Massacre at Mountain Meadows

On September 11, 1857 a wagon train of emigrants bound for California was wiped out by a group of Mormons, aided by Indians.  Of the 140 original travelers, only 20 survived, all children too young to bear tales.  The event was not sanctioned by the Mormon church but was the result of President Buchanan's decision to send federal troops to Utah and the bad feeling between Mormons and Gentiles...mostly of Young's making.

When Brigham Young heard that the troops were on their way and had reached the Mormons, he forbade his people to sell water, food or supplies to the Gentiles and fanatical preachers roused the people to hysteria.

Along came the Fancher wagon train, probably oblivious to the President's action, and certainly unaware of the Mormons feeling about their traveling through Utah.  Half of them were respectable settlers from Arkansas, the rest were a group of self-styled "Missouri Wildcats" who boasted of having been a part of the attack and murder of Joseph Smith...not a good combination.  When refused supplies they resorted to robbery and vandalism on Mormon property. They threatened to round up and lead an anti-Mormon army back from California. 

The Mormons of southwest Utah incited the local Indians to attack the wagon train as it camped in Mountain Meadows.  The campsite "forted up" and beat off the attack for 5 days until the ammunition began to run out.  They then accepted the Mormon promise of safe conduct.  They piled their weapons in the wagons and under the Mormons military protection began to walk away and start on their journey.  Hidden in nearby brush, the Mormons shot the unarmed men while the Indians killed the women and most of the children. 

Fearing the church and government reprisals (you think?), the Mormons blamed the massacre on the Indians and hushed up the whole matter.  Not until 1872 - 15 years later, when John D Ice, a participant was brought to trial, was the event even known about.  He faced a firing squad in 1877, by the way, on the very site of the massacre at Mountain Massacre.

Next time...The Ruin of James Marshall
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On this Day in Pioneer History: "On June 26, 1876, following Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s death the previous day in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Major Marcus Reno takes command of the surviving soldiers of the 7th Cavalry.

Lofty Plans

The valley beneath the Wasatch Mountains was fertile but dry.  Brigham Young planned to divert mountain streams into irrigation canals.  He told his people, "No person can buy land here for no one has any land to sell.  But every man shall have his land measured out to him which he must cultivate in order to keep it.  There is no private ownership of the canyon streams, nor the timber that grows on the hills.  Those belong to the people." 

Each adult male Mormon was to be awarded a town lot and his share of farmland.  The temple would cover 40 acres, the streets 88 feet wide, and the sidewalks 20 feet wide.  Each lot would contain 1 1/4 acre with 8 lots to a block.

Young was determined to shun all Gentile influence.  His community would be the State of Deseret (after the Mormon word for honeybee because of its industriousness and cooperation).  Young's own house was called the Beehive House. 

The planned Mormon state would cover all of present day Utah and extend through much of the territory gained by the United States from Mexico in California, down to San Diego where there would be a Mormon port.  Young vowed to acknowledge the government's ultimate sovereignty but little else - especially direct control. Eventually most of the Far West came under the US government's control which was not in Young's plans.

Next time...The Starving Time
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This Day in Pioneer History: "On June 19, 1868, Father De Smet talks peace with Sitting Bull.  Attempting to convince hostile Indians to make peace with the United States, the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet meets with the great Sioux Chief Sitting Bull in present-day Montana.

This is the Place!

Spring of 1847 found Brigham Young with 143 men, 3 women, and 2 children, along with 73 wagons, moving across the Plains to settle in a new Zion.  Young followed the north bank of the Platte River rather than along the south side which was the Oregon Trail and full of "Gentiles" of which he wanted no contact with.  Wet weather made traveling miserable in April, but by May they were hunting buffalo - "sweet and tender like veal". 

Side Note:  The Mormons invented a "roadometer" with wooden cogs geared to a wagon wheel that recorded the miles covered on a journey!  The first odometer!

Spring found the travelers jovial and high-spirited, so much so that Young was forced to remind them that "joking, nonsense, profane language, trifling conversation and loud laughter do not belong to us.  Suppose the angels were witnessing the hoe down the other evening, listening to the haw haws, would they be ashamed?"  (Must have been a fun trip!?) 

Properly chastened , the Mormons reached Casper in modern day Wyoming where they built two ferries to cross the river.  Crossing was free if you were a Mormon, but expensive for all Gentiles. 
On June 27, they crossed the South Pass into the Rockies. 

In the Rockies they received advice from several mountain men, among them Jim Bridger who said that late spring frosts were a threat to agriculture around the Great Salt Lake.  He even said he'd give a $1000 for the first bushel of corn they grew.  Young was not deterred. 

On July 9, 1847 a scouting party got their first glimpse of Great Salt Lake.  Young was sick with mountain fever which had devastated the group, so it was 5 days until he got his first look.  Reportedly he said "This is the place.  The spirit of light rests upon me and hovers over the valley. I feel the saints will find protection and safety here"  They had found their new Zion.

Next time: Building a Religious Community
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On this Day in Pioneer History: "On June 15, 1840, Francis Parkman, one of the first serious historians to study the American West, arrives at Fort Laramie and prepares for a summer of research with the Sioux.

We've Got to Move!

Brigham Young was a shrewd Yankee pragmatist, had a genius for organization and was a competent handyman.  Born in Vermont in 1801, Young had only two months of schooling, but became a carpenter, glazier, and farmer, as well as a canny businessman.  Known for his tongue lashings, many a Mormon was fearful of his sarcasm as punishment for wrong doing.  In his private life, he was a kind, genial man who was fond of dancing, music and theater. 

In 1845, Young knew he had to relocate his people.  He had read Fremont's report referring to a place in the West - Great Salt Lake valley some 1600 miles west of Nauvoo, Illinois.  In February 1846, the first Mormon wagons left Nauvoo and crossed the Mississippi into Iowa in the dead of winter.  By September more than 250 families had left Illinois.

Strict discipline accompanied all the wagon trains going west because Young believed that survival depended on organization and discipline - a semi-military type of order.  Each small group of wagons reported to a "centurion" who was responsible for several detachments.  Bugle calls woke you in the morning and prayers, breakfast, even dressing had strict timetables. 

The plan was to winter on the west bank of the Mississippi River near where Omaha is today.  The first wagons would stop periodically to plow the fields and sow crops.  (in February???)  The wagons that followed behind would harvest those crops and then replant more crops.  16,000 Mormons thus worked their way across Missouri to the west bank of the river.   Despite their well thought out plans, that winter saw hunger, cold and disease.  By Spring, 700 were dead.

Next time...Onward to the West
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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 12 1876, Marcus Kellogg, a journalist traveling with Custer's 7th Calvary, files one of his last dispatches before being killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  The New York Herald later erected a monument to him over the supposed site of his grave on the battlefield.

The Last Days in Nauvoo - Part 3

When Joseph Smith entered the Carthage, Illinois jail in June of 1844, he said he had a premonition of doom.  For three days he and his brother Hyrum listened to the angry mob of anti-Mormons outside the jail.  Finally on the afternoon of June 27, the mob with painted black faces stormed the jail brandishing guns, killing Hyrum on the spot.  Smith seeing his brother fall to floor reportedly yelled, "O Lord, my God" as he was shot, falling through the window to the ground below.

Smith's martyrdom, however, could not heal the division in the church.  Soon after his was buried in a secret grave, Nauvoo's 20,000 Mormons blamed him and his advisors for the situation they found themselves in.  They denounced his alleged  practice of polygamy (which was never proved by the way) as the source of all the danger they found themselves in.  They looked at the rising anti-Mormon feeling that surrounded them in fear and trepidation.



No one knew who the next prophet would be to lead the church.  The "Senior Apostle", Brigham Young had competition.  Sidney Rigdon, one of the earliest members of the church and a close counselor of Smith, claimed a divine revelation had chosen him to be the next prophet.  A mass meeting was held on August 6, almost 2 months after Smith's death, and Rigdon was rejected. 



The new prophet would be Brigham Young, a plain spoken Vermont native who decided the church's survival depended  on abandoning Nauvoo.  Young proposed a modern day Exodus to the West but he didn't know where...yet. 






Next time...1400 miles to the West.
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On This Day in Pioneer History:  "On June 8, 1874, Apache Chief Cochise, one of the great leaders of the Apache Indians in their battles with the white man dies of probably stomach cancer on the Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona.