Jacob Hamblin had been granted ten square miles of land situated against the foothills of the north slope of the meadows. This day, there had been a lot of movement off that lone road. Jacob was out of town but his wife, Rachel, heard the sound of movement in the distance. Cattle brayed, and forty prairie schooners rolled and rattled. All of nature, it seemed, was announcing the deed was not left undone.

Two regimental baggage wagons left the chaos behind and turned up the road leading to the Hamblin Ranch. You could hear the cries of children, some very young. Twenty of them, some said, all under the age of eight. Two were wounded. Neighbors offered assistance. The children were hysterical and could not be calmed. Many were aware of the slaughter and spent the entire night screaming.

I turn to the next page and find the story of a cairn placed at the Mountain Meadows Massacre site on August 3, 1999. That would be the third or fourth cairn. The first was built in the spring of 1859 by Major Carleton and his troops. It was fifty feet in circumference and piled with loose rocks twelve feet high. It was topped by a twenty-four foot tall red cedar cross that carried an inscription: “Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.”

Brigham Young visited the site two years later with Wilford Woodruff and sixty of the faithful. Some reports describe Brigham Young bending and raising his arm, thereby giving the silent signal to pull down the cross and redistribute the rocks. Wilford writes that Brigham Young read the inscription and added his own words: “Vengeance is mine and I have taken a little.” Whatever words or gestures President Young may have made, the cairn was laid to waste. Three years later, in 1864, a new stone monument was built by the California Calvary. Since then, the cairn has suffered vandalism, the aging effects of the passing of decades and has been periodically improved.

Sally Denton takes us on a brief step through the beginnings of Mormonism: the visions, the plates of gold, the digging for treasures. She writes of Joseph as being dressed in black, seated upon a borrowed sleigh, pulled by a black horse as he approached the scene where he expected to meet a heavenly messenger and receive some golden plates for translation. This varies from my knowledge of these historic events. I would say, Joseph and Emma took Josiah Stowell’s wagon. He got up before the roosters crowed and pulled up the same trousers he let drop to the floor the night before. Stowell was visiting with the family. He and Joseph had a long-term, healthy relationship. Joseph’s mother, Lucy, was fretful when her visitor went out in search of his wagon. Then, Joseph and Emma rolled in, pulled by a well-worn and well-lathered (possibly) black horse. Lucy records her sense of relief, but Josiah Stowell wasn’t

worried about his wagon or his horse. Joseph was like a second son to Josiah.
In Chapter Seven, we meet Alexander Fancher having a conversation with his brother, John. Alexander is enticed by the stories of pieces of gold lying on the earth waiting to be picked up, but deep down he knows the real gold lay in the lush green fields and wide-open ranges, not to mention the ready cattle market known to California. As a war veteran, Alexander was entitled to a free land grant in the new frontier.

The promise of year-round grazing, ideal weather conditions for growing hay, and the high prices miners were willing to pay for beef, all added up to a call to ‘go west’. John was pleased Alexander agreed to go. The urge to explore quickly took hold of the Fancher family, and then other families. Soon, two hundred persons, mostly women and children, were riding in or walking beside forty creaking, lumbering wagons, listening to the bellowing, snorting, and grunting of several hundred head of cattle. The men rode a dozen or more fine horses.

Meet the Bakers: George and Manerva, and their four children ranging from seven years to nine months. They joined the Fancher party as well as Manerva’s two teenage siblings, Melissa and David. The Cameon’s, a group of twenty, ranging from infancy to old-age, were the wealthiest in the party.

The Dunlaps and the Mitchells were well stocked with guns, pistols, Bowie knives, camping gear, livestock and horses for riding. Before parting, John Milan Jones and his younger brother, Newton, joined the group. John and his wife, Eloah Angeline Tackitt, had two small children, plus Eloah’s five siblings, and their widowed mother, Cynthia. Pleasant and Armilda Tackitt traveled with their four year old and nineteen month old sons. They drove sixty head of beef cattle.

Alexander Fancher made a deep impression with his five hundred cattle, Egyptian Arabian stallions, and his collection of two hundred horses of varying pedigrees. Alexander and his wife, Eliza, had nine children. Both Tilghman Cameron and nineteen year old Hampton Fancher would function as scouts. Two of Alexander’s cousins, James and Robert, would travel with the group, plus an unknown number of single men and teenagers who signed on as riflemen, wranglers, bull-whackers, and drovers. It took fifteen days to assemble the company, practice defensive maneuvers, and assign wagon placements.

The wagons rolled out on May 7th, 1857 from Baker’s Prairie, Arkansas, a land of tall grass prairie in Northwest Arkansas. The train started out slowly, headed northwest and then shifted to the northeast along the Arkansas River. Eventually, they headed north, paralleling the front range of the Rocky Mountains, linking the Arkansas and Platte River systems, and also connecting the Santa Fe Trail with the California Trail to the north.

The Fancher wagon did not feel rushed and was content to amble along at ten or twelve miles a day, giving a friendly wave to wagons traveling fifteen or more miles each day. Along the trial, there were innumerable hastily dug graves and many carcasses lying in the open. One day, while still in Wyoming, totally unexpectedly, Peter Huff died of a spider bite. The grave was dug, prayers were said, shovels were stored, and the miles progressed. Many travelers looked forward to seeing Salt Lake City and taking advantage of time to fatten up their livestock and supplement their own diet with fresh fruits and vegetables.

This was not the Fancher’s first trip to and from California. It was not their first trip through Salt Lake City, but it was the first time they encountered animosity and downright unfriendly attitudes. There were several circumstances that caused these changes.

Word was President Buchanan had assembled a huge invading force that was making its way to Salt Lake City intent on disposing Brigham Young as governor. For those who had traveled across the prairie from Illinois to the Great Basin the previous decade, the expectation was that the troops intended to oust, or possibly murder, the Saints. Many had lived through the 1838 extermination order issued by Missouri’s Governor Boggs, and after their first prophet’s murder (while under government protection) in 1844, the Saints left Illinois in the dead of winter even though the original agreement had been that their removal should take place in the spring. The Saints had been ousted from their homes in the dead of winter. They had little reason to believe they would be treated fairly now.

Rumors, many unfounded, preceded the troops adding to the insecurities of the Saints in Salt Lake City. Brigham Young was adamant that no troops would enter his city while it was inhabited by the Saints. He issued an order prohibiting emigrants from passing through the territory and prohibiting the Saints from selling supplies to the travelers.

The Baker/Fancher party arrived in the area on August third and encamped six miles outside of Salt Lake City on the Jordan River. So far, at each livery barn or feed store, they were met with the same negativity. There were no supplies available for them. When Apostle Charles C. Rich rode in with an order for them to break-up camp, he encouraged them to follow the southern route where they would be able to refresh their livestock before heading toward one of the most dreaded of the American deserts, the Mojave.

Sally Denton tells us, “Once the Fancher party left Salt Lake City, it disappeared into a historical maze built of lies, folklore, popular myth, justifications and a few facts.” Let’s see if we can sort through some of the myths invented during the month it took to reach the southern settlements.

Some told stories intended to vilify the Fancher party: they carried a gun that was used to kill the first Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith. They were rude and disorderly.

The women were prostitutes. They poisoned the water the Indians drank and several savages died. They poisoned a cow and presented it to the Indians and several died. The party was unaware of the stories that preceded them and were offended when setting-up camp in a large grass field west of Provo they were told to keep moving.

Along the road, they were joined by a young artist from Tennessee, William Aden, who was eager to leave Utah in the safety of a wagon train. Somewhere around Springville, an unknown number of backouts joined the train. As the Fancher party continued, they found that none of the locals wanted to speak or trade with them. The leaders had heard enough disconcerting stories from the backouts to proceed with wariness, drawing their wagons in a circle each night, then chaining the wheels, and posting sentries.

Daytime temperatures were scorching and the sun unrelenting. As they neared the Juab Valley on the western slope of the San Pitch mountains, they were out of supplies and living off the slaughter of their own beef or what game they could kill. Their luck changed in Cedar City, the most populous town in the southern territory. They purchased fifty pounds of wheat and found a man willing to grind it. The Bishop of the area sent a man to stop the grinding process, but the grinder, a man with a conscience, refused to obey the bishop.

The wagon train rested the night outside Cedar City. The next morning, they began to exit Mormon territory where, they had been told by local Mormons, they would be able to purchase supplies. On Friday, September 4th, they crossed the rim of the Great Basin and moved into the five mile long valley known as Mountain Meadows the following day. They set-up camp near a large spring at the southern end and began to relax. They planned a leisurely month of grazing and recuperating their strength, as well as that of their animals.

On Monday morning, the camp arose to the aroma of fresh brewed coffee and the smell of roasting rabbit and quail. All was peace and contentment until a shot crackled loudly and young Sarah Baker toppled over, blood oozing onto her clothing. In the next few moments, seven men fell dead. More than twenty had been wounded.

These men were accustomed to Indian skirmishes, and adept with the use of a rifle. They quickly corralled their wagons into a circular barricade and began shoveling trenches in order to sink the wagon’s wheels down to the axletrees. They threw up earthen mounds in front of the wagons while the women dragged the wounded and dying into the center of their newly created fort. The fifty children were in a panic.

The firing ceased soon after daybreak. On Tuesday, they were greeted with a halfhearted round of sniper fire. From their fort, they could see the stream of clean, clear water but every attempt to get close to it was met with gunfire. The following day, more wounded died and there was an odor of decaying corpses and carcasses that was almost unbearable.

A bullet tore the lobe from the left ear of three year old Sarah Baker while she was sitting on her father’s knee. Still, the Arkansans fought well and bravely, while their thirst went unassuaged. In an act of desperation, two little girls were dressed in white and sent to the spring carrying buckets. They were immediately gunned down.

William Aden suggested he would leave the camp and backtrack to where the rest of the party which had split from them would now likely be. Aden, along with a companion named Dutchman, slipped out of camp in the quiet of the night. Days later, Dutchman returned to the train wounded with tales of how Aden had been ruthlessly gunned down as he approached the campsite he thought belonged to Duke’s train.

On Thursday morning the attack resumed, but not until two men managed to make it to the stream and fill a couple of buckets before returning to the fort. Later that afternoon, the children spied a white man crossing the valley. The men quickly made a white flag and raised it up high. The boys went out to find the white man they had seen. Unsuccessful, they returned to camp.

Thursday evening, the severely wounded Alexander Fancher implored three of the groups healthiest, most skilled and experienced scouts to make the trip across the Mojave Desert and to California where they could share their tale of woe. The camp gathered together, drew up a petition wherein they beseeched immediate rescue and begged for justice to be brought to the attackers. They included a list of the names of all the emigrants as well as a tally of their possessions. These men did not slip-out unnoticed and never saw the Mojave.

All was quiet Friday morning. There was no food or water, and their ammunition stores were nearing depletion. Mid-morning, a large body of white men was seen coming up the road, carrying a white flag as well as the American flag. In response, eight year old Mary Dunlap was dressed in a white dress and sent out waving a white handkerchief. When a white man on a horse approached waving his own white flag, Matt Fancher met the rider in the field. He was informed that another Mormon, John D. Lee, wanted to enter the emigrant’s camp and negotiate a treaty. Matt, fully aware of the hopelessness of the situation and their inability to continue to defend themselves, agreed.

Lee entered the emigrants camp around noon. He introduced himself as a Federal Indian Agent and a Major in the Mormon Militia. Still, it took Lee three or four hours to coax the emigrants to give up their arms and place themselves under his protection. Once an agreement was reached and the emigrants’ weapons were collected, John D. separated the travelers into three separate groups. The wounded were loaded into a wagon, while the women and children were separated from their husbands and fathers. The wounded were placed in one of two wagons, along with the firearms that had been collected. Once they were a good way out, the men followed single-file, about ten feet apart, each walking next to an armed Mormon guard. As the men came to a smooth open patch surrounded by oak brush a shot was fired into the air, and then each Mormon male shot the unarmed emigrant walking beside him. They say it took only a matter of minutes before all the adults were dead. Children under eight were saved. As Mormons, there was an intent not to take innocent lives.

When the wagons reached Jacob Hamblin’s ranch they found that Jacob was in Salt Lake City, but Rachel and her farm assistant, Albert, were there. Soon, there would be neighbors to help calm the traumatized youngsters, but no sense of calm could be reached.

The men returned to the killing fields looking for valuables. Before the night was over, fifty grim, silent men listened as their leaders made speeches, then the group took a most binding oath to stand by each other with sealed lips. That night, John D. Lee slept soundly under a tree on Hamblin’s property.