|
Posted on 09/11/2003 12:00:34 AM PDT by SAMWolf
|
|
 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
|
|
The years of 1855-56 had been particularly harsh on the Mormon settlements around the Great Salt Lake. Through their difficulties were due to normal things like drought and insect infestation, the Mormons believed they were being punished by God for their sins. All people were called upon to confess and represent. For some sins, the only way of achieving forgiveness was the doctrine of "blood-atonement." This meant that one had to shed their own blood. Unfortunately, things got out of control when some Mormons extended the shedding of blood to others to save themselves. At the same time, they claimed, they were "saving" the person who was sacrificed.  The atrocities reached the ears of leaders in the east. President Buchanan sent troops to Utah to return order. The Mormons heard about it in advance and prepared for a long siege. They stockpiled grain. They found places to hide. They got ready to leave at a moment’s notice. They burned down Fort Bridger and Fort Supply so they could not provide shelter to U.S. troops. Brigham Young declared that army troops would not be allowed to enter the Salt Lake Valley for any reason. He declared that all citizens must be ready to bare arms against them. Before the troops could reach Utah, the Fancher emigrant train had reached Salt Lake City from Arkansas. They had received a hostile reception there so left as soon as possible. In their way south, they were unable to buy or trade with any of the settlers. They traveled as fast as they could to get out of Utah. They stopped at Mountain Meadows, in the southwest corner of the territory, to rest their animals. The meadows were a final resting and refueling stop before crossing the ninety miles of desert west of them. There were two springs in the valley and lush grass. Around the valley were steep hillsides.  This 1870s T.B.H. Stenhouse sketch depicts the horrors at Mountain Meadows On the eastern edge of the valley lived Jacob Hamlin, a Mormon Indian agent for the Paiutes, and some other assistants. On the morning of September 7, 1857, seven emigrants fell dead from gunfire. Sixteen others were wounded. The emigrants were stunned, but the survivors raced to their wagons to arm themselves and get the women and children under cover. The Indians did not expect resistance and hesitated. But spurned on by their Mormon instigators John D. Lee, sub-agent, and Nephi Johnson, interpreter, they kept fighting. The Indians also ran off some of the cattle and shot the rest. Overall, there were 54 white men and 200 Indians in the attacking force. The settlers made a fortress out of their wagons and piled up earth. They sent out messengers for help. Two men reached Cedar City, but when they asked for help, one of them was killed on the spot. The other was wounded, but got away. Three men finally got out and headed toward California for help.  John D. Lee The Mormons were dismayed that the settlers weren’t so easy to dislodge. They held a council to decide what to do. They decided they must somehow be lured out of their stronghold and then killed. Lee and William Bateman approached the camp waving a white flag. They claimed that the Indians had agreed to leave them alone if they surrendered to the Mormons. They would have to make a show of it so the Indians would believe they were surrendering. They had to put their guns in the wagons and the men had to walk unarmed. The pioneers agreed, believing it was their only option. They started to march out of the valley, practically in single file. When they reached a certain spot, Major John Higbee gave a signal. All of a sudden the Indians erupted out of their hiding places and attacked the women. The Mormon militiamen bringing up the rear killed the men on foot that were closest to them. All of the men were killed in the first two or three volleys. The women were left to the Indians. All of them were scalped, stripped of their clothes, and killed.  Site of the Mountain Meadow Massacre Shortly afterward, Ira Hatch led some Indians after the three men who were heading to California. They caught up with them in the Santa Clara Mountains and killed them. In all, about 120 men, women, and children were killed including the five who had left the stronghold. Seventeen children survived and were taken to Hamlin’s agency and divided up among Mormon families. The Mormons took all the money that the settlers had on them. They gave much of the property to the Indians. The rest was taken and sold and donated to the Church. They took all the jewelry off the bodies, not caring if they mutilated fingers or ears in its removal. On October 2, eleven Mormon men fleeing Utah through the southern boundary stopped at the site of the massacre. They saw the nude, mutilated bodies still laying there, some partly eaten by wild animals. They told about what they saw when they reached Los Angeles. From there the news spread all over the country. A hue and cry went up to punish the Indians and Mormons responsible.  A Dr. Forney, Superintendent of Utah, investigated the matter. He found the missing children living with white families near Hamlin’s agency. Some of them were old enough to explain exactly what happened. He was amazed that the families who had taken in the children demanded money to repay them for what they had paid the Indians to free the children. He learned that the Indians that died had done so after eating an animal infected from eating a noxious weed, not from being deliberately poisoned by the emigrants. He also learned that this particular tribe had not even been involved in the fight. This contradicted the story that had been given by the Mormons for the Indian uprising. It wasn’t until the spring of 1859, that an army company went to the meadows and buried the remains. On June 29, fifteen of the seventeen children were sent east in a wagon train escorted by soldiers, John C. Miller and Milium Tackett were kept was witnesses. They testified in Washington D.C., then went home to Arkansas. No one was punished until 1876, when Lee and three others finally went on trial. In the first trial, Lee was acquitted, being as there were nine Mormon men on the jury. The U.S. government proclaimed the jury selection as invalid and declared a second trial. By then, the Mormon church decided that they should sacrifice Lee and the others to improve their own standing. The witnesses in the second trial all of a sudden remembered everything that happened. Lee was found guilty of murder. On March 23, 1877, he was executed at the scene of the massacre.  Below is a short history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, as it appears on the memorial in Harrison, Arkansas. The Mountain Meadows Massacre In memory of 140 men, women and children, Northwest Arkansas emigrants to California in 1857 under leadership of Alexander Fancher (Piney Alex) left from Caravan Spring 4 miles south of here around May 1st - camped at Mountain Meadows, Utah in early September - attacked by Indians directed by Mormons - fought for several days until ammunition exhausted - approached by Mormons under flag of truce - promised protection - surrendered - all were then killed except 17 small children - found later in Mormon homes - rescued by Army in 1859 - taken to Arkansas - cared for by relatives - John D. Lee, Mormon bishop, tried - found guilty - executed in 1877 - confessed guilt and Mormon complicity - consult Russells Behind These Ozark Hills (1947) Goodspeeds History of Arkansas (1889) p. 346 - 350 in regional library Harrison. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Romans 12:19 Small children not killed Milum & William - children of Pleasant Tackett Angeline & George Ann - children of L. D. Dunlap Martha Elizabeth - Sarah F. - W. T. - children of G. W. Baker Rebecca J. - Sarah E. - Louisa - children of Jesse Dunlap John Calvin - Mary - Joseph - children of Josiah Miller Kit Carson & Tryphina - children of Alexander Fancher F. M. Jones - child of J. M. Jones Sophronia - child of Peter Huff  Below is the inscription of the back side of the monument at Harrison, Arkansas. It provides an incomplete list of the victims of the massacre. Those Killed From Carroll Co. Arkansas Alexander Fancher - Wife Eliza Ingram - Their children: Hampton - William - Mary - Thomas - Martha - Sarah G. - Margaret A. George W. Baker - Wife - Child John I. Baker - Abel Baker Milum Rush - Allen Deshazo David W. Beller - Jrs Mathew Fancher Robert T. Fancher - Melissa Ann Beller From Marion Co. Arkansas Chas R. Mitchell - Wife - Child Joel D. Mitchell - Lawson Mitchell Wm. Pruett - John Pruett Jesse Dunlap - Wife - 6 Children Rachel Dunlap - Ruth Dunlap L. D. Dunlap - 5 Children Wm. Wood - Solomon Wood Richard Wilson From Johnson Co. Arkansas J. Milum Jones - Wife - Child Pleasant Tackett - Wife - 2 Children Cintha Tackett - 3 Children Ambrose Tackett - Miriam Tackett William Cambron - Wife - 5 Children Josiah Miller - Wife - 5 Children Peter Huff - Wife - Their children: Angeline - Annie - Ephriam W. Wm. Eaton - Indiana - Wm. A. Aden - Tenn. Residence Unknown John Melvin Sorel - Mary Sorel Francis Horn - Joseph Miller - Wife Other Names in Caravan Mortons - Haydons - Hudsons - Hamiltons - Smiths - Laffoons OTHERS UNKNOWN
|
A new forensic study lends credence to Paiute Indian claims that the tribe did not participate in the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 to the extent history has recorded.
The analysis of bones from some of the 120 emigrants in a California-bound wagon train who were slaughtered at Mountain Meadows also shows some of the remains have distinct American Indian characteristics. Those traits may be attributed to the mixed Cherokee ancestry of many of the emigrants from northwestern Arkansas who were murdered.
Utah American Indian officials say they plan to study the report to determine what steps might be taken, but were pleased with implications of the new evidence for the Paiute Tribe.
"It is ludicrous to keep saying the Indians jumped out of the bushes and attacked these people," says Forrest Cuch, director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. "I'm completely with [researchers] on the findings."
Prepared by researchers at the University of Utah Department of Anthropology, the 200-page skeletal-trauma analysis was delivered in July to Brigham Young University's Office of Public Archaeology for inclusion in a final report to state history officials.
That report was due last August under the customary one-year-from-excavation deadline of a state archaeological permit, but it has yet to be submitted to the Antiquities Section of the Utah Division of History. The Salt Lake Tribune recently obtained a draft copy of the University of Utah portion of the study, in which skeletal biologists used forensic anthropology techniques to assess age, sex and approximate cause of death of the massacre victims.
At the time, Mormons were being rallied by church leaders into a state of war hysteria against the federal government, which was marching troops to Utah to replace LDS Prophet Brigham Young as territorial governor.
After initially repelling the first assault, the emigrants endured a four-day siege. With food and water running low, local Mormon officials convinced the emigrants on Sept. 11 to surrender their arms in exchange for safe passage to Cedar City. Instead, at a pre-arranged command, the emigrant men were executed by their Mormon escorts while Paiute Indians lying in wait murdered the women and children. Or so the story has been told.
"As with most mass killings, emotion and propaganda surround this historic event, often with greatly disparate views," wrote principal investigator Shannon Novak, a native Utahn. "With time, interpretations often become bipolar -- either romanticized or exaggerated depending on which side is recounting the event. Physical evidence can often provide a reality check, requiring all sides to reconsider what they have 'known to be true.'"
The Tribune reported Novak's preliminary findings from the massacre remains last March. Her research was prematurely terminated when Gov. Mike Leavitt asked state officials to order immediate return of the bones to BYU for the reburial ceremony when Hinckley dedicated a new monument to the victims. In an e-mail sent to state history officials, the governor -- whose ancestor Dudley Leavitt was one of the participants in the slaughter -- wrote he did not want controversy to highlight "the rather good-spirited attempt to put [the massacre] behind us."
Those findings, in some points, differ with the generally accepted historical version of the massacre.
"All accounts agree that it was quickly over," wrote Mormon historian Juanita Brooks in her landmark 1950 study, The Mountain Meadows Massacre. "Most of the emigrant men fell at the first volley, and those who started to run were quickly shot down by Mormons or by Indians. The savages, far outnumbering the women and children, leaped from the brush on both sides of the road at once and, stimulated by the shrieks and screams, fell upon their victims with knives and hatchets and soon quieted them."
Novak's study of the bones, however, found no evidence of sharp-force trauma, such as that caused by a blow from a knife or hatchet. The researcher notes that "skeletal trauma only records lesions that penetrate to the bone."
Another indication of women and children being executed is the fractured palate of a female, aged 18-22. The pattern of the bone fracture, along with the blackened and burned crowns of the woman's teeth, is consistent with a gunshot wound.
Suggestions that most emigrant men were shot in the back of the head and from the rear while fleeing also are questioned by bullet trajectories through the skulls. Six individuals were shot in the head from behind, while five were shot in frontal assaults.
Recognizing the new scientific evidence is bound to prompt a reassessment of long-held views of Paiute Indian involvement in the massacre, Novak cautioned: "Obviously, skeletal trauma cannot corroborate ethnically who was responsible for the shooting and whom for the beating."
Still, Paiute leaders say the forensic evidence supports their oral traditions that tribal members had little or no role in the killings. In 1998, tribal researchers interviewed elders about the massacre and the Utah divisions of History and Indian Affairs recently published some of those accounts in the new book edited by Cuch, A History of Utah's American Indians.
Hinckley's declaration at the 1999 dedication -- "That which we have done here must never be construed as an acknowledgement of the part of the church of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful day" -- underlined the belief of many Paiutes that they are still scapegoats for a crime perpetrated by Mormon church officials.
"The truth will prevail at the end," says Paiute Tribe of Utah Chairwoman Geneal Anderson of Cedar City. "You hope that learning from history makes a better tomorrow, but the attitude seems to be that the Indians are not going to say anything anyway, it's not down in writing so who is going to believe them?"
One Paiute elder, Will Rogers, related a story told by an ancestor that the killing "took about three [or] four hours, I think he said, you know to shoot them people all. Some of them were half-dead, some of them weren't even dead."
Those versions differ wildly from accounts of Mormons at the scene. In court affidavits subsequent to the trial of John D. Lee -- the only person ever convicted for the massacre -- Nephi Johnson, who served as Paiute interpreter, said 150 Indians were present and "owing to some of the white men of the posse failed to kill their men, the Indians assisted in finishing the work."
However, the journal of Francis Lyman, who died in 1903 after serving as president of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, recounts a different version of the story from a conversation he had with Johnson.
Another Mormon participant who commanded the territorial militia, John M. Higbee, wrote in a court affidavit that the Paiute Indians forced the Mormons to kill the emigrants.
"The savages came to Lee and said if he and the Mormons did not help them to kill the Merrycats [emigrants] they would join the soldiers and fight the Mormons," Higbee's affidavit reads.
"The number of Indians there were variously estimated at anywhere from three to six hundred, all determined it seemed to accomplish the destruction of the company if they had to fight all the Mormons in the southern country."
In the last half of the 1800s, Paiutes accounted for more converts to Mormonism than any other Utah tribe and Paiute children were adopted by Mormon families in numbers greater than any other tribe. Yet the continued blame shifting over Mountain Meadows has sullied relationships between the tribe and church.
Anderson, who served as leader of the Paiutes from 1984 to 1993 and was elected to another term in 1997, said she was not invited to the 1999 LDS Church dedication of the new massacre victim monument. She was a guest speaker at the 1990 dedication ceremony for a separate monument, and was "really uncomfortable" with the suggestion that Paiutes should ask forgiveness for the massacre.
"Somebody asked me afterwards how many Paiutes were involved and I said, ' That's your history, not ours,' " she says today. "They still call us wagon-burners. As things are passed down through generations, people can make them worse than they are."
Cuch says he believes that no matter how painful, the past must be re-examined by LDS Church officials and appropriate responsibility taken.
"The LDS Church has to discontinue this denial process and they have to believe in the power to forgive," says Cuch. "They thought by executing John D. Lee this thing would go away. But the problem is, that wasn't the truth and if it's not the truth it cannot possibly contribute to overall understanding and a sense of forgiveness.
CHRISTOPHER SMITH
Salt Lake Tribune
www.rickross.com
www.greaterthings.com
asms.k12.ar.us
www.worldisround.com
www.mazeministry.com www.escribe.com
| 'The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands without a parallel amongst the crimes that stain the pages of American history. It was a crime committed without cause or justification of any kind to relieve it of its fearful character... When nearly exhausted from fatigue and thirst, [the men of the caravan] were approached by white men, with a flag of truce, and induced to surrender their arms, under the most solemn promises of protection. They were then murdered in cold blood.' William Bishop, 'I observed that nearly every skull I saw had been shot through with rifle or revolver bullets. I did not see one that had been "broken in with stones." Dr. Brewer showed me one, that probably of a boy of eighteen, which had been fractured and slit, doubtless by two blows of a bowie knife or other instrument of that character. James Henry Carleton, |
|
Sept. 11th in Iraq
 American soldier Maj. General Raymond T. Odierno, center, commander of the 4th Infantry division in Tikrit, Iraq, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2003, addresses fellow soldiers during a memorial service. More than 150 soldiers from the 4th infantry division attended the memorial service in memory of the loss of life from terrorist attacks in America on September 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith)  American soldier Maj. General Raymond T. Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry division in Tikrit, Iraq, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2003, addresses fellow soldiers during a memorial service.  American soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 22nd infantry regiment, 4th Infantry division in Tikrit, Iraq , Thursday, Sept. 11, 2003, reflect during a memorial service.  American soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 22nd infantry regiment, 4th Infantry division in Tikrit, Iraq, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2003, hold the unit color flags during a memorial service.
|
.......FALL IN to the FReeper Foxhole!Folks I'm going to be in and out from the computer due to thunderstorms today. Hope everyone has a great Thursday.
|
I was hungry for breakfast and now I've lost my appetite. Gross! A few cuss words come to mind as well. Lord have mercy.
Nice touch executing the criminal at the spot.
This is such a bizarre story. Another case of fanatics.
Thanks for the thread today SAM.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
