"As far back as I can remember, my father would put me on his lap and read from this big book," Burr Fancher says from his home in Albany, Ore. The story he heard as a boy always started the same way. It was April 1857. His great-grandmother's cousin, 45-year-old Alexander Fancher, and 52-year-old John Baker -- both adventurous men in a time that required it -- pulled together their large, extended families into a wagon train in northwestern Arkansas. They were 135 strong. Farmers with callused hands, tobacco-stained teeth and strong backs. Young mothers with babies in their arms. Children. They were uncommonly affluent for that time, setting out with wagons, cash and cattle numbering in the hundreds. And dreams of a new life in California.
In that spring of 1857, in the wild and wide-open place that was the Utah territory, dreams of a different kind were being sown. The area was a U.S. territory, populated almost exclusively by disciples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- the Mormons. They'd been driven from their homes, first in New York, later in Illinois and Missouri. Although church leaders were in the midst of efforts to be admitted to the United States, and although Utah eventually achieved statehood, many actually wanted sovereignty. They called their land Deseret, and they envisioned a theocratic state where they would be free to practice their religion and control their communities. A month after the farmers started their journey, a Mormon apostle, Parley P. Pratt, was killed in northwest Arkansas. His killer had been the husband of a woman Pratt took as his 10th wife, according to historical accounts. As the farmers worked their way west, they headed toward Utah, where religious leaders were in the midst of a yearlong clash with outsiders. The wagon train cut through Kansas, Colorado and southern Wyoming. At the same time, President James Buchanan threatened to invade Utah and to replace territorial governor Brigham Young with a non-Mormon. Young, head of the Mormon Church, had launched a "reformation" the year before, calling on followers to reaffirm their faith. He also had introduced a doctrine known as "blood atonement." It held that some sins could only be absolved by spilling blood, according to scholarly works, including David L. Bigler's Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West. It was against that backdrop that the wagon train rolled into the Salt Lake valley on Aug. 3, 1857.
Two days later, the wagon train lurched south, meandering through Mormon settlements as it headed for a southern crossing to California. The farmers moved through country home to American Indians who traded with the local Mormons. Tension followed. Settlers refused to sell grain to the travelers. Disputes arose as their sizable herd of cattle chewed across pastures that had been set aside for winter feed. By Sept. 6, the Baker-Fancher party had reached a high mountain valley dotted with brush, grass and rock and surrounded by rolling hills and, farther in the distance, high peaks. Early the next morning, as some of the men in the wagon train stood around a campfire, shots rang out from the rises surrounding the camp. The attackers in that initial volley probably included a mix of Paiute Indians and members of the local Mormon militia, historians say. As many as 10 of the Arkansas farmers fell, and several Indians were probably killed and wounded. But the men in that camp were tougher than their attackers expected. They chained their wagons together and dug in for a fight, which went on sporadically during the next three days. On Sept. 11, the fifth day of the siege, the men in the wagon train were offered a deal: Give up your weapons, wagons and cattle, and you will be escorted safely to Cedar City. No deal, the travelers said. The captors opened fire as they marched the terrified travelers out of the valley. Others who ran for their lives were beaten to death. Before long, all but 17 children were dead. It was a hellish scene in a heavenly setting. Scattered bodies. Clumps of hair. Blood. The corpses were left on the killing field. There was a concerted effort to blame the Indians for the massacre. Some said the California-bound travelers had poisoned a spring, provoking the attack. But almost immediately, others hinted that Mormons -- and perhaps even church leaders in Salt Lake City -- had been involved. The first formal report of the episode, written May 25, 1859, by Brevet Maj. James H. Carlson of the U.S. Army, included interviews with people in the area who blamed the attack on the Indians. But Carlson also wrote of talks with Indians who claimed that Mormons, their faces painted, helped launch the assault and, in the end, did most of the killing. He wrote of a dentist who claimed to have been told by a Mormon "that orders to destroy the emigrants first came from above." Carlson interpreted "above" as meaning Salt Lake City -- and the headquarters of the Mormon Church. The same man claimed that a group of Mormons, led by local church bishop John D. Lee, disappeared for several days at about the time of the massacre, then returned with wagons, cattle, horses, mules and other belongings. In that spring of 1859, Carlson helped bury the remains of some victims. Then he built a simple stone cairn above the mass grave and topped it with a cedar cross. "In pursuing the bloody threat 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," Carlson wrote in his report, which was submitted to Congress. He wrote of the Mormons' clashes with others, in Missouri and in Illinois. "Perhaps the future may be judged by the past," he wrote. In the ensuing years, as Utah struggled for statehood, pressure mounted to do something -- anything -- to bring justice in the case. In 1870, the Mormon Church did, excommunicating Lee, the adopted son of Brigham Young. Four years later, Lee was arrested. He was tried, convicted, and on March 23, 1877, taken to the valley of sagebrush where so many people had been killed two decades earlier, and executed by a firing squad. For much of the next century, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was Utah's drunken uncle at the family picnic. Many people knew of it. Few talked about it. The question of who did the killing -- and who ordered it -- is debated to this day. Many scholars put the blame squarely on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and on members of the Mormon militia in southern Utah. Those same scholars generally agree that Indians were involved, but believe they took their orders from the Mormons. "The simple facts are that Paiutes were clients of the Mormons, pretty much did what they were told, and did not launch a daylight attack on a wagon train," said Will Bagley, a Utah historian and author. Church officials take a different view. It's impossible from the records to know exactly who was there, says Glen M. Leonard, director of the Museum of Church History and Art. "I think it's clear from the historical information that those who participated in both the initial attack Monday (Sept. 7) and the massacre, where they killed men, women and older children, included both some of the local Latter-day Saints and a number of Indians." His theory: The Indians wanted to steal horses, perhaps with the blessing of local Mormons. The fight escalated, and some of the Mormons -- with no support of church officials -- killed everyone to hide their involvement. "If that's the scenario, and we really can't be sure, it's a terrible scenario for everybody concerned," Leonard said. But that supposition -- that nobody really knows what happened -- angers Burr Fancher, whose ancestors lost 28 relatives in the massacre. "I think this is an apologist's view that we don't know what happened," he said. "We know exactly what happened here. We need to face up to it and let it be a part of history."
|
