may be contemplated from any point of view, and but one
conclusion can be arrived at concerning it. The Thugs of India were an
inoffensive, moral, law-abiding people in comparison.
I have made this a special
report, because the information here given, however crude, I thought to be
of such grave importance it ought to be put permanently on record and
deserved to be kept separate and distinct from a report on the ordinary
occurrences of a march. Some of the details might, perhaps, have been
omitted, but there has been a great and fearful crime perpetrated, and
many of the circumstances connected with it have long been kept most
artfully concealed. But few direct rays even now shine in upon the
subject. So that however indistinct and unimportant they may at present
appear to be, even the faint side lights given by these details may yet
lend assistance in exploring some obscure recess of the matter where the
great truths, that should be diligently and persistently sought for, may
yet happily be discovered.
I have the honor to be, very
respectfully, your obedient servant,
James Henry Carleton, Brevet Major,
U.S.A., Captain in the First Dragoons.
Major W. W. Mackall, Ass't. Adjutant-General, U.S.A., San
Francisco,
California.
~~~~~~
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