Well if you read the thread there are some interesting posts regarding some of the known facts. There are plenty of good books out there that summarize the event.
It is the unknown facts that are in dispute and that have caused so much pain for the families of the victims of the massacre. They have never received a decent burial. Until recently there was no marker of the event. This was the single worst act of murder in America's history, until the time of the Oklahoma City bombings!
My family member, along with other members of the Church killed these poor innocent people. We owe them the truth. The Church owes them respect and full disclosure if nothing else.
I won't dispute that, as it is obvious. The problem is, what *is* the truth? From my own limited knowledge of the event, and from what I've gleaned on this thread, I find it hard to understand exactly *what* happened.
It is entirely possible that when your family member went to these people, along with whoever accompanied him, that wholesale slaughter was not the agenda, so much as "encouraging" these people to settle elsewhere, particularly if the postulation of prior "bad blood" has some basis in fact. It is easy to visualize such a "showdown" as suddenly getting totally out of the control of anyone involved.
So, the unknown facts are as follows. First: did Bishop Lee act under orders from higher up within the Church heirarchy? Secondly: if so, exactly *what* were those orders? If Brigham Young, or anyone directly between him and your relative, ordered him to encourage the Arkansans to move on, by a show of force, but did *not* order wholesale slaughter, then it's one thing. If Young, or his deputies ordered their elimination, then it's another. Neither is provable to date, at least with such information on the matter as the church has divulged. The Church's *official* position is that he acted on his own, but that rings a bit hollow, in that he did *not* go to the Arkansans alone, but in the company of others, numerous others.
Will the truth ever be known? Unlikely, at best, as the Church just wishes the whole issue would disappear with the passage of time, and refuses to face the issue of what happened on that day in 1857, and why it happened...
the infowarrior
Not true.
Sandcreek Massacre: 160 men, women and children murdered.
Marias Massacre: 200 men, women and children murdered.
Wounded Knee Massacre: 300 men, women and children murdered.