Mountain Meadows Massacre

As you search to learn more about the massacre, search for truth. Juanita Brooks sought and wrote truth to the best of her knowledge. Seek sources that will give facts based on accurate and well researched information. Please consider these sources in your search.

Mountain Meadows Massacre Massacre at Mountain Meadows Vengeance is Mine Mountain Meadows Massacre (Topics and Questions)

THE STORY SHE WAS BORN TO TELL

“Born and bred in Utah’s Dixie (Bunkerville, NV), Juanita grew up knowing about what happened at nearby Mountain meadows in the days when her grandfather was young. What she knew, however, was what most Mormons of her generation ‘knew,’ that is, that in 1857 an Indian attack on a wagon train had resulted in an appalling loss of life and that non-Mormons usually blamed the Saints for the massacre of the innocent travelers. She was not aware that most of the older Latter-day Saints in Dixie knew and altogether different version of the story.” Jan Shipps, Forward, Mountain Meadows Massacre 1991 edition.

When she was 20 years old and a grade school teacher in Mesquite she experienced the following: “During the winter, I had made it a point to speak to Old Brother Nephi Johnson at Sunday School and Church; occasionally I sat beside him. I was not disturbed when he came to my room one day just before closing time. The students were all busy in a drawing lesson. ‘Don’t pay any attention to me! Go right on with your work,’ he said as he tapped his way to my desk and sat down in my chair. The children were well-behaved, so things in the room proceeded normally until the bell sounded, when the hurried out, but in good order. I came at once and pulled a chair up facing Brother Johnson. This was what he had been waiting for. Leaning with both hands on his cane, he said impressively, ‘I want you to do some writing for me. My eyes have witnessed things that my tongue has never uttered, and before I die, I want them written down. And I want YOU to do the writing.’ Silly, foolish me! Why didn’t I just reach for a pencil and pad, settle myself and say, ‘Go ahead?’…” That hedging, as she called it, would be one of her life’s greatest regrets. Months later she was called to the Johnson Ranch as Nephi Johnson lay dying. She said, “Brother Johnson…seemed troubled; he rambled in delirium - he prayed, he yelled, he preached, an once again his eyes opened wide to the ceiling and he yelled ‘Blood! BLOOD! BLOOD!’ What is the matter with him I asked, he acts like he is haunted. Uncle List responded, ‘Maybe he is. He was at the Mountain Meadows Massacre, you know.’ No, indeed. I did NOT know….So that was what he wanted me to write! Clearly that was what he meant when he had said his eyes had witnessed things that he tongue had never uttered! Fool, fool that I was, not to have taken the opportunity to write it when he was eager to talk…But I had missed my chance.” Quicksand and Cactus pp 226-229

This began her journey to tell the story.

The Massacre

The Mountain Meadows Massacre (September 7–11, 1857) was a series of attacks during the Utah War that resulted in the mass murder of at least 120 members of the Baker–Fancher wagon train. The massacre occurred in the southern Utah Territory at Mountain Meadows, and was perpetrated by settlers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) involved with the Utah Territorial Militia (officially called the Nauvoo Legion) who recruited and were aided by some Southern Paiute Native Americans. The wagon train, made up mostly of immigrant families from Arkansas, was bound for California, traveling on the Old Spanish Trail that passed through the Territory.

After arriving in Salt Lake City, the Baker–Fancher party made their way south along the Mormon Road, eventually stopping to rest at Mountain Meadows. The party's journey occurred amidst hostilities between Mormon settlers and the U.S. government, with war hysteria rampant amongst the Mormons. Acting on rumors of hostile behavior on the part of the travelers, local Mormon militia leaders, including Isaac C. Haight and John D. Lee, made plans to attack them as they camped at the meadow. The leaders of the militia, wanting to give the impression of tribal hostilities, persuaded Southern Paiutes to join with a larger party of militiamen disguised as Native Americans in an attack on the wagon train.

During the militia's first assault, the travelers fought back, and a five-day siege ensued. Eventually, fear spread among the militia's leaders that some immigrants had caught sight of the white men, likely discerning the actual identity of a majority of the attackers. As a result, militia commander William H. Dame ordered his forces to kill the travelers. By this time, the travelers were running low on water and provisions, and allowed some members of the militia – who approached under a white flag – to enter their camp. The militia members assured the immigrants they were protected, and after handing over their weapons, the immigrants were escorted away from their defensive position. After walking a distance from the camp, the militiamen, with the help of auxiliary forces hiding nearby, attacked the travelers. The perpetrators killed all the adults and older children in the group, in the end sparing only seventeen young children ages six and under

  • "To whom it may concern: I have been asked repeatedly why I wrote this book. 'Why open up an old question?' many say. My reason is that it was listed as one of the topics in western history which was considered as a subject for further research. I felt that, as a member of the church, I could perhaps present it with more understanding than could a person without a L.D.S background.... In delving into the subject, I did the best I could to present my findings fully and honestly. I could do nothing else."

    Juanita Brooks written on the half-title page of the first-edition copy of the book

  • "But I do think that as an honest historian - as I have tried to be, I owe it to myself and to my readers to tell all the truth, for truth suppressed is its own kind of lie."

    Juanita Brooks in a letter to Jesse Udall 23 June 1961

  • "So the wind grew into the whirlwind, exaggeration, misrepresentation, ungrounded fears, unreasoning hate, desire for revenge, yes, even lust for the property of the emigrants, all combined to give justification which, once the crime was done, looked inadequate and flimsy indeed."

    Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre 2d ed.

  • "When a cowboy wants to turn a herd of stampeding cattle, he doesn't run directly counter to them. If he did he'd be run over. He rides with them, and turns them gradually. So if I don't like the stand of the church, I can do more about it by staying in."

    Juanita Brooks in a letter to Dale Morgan 13 Dec

  • "They do not wish to see their pioneers realistically as tough frontiersmen, sometimes disagreeing among themselves, quarreling upon occasion, swearing under provocation, drinking a little once-in-a-while, loyal to each other, but cheating Gentiles with impunity. Like the pink and white portraits of the leaders, all smoothed of character wrinkles, they lack only a halo. Yet to guild the lily is not more ridiculous than to put powder and rouge on their leathered, weatherbeaten faces."

    Juanita read this paper before the Arts and Letters section of the Utah Academy at the University of Utah.
    Her paper was titled The First One Hundred years of Southern Utah History, later published in 1949. It was her denunciation of Kate Carter’s practice of editing pioneer diaries.

  • .. the Church was everything to us. It was for the Church that we were all here; it was the Church that had drawn our parents from all the far countries. Even the building of the ditch and the dam, the graveling of the sidewalks, the planting of cotton or cane had its inception in the Church, for ours was a temporal gospel as well as a spiritual one.

    Juanita Brooks Quicksand and Cactus p 112

  • Pa let me talk myself out, and then said kindly, "My girl, I think you should follow your hunches — that is, if you have a strong feeling you should pay attention to it, whether it goes against my counsel or anyone else's. But be careful. In general, it is better to do your assigned duty. "You did the best you could. That is all any of us can do. But you must learn that life is full of sorrow and disappointments. When it comes, we must take it with patience. This may teach you to follow your own inner guide in the future."

    Henry Leavitt (Quicksand and Cactus, page 174)