Bagley starts by informing us the first reliable report of the murder at Mountain Meadows did not reach the American public until almost two years after the event. News spread all the way to California and back across the Missouri River, but much of it could not be believed and was not reliable. Still, the news scandalized the nation for decades. The hideous truth of this American drama remained elusive.

Bagley promises to answer the most frequently asked questions about Mountain Meadows: What did Brigham Young know, and when did he know it? Most Federal Officers were convinced the Mormon prophet, who was also Utah Territory’s governor and Indian superintendent, explicitly ordered the massacre. But, the historical record for this crime was riddled with contradictory sources and outright lies. The men who investigated the crime failed to produce enough evidence to bring President Young to trial.

The LDS Church made a concerted effort to eliminate any mention of the massacre in its own history, At least one librarian openly admitted to deliberately purging documents with controversial passages before publication. “I never allow anything into print that I think will be injurious to my church.” Much of the Mountain Meadows history has been destroyed.

Piecing events together: The group started out with two hundred and forty persons known as the Baker / Fancher Wagon Train. The families split up from time to time so the number in the party varied. Who was responsible for these murders? Did the prophet, Brigham Young, order the massacre as federal officers were convinced he did? What caused such animosity?

The area known as Mountain Meadows had been known to the Southern Paiutes for six hundred years. Time passed swiftly and powerful bands of Utes preyed on the Paiutes, stealing their children and selling them as slaves. By the mid-nineteenth century, the meadow had become a place of rest for those on their way to and from California.

Then came the Saints. They entered the Great Salt Lake Valley in July of 1847 and, as the years passed, built town after town in southern Utah. These whites liked to think they shared the blood of Israel with the red men who they called Lamanites (characters from Book of Mormon stories). They gained great favor with the Paiutes when they stopped the theft of their children. Still, the white man’s need for land, water, and grass seemed without end.

In September, 1857, the Fancher party stopped at Mountain Meadows to rest and consider their situation. They had stopped at a nearby farmhouse and were informed orders were to give no supplies to the travelers. The train’s supplies were insufficient to face their long trek west. They drove their cattle, around eight hundred head, into an appropriate place in the meadow and began to set up camp for the night.

The Paiutes joined the “Mormons” in this ritual of blood and vengeance on the fateful day of September 7, 1857. It was close to dawn on Monday when officers of the Utah Territorial Militia led warriors and men disguised as Indians in an attack on the Fancher train.

There were five days of shooting. On Friday, the fifth day, after receiving a promise of protection from the Paiutes, the remaining Fancher party surrendered their arms to the Mormons. The elders divided the party into three groups. The infants and wounded were loaded into a wagon, the women walked behind, and the men were ordered to lag even farther behind. Seventeen children under the age of eight years were spared so as not to shed innocent blood, or because the elders felt sure they would not have memories to share with others.

The Mormon prophet, his apostles, and elders–all were aware the Second Coming was imminent. God would usher in the millennium. Consistent with previous revelations, the Indians, often referred to as Lamanites, were being prepared for their role as the ‘Battle Axe of the Lord’ in the Last Days. They were taught the difference between Mormonees and Mericats (Americans). The latter, the red men were assured, were not to be trusted.

The Paiutes were relatively peaceful by nature. The Arkansas travelers were slowly waking-up on Monday morning to the smell of breakfast cooking on the campfire when shots rang out. One of the children toppled over. Then, ten to fifteen adults hit the ground with seven of them mortally wounded.

The Paiutes launched a frontal assault on the camp but quickly retreated in the face of heavy fire from the emigrants. At least one Indian was killed by an Arkansas marksman and two war chiefs reportedly had their knees shattered. From a hiding place amid the rock formations and shrubbery, Indian Farmer, John D. Lee, watched the red men crack in the face of unexpected forceful resistance. They did not expect the emigrants’ bullets would harm them. They quickly lost faith in Mormon magic once their blood began to flow. The Indians would not rally for another attack. Lee went for reinforcements while the elders rounded up the train’s stock. Guards were left in place to prevent the emigrants from reaching the nearby spring of water.

The day before this attack, at a prayer circle composed of the members of the Cedar Stake Presidency, there was much discussion on what should be done with the emigrants. Bishop Klingensmith argued for killing them for boasting they had helped to murder the first Mormon prophet, the beloved Joseph Smith. John Higbee agreed.

Isaac Haight proposed laying such an important matter before President Young. A dispatch was issued and all agreed that no hostile action was to be taken until the messenger returned with Young’s orders. Unexpectedly, Haight jumped up and broke up the meeting. He went outside where he convened the men he trusted. This final meeting brought a decision for the destruction of the train. The men went on to discuss how best to induce the Indians to destroy the party.

Late on Monday afternoon, when the emigrants were tending their wounded, Haight received word of the attack that took place that morning at Mountain Meadows. He decided to send the courier, James Haslam, to the governor in Salt Lake City, for instructions. This would be a six hundred mile round trip to be made in one-hundred hours. Haight’s message purportedly read: “The Indians have gotten the emigrants corralled at Mountain Meadows and Lee wants to know what to do.”

It is impossible to determine how and when the attacking forces arrived at Mountain Meadows. We know many of the Indians, and many of the Mormons dressed as Indians, had hidden themselves close by during the early hours of the morning.

John D. Lee, who had left the Meadows in search of reinforcements, ended up in Cedar City, talking with Haight, asking for reinforcements. A dozen or more ‘good citizens’ volunteered to join the fray. Another scouting party of six or eight men also joined the party, but they had no orders and claimed to be there merely to see how things were going.

On Tuesday afternoon, ten or fifteen Legionaries from Santa Clara reached the Meadows, and about six men from the nearby town of Washington arrived in a little two-horse wagon. Another seventy-three men from Cedar City, volunteers, arrived at the Meadows during the next four days. An additional one hundred Mormon men, drawn from every settlement south of Parowan, eventually joined the fight.

Folklore and disinformation began to spread rapidly. Word was the Arkansas travelers poisoned a cow and gave it to the Indians causing sickness and death. The travelers were also said to have poisoned a stream the Indians were using. The problem with many of the stories floating across the nation was they were not verifiable and sometimes senseless. The fast flowing streams could not be successfully poisoned with strychnine.

There were tales of the Indians until Indian Agent Forney concluded not one Pah-vant Indian was present at the massacre, Chief Kanosh knew all the details of the massacre, but he stoutly followed the Mormon’s version of events.

Managing the Indians was a waking nightmare for Higbee and Lee. The Paiutes who had initiated the attack wanted the clothing, guns, and beef they had been promised, but they were not willing to die for them.

Tuesday, the day after the initial attack, about two hundred Indians were estimated in the Mountain Meadow campsite, including the wounded chiefs and other casualties. Little by little, the Indians began to drift away, many taking a few cattle with them. Three additional attacks were made on the emigrants who were better fighters than expected. The attackers quickly withdrew. Lee wanted to let the emigrants go, but Haight sent orders for Lee to finish what he had started.

Relief was on the way. Major Higbee found a horrific scene since the meadow was strewn with the carcasses of cattle and horses. The Mormons tried to explain to the Paiutes the failure of their magic in protecting them. Higbee tried to invoke a spiritual cure for the two Indian chiefs whose bones had been crushed to splinters in the initial assault. He anointed their wounds with consecrated oil and went through the process of ‘laying on of hands’ and fervently prayed for healing. Both Indians died.

The Mormon officers held a council. After much deliberation, they sent Higbee to inform Colonel Dame of conditions at the meadows. This was unnecessary as Dame’s son-in-law had been carrying messages to him and keeping him informed. Exactly what orders Dame gave was uncertain. Some say he ordered the emigrants be done away with. Others say he directed Lee to compromise with the Indians and let them take the stock and leave the travelers alone. There was no shortage of stories, many of which were designed to cover guilt or to place the blame on the Lamanites / Indians.

Haslam, the messenger, recalled that Haight ordered Lee to keep the Indians in check until his return from Salt Lake City with Young’s response. Since this was not done, it was assumed Lee executed the massacre on his own responsibility. Other traditions claimed Lee received written orders to spare the emigrants but no such document survives.

Someone decided the emigrants should be decoyed from their stronghold and exterminated. Early Thursday morning, the militia was called out for the purpose of committing hostile acts against the emigrants. Only men chosen for their proven loyalty to the LDS church and drawn from the upper echelons of several companies were sent to the scene. It was surmised each man had sworn the temple endowment oath to avenge the blood of the prophets.

At this point, the emigrants had spent four days without water. Lee watched from his hiding place as two men ran for the spring to fill their buckets. Bullets flew around them thick and fast, but they stood firm and returned to the corral safely. Another determined, but unsuccessful, attack was made on the train. Many of the Indians left enraged and drove off quite a few cattle.

By Thursday evening, Lee had accepted Haight’s orders to “clean up the dirty job he had started.” He sent a message to the Cedar Creek militia stating the Indians had massacred an emigrant train and he needed men to bury the dead. Men arrived with shovels in hand only to find the slaughter had yet to commence. They should have brought their weapons.

By Friday, conditions at the embattled wagon fort could not have been worse. Fewer than two dozen men survived to defend the circled wagons. Some of the wounded had died. The camp was out of water and almost out of ammunition.

White flags, along with a five day thirst and hunger for food, encouraged the emigrants to trust. They surrounded Lee and his men wearing happy faces sure their deliverance had come. Others looked upon the man with doubt, distrust, and terror.

The emigrants were divided into three groups. The seventeen children under the age of eight were loaded into the lead wagon along with some of the wounded. Lee walked closely behind this wagon and told the women to follow the road. They hurried along while the men were to linger behind, each with an armed elder walking beside them, presumably to protect them from the Indians. At a certain point the cry was heard: “Halt! Do your duty!” Each guard turned and shot down a man producing a volley of discharges seemingly at the very same time.

That night, while Jacob Hamblin was in Salt Lake City accepting another plural wife, his first wife was at home receiving the wagon load of seventeen hysterical children who had just seen their family murdered before their eyes. These children would eventually be returned to their Arkansas families.

The hastily buried bones were dug up by coyotes and scattered over the territory. Eventually they were gathered and placed in one grave with a large pile of rocks intended to protect them from further predators. These rocks were topped by a tall pine cross.

The men who carried the weapons and fired the shots became known as the Mountain Meadows Dogs. They had taken oaths of silence, and held their tongues for a time, but eventually details, some true and others not, surfaced. After twenty years of off-and-on hiding in the mountains or in Mexico, one person paid the price for the crime. John D. Lee placed his empty coffin on a spot of ground near where the tragedy took place and sat in front of it. He boldly waited until the impact of the executioner’s bullet pushed his lifeless body into the wooden box. Men were standing by with shovels in hand.

John D. Lee had a family who loved him. He was, basically, a good man. He had been excommunicated from the church he served and loved for so many decades. This, for the family that remained, was a hurtful thing. In April, 1961, Lee was absolved of any guilt and readmitted in good standing with the church.