The greater crime was that after the wagon train surrendered to the mormons and were told they would be escorted to safety, once disarmed they were shot and bludgened to death by the very people who promised safe passage - in cold blood. The size of the massacre was not exceeded in the US until the Murrah Federal Bldg in OK.
It was a horrible thing.
I was driving across the country once many years ago and we arrived at a park with a campground in the late evening and decided to stop there for the night. We set up camp and went to bed almost immediately, because the place was somehow unpleasant. My kids didn’t sleep at all and I had to keep getting up and going to them, and in fact none of us could sleep. I woke up in a real panic in the middle of the night, something that never happens to me because I love going camping and I am not nervous at all.
As soon as the faintest dawn broke, we got up and packed up and drove out of the camp. At the gate, we stopped and read the sign: Mountain Meadows. There was a brief description of what had happened on the site, but it wasn’t until later that I read the full story. However, that did explain our horrible night (and I’m not even a very “sensitive” person). It must have been awful.