LDS.org posts link to 1857 massacre

In response to heightened public interest in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has posted a link on its Web site to a detailed account of one of the ugliest events in Utah history.

"Sept. 11 marks the anniversary of the 1857 massacre of some 120 California-bound emigrants in southern Utah," notes the site, LDS.org. "An article by Richard E. Turley Jr., the managing director for the Family and Church History Department, will be printed in the 2007 Ensign magazine, but you can read it online now."

That note carries a link to the church magazine's online site, which opens the lengthy article.

For about six years Turley and co-authors have been researching and writing a book about the massacre, in which Mormon settlers in southern Utah and some Indian allies murdered 120 members of a wagon train headed toward California. Only 17 children age 6 and under were spared, as they were believed to be "too young to tell tales."

The book is "Massacre at Mountain Meadows," to be published this year or next by Oxford University Press. Besides Turley, co-authors are Ronald W. Walker , professor of history at Brigham Young University, and Glen M. Leonard, retired director of the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.

Ever since the 1850s the massacre has been a subject of intense debate and conflicting stories.

Turley writes in the Ensign article: "How could this have happened? How could members of the church have participated in such a crime?

"Two facts make the case even more difficult to fathom. First, nothing that any of the emigrants purportedly did or said, even if all were true, came close to justifying their deaths. Second, the large majority of perpetrators led decent, nonviolent lives before and after the massacre."

Some were haunted for the rest of their lives by what they had done and seen, Turley wrote.

After confrontations with a wagon train of emigrants from Arkansas, church leaders in Cedar City planned to induce Indians to help attack the train; they would let the Indians take the blame. But the first attacks failed, and the emigrants formed their wagons into a strong defensive circle.

The most horrifying scene occurred on Sept. 11, 1857, starting when John D. Lee entered the wagon fort under cover of a white flag. Lee, a militia major from Fort Harmony and the federally funded Indian agent, convinced the emigrants that Mormon militiamen would protect them from the Indians if they abandoned all their belongings, including their weapons. Suspicious but almost out of ammunition, the settlers agreed to the terms.