9.11. ... 1857

In the spring of 1857 a wagon train of 30 families (nearly 150 people) left Arkansas for the long journey to California. As a group they were well above average in means and set out with gold, jewelry, exquisite clothing, 1000 head of cattle, new wagons and fine carriages. It is believed to be one of the richest wagon trains ever to attempt the migration, but it never reached its destination. Following tracks left by thousands of earlier settlers, the train traveled west over the Oregon Trail to Arapaho territory (Wyoming), and then turned southwest on the California Trail to the new settlement of Salt Lake City that had been founded 10 years earlier by Brigham Young. They intended to take the Old Spanish Trail through Utah and Nevada to California.

No one knows whether the emigrants in the train were aware that Young had earlier "declared war" on the United States. In Salt Lake City the pilgrims experienced hostility and resentment but were reluctantly allowed to barter for a few supplies and move on. Farther south they were surprised to learn that they could no longer trade. At stop after stop, they were told they were unwelcome and must leave. They were harassed, badgered, and taunted for 300 miles. The journey became increasingly difficult. Their health declined and they were starving for corn, flour and other staples by the time they reached the narrow valley of Mountain Meadows, 6000-feet-high in southwest Utah. There they rested, grazed their stock and prepared to begin the arduous descent to the scorching deserts of Nevada and California.

Its likely that, given the state of their health and provisions, many would not have survived the searing heat of deserts that would have required 70 days to cross, but we'll never know. ... On Sept. 6th, they were attacked. At first it looked like an Indian raid but, as the hapless travelers soon learned, a real Indian war party might have been a blessing. The brave pioneers held out for five days but Mormon treachery sealed their fate and, on Sept. 11th, they were slaughtered. The butchers spared 17 children but only because they were considered "too young to talk." The Mormons didn't stop with murder: they raped young women and stole everything, including the clothes from the dead bodies, and left the naked corpses on the open meadow "for the coyotes and the wolves." -- The shear brutality was so gruesome that many coetaneous writers refused to describe the scene.

Some of the spared children could and did talk. They told how the Indians turned white when they washed their faces in a stream. The local Piute Indians were known as passive and non-violent but they knew they were to be blamed for the massacre so they fled, scattering to Nevada, Arizona, Idaho and Wyoming, ... abandoning their homes forever. So too did hundreds of local Mormons who had refused to participate in the carnage and like the Piutes, they fled to avoid retribution. The population of nearby Cedar City dropped from over 100 families to about 20, in a matter of days.

For the next 20 years leaders of the massacre were granted special standing by Brigham Young. They were given permission to take additional plural wives, appointed to high office, and generally treated with reverence by Young and his apostles. Finally, on March 23, 1877, one man, -- John Doyle Lee, a mid-rank Mormon -- was sacrificed to satisfy the public so that Utah might gain stature for statehood. Lee was executed at the scene of the crimes. Brigham Young died of cholera five months later, denying to the last any culpability for himself and other church officials.

Nearly 150 years later the coverup continues. Mormons, with few exceptions, still deny church complicity in the brutal acts of terrorism ... but facts cannot be ignored, nor truth denied.