Site Of Mountain Meadows Massacre Recognized [First 9/11 American terrorist attack

ROGERS, Ark. -- For more than 150 years, an important piece of Arkansas and American history has been relegated to obscurity.

In early 1857, a wagon train left Northwest Arkansas and headed west, bound for California.

The Francher-Baker train was made up of 14 large Arkansas families, about 800 cattle and around 30 wagons.

"They were en route to California for a better life and little did they know that Brigham Young had declared war on the United States two weeks before they entered the Salt Lake Valley," said Phil Bolinger, with the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation.

So without knowing tensions were running high between the U.S. government and Brigham Young, the leader of the Chuch of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church), the families decided to camp in southwest Utah, in a place called Mountain Meadows.

"They were attacked by a few indians, but mainly Mormon militia men," Bolinger said.

"Under one order -- the order was 'do your duty' -- each man killed his man, in other words, point-blank, execution-style murder. And then the women and children weren't so lucky. They were mainly bludgeoned to death with rocks or gun stocks," Bolinger said.

On September 11, 1857, 121 men, women and children were murdered. Only 17 small children, all under the age of 6, were spared. Two years later, the orphans were reunited with relatives in Arkansas.

"Everyone who lived in Northwest Arkansas at that time, had some blood relatives that were members of this wagon train," said Scott Fancher, a descendant who has 27 relatives who died that day.

For years the Mormon church denied allegations of involvement and blamed local Native Americans for the slaughter.

Descedents of the victims have always wanted the church to own up and have wanted to get federal protection for the massacre site.

In the last 10 years, there has been movies and media coverage and trips to washington to fight for the site of the massacre to become a national historic landmark, and on July 2, it did.

"Finally we have some serious, bonafied, high order federal protection for the site to protect it from development or encroachment. We also have the recognition of the site as a nationally significant historic site," Fancher said.

"Interestingly enough, it was also an act of religious extremism, and that's another sort of eerie parallel between that and are more recent 9/11. But in both cases, religious extremists did basically horrible things to basically innocent people," Fancher said.

But in this case, more than a hundred years later, both sides have been able to reconcile.

"We're 150 years-plus into this story, and it's taken that long for the players to kind of meet in the middle and agree to be civil and both agree we won't get everything that we want but we get something better for everyone that's involved," Fancher said.

The national landmark dedication ceremony will be held in Utah at the site of the Mountain Meadows massacre on September 11.

The orders of their prophet come before ANYTHING else, even the US. Constitution.

NO!!

You HAVE to be kidding; RIGHT???

In conclusion let us summarize this grand key, these “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet”, for our salvation depends on them.

1. The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.
2. The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works.
3. The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.
4. The prophet will never lead the church astray.
5. The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
6. The prophet does not have to say “Thus Saith the Lord,” to give us scripture.
7. The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.
8. The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
9. The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.
10. The prophet may advise on civic matters.
11. The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.
12. The prophet will not necessarily be popular with the world or the worldly.
13. The prophet and his counselors make up the First Presidency—the highest quorum in the Church.
14. The prophet and the presidency—the living prophet and the First Presidency—follow them and be blessed—reject them and suffer.

I testify that these fourteen fundamentals in following the living prophet are true. If we want to know how well we stand with the Lord then let us ask ourselves how well we stand with His mortal captain—how close do our lives harmonize with the Lord’s anointed—the living Prophet—President of the Church, and with the Quorum of the First Presidency.

Ezra Taft Benson

(Address given Tuesday, February 26, 1980 at Brigham Young University)

From the same article: Not saying it’s right, just trying to keep the hysterics from clouding the facts.

Why would Mormons kill innocent emigrants?

Since the founding of their church in 1830, Mormons had been heavily persecuted and attacked. They had been chased from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois and then finally to Utah. In Missouri, at Haun’s Mill, 18 Mormons had been massacred and 13 injured. The governor of Missouri had even issued an extermination order against the Mormons, forcing them to leave Missouri or be killed.

The church’s founder, the prophet Joseph Smith, had been tarred and weathered, falsely accused and imprisoned several times, and ultimately killed alongside his brother.

In 1857 the federal government sent 1,500 United States troops to Utah to deal with what it thought was a rogue sect. Tensions were high in Utah in 1857.

Because of all the past persecution and fear of being attacked or imprisoned by federal troops, it’s likely that local Mormons who participated in the Mountain Meadows Massacre acted out of a deep fear and paranoia.

Did persecution against the Mormons justify the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

While the Mormons were heavily persecuted, driven from their homes, and killed en masse several times, their persecution did not justify the killings at Mountain Meadows.

All hysterics aside, according to this article, the Mormon's shot the men and the Native American's they convinced to help them, murdered the women and children.

No, it wasn't quite as "clean" of a division as that.

"...sisters Rebecca, six, and Louisa, four...had all seen the slaughter of their seven brothers and sisters, as well as both parents, and Rebecca had pried her baby sister from the arms of their dead mother. Rebecca and Louisa had also watched as the Mormon killers, disguised as Indians, washed off their war paint in one of the meadow streams. They would eventually be among the first witnesses to report this occurrence, thereby attributing the murders to white men rather than Paiutes." (p. Sally Denton, American Massacre, p. 140 Vintage Books 2003)

Now that's not to say there weren't Paiutes involved. They were. But many of them left the scene after the initial first-day siege -- as the wagon train held out for several days. And, reportedly, some Paiutes were indeed present during the 9/11 massacre and did less -- if any of the shooting on that day.

The shooting victims indeed could all -- on the 9/11 portion of the massacre -- be attributed to the Mormons.

Yet many accounts (like the one below) say one one yo was killed by the same bullet that killed the father (the baby was in the father's arms)...plus "One-year-old Sarah Dunlap was shot in the elbow..." (Sally Denton, American Massacre, p. 137)

You can see that there was other female victims from the Mormons here:

The following is an except from the book THE INDIAN WARS OF THE FAR WEST BY J. P.' DUNN, JE., M.S., LL.B. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, 1886 (pages 297 - 301):

It is just after noon , and the day is bright and clear. Tramp, tramp, tramp ; they march down from the camping place. The men have reached the militia, and give them three hearty cheers as they take their places, murderer and victim, side by side. Tramp, tramp, tramp. They are rounding the point of the ridge which has served as a screen for the Mormons and Indians for the past week. A raven flies over them, croaking. What called him there ? The wagons have just passed out of sight over the divide. The men are entering a little ravine. The women are opposite the Indians. They have regained confidence, and several are expressing their joy at escaping from their savage foes. See that man on the divide! It is Higbee. He makes a motion with his arms and shouts something which those nearest him understand to be: "Do your duty." In an instant the militiamen wheel, and each shoots the man nearest him; the Indians spring from their ambush and rush upon the women; from between the wagons the rifle of John D. Lee cracks, and a wounded woman in the forward wagon falls off the seat.

Swiftly the work of death goes on. Lee is assisted in shooting and braining the wounded by the teamsters Knight and McMurdy, and as the latter raises his rifle to his shoulder he cries; " O Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for thy kingdom that I do this." The men all fell at the first fire but two or three, and these the horsemen ride down, knock over with their clubbed guns, and finish with their knives. Their throats are cut, that the atoning blood may flow freely. The women and older children are not hurried out of the world quite so quickly as the others. Some are on their knees begging for life.

Others run shrieking over the Meadows. Swiftly the work of death goes on. Lee is assisted in shooting and braining the wounded by the teamsters Knight and McMurdy, and as the latter raises his rifle to his shoulder he cries; "O Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for thy kingdom that I do this." The men all fell at the first fire but two or three, and these the horsemen ride down, knock over with their clubbed guns, and finish with their knives. Their throats are cut, that the atoning blood may flow freely. The women and older children are not hurried out of the world quite so quickly as the others. Some are on their knees begging for life. Others run shrieking over the Meadows. They receive but two answers—the tomahawk crashing through the skull, and the knife plunging through the heart. These are all left to the Indians, for fear there may be "innocent blood " among them, which no Mormon may shed. There is alarm on this account already, for one of the emigrants had carried his infant child in his arms, and the bullet that pierced the father's heart went through the babe's brain. It is decided, however, that it was accidental and that no criminal wrong is done. Several of the Mormons run to the Indians, to see that they do their work properly. Among them is Lee. It is discovered that two of the girls are missing. Some one saw them run to a ravine fifty yards away. Lee and one of the Cedar City chiefs run to the place and find there the Indian boy, Albert, who lives with Hamlin. He says the girls came there, and shows where they hid in the brush. They drag them forth and brutally ravish them. This was the only act on that field that was not inspired. Was it wrong, under the Mormon code of morality? The question is too subtle for me to answer; certainly it was not punished. Lee next tells the chief the girls must be killed. The chief answers: " No, they are too pretty to kill; let us save them;" but he meets a grim refusal. The unhappy child that Lee holds, with the terror of death upon her, flings her arms round his neck and promises to love him as long as he lives, if he will spare her life. The wolf has keener fangs but no more merciless heart. He throws her head back with his arm, and with one stroke of his keen bowie-knife severs her neck to the spine. The chief brains the other with his tomahawk.
Secondary source: Frank Kirkman's Mountain Meadow Massacre Site

Oh...and did you catch this line: "Several of the Mormons run to the Indians, to see that they do their work properly."

So, do you mean to tell me that if you're overseeing a massacre, and you run to see that it's being done properly, that somehow you're less culpable.

Really. Your attempt at a "neat compartmentilization" of this massacre reveals a disturbed mind.

...falsely accused and imprisoned several times..

Besides Liberty Jail, when was Joseph Smith "falsely accused and imprisoned several times?" He was jailed in 1844 for ordering the destruction of a printing press. That wasn't a false accusation, nor false imprisonment.

In Missouri, at Haun’s Mill, 18 Mormons had been massacred and 13 injured. The governor of Missouri had even issued an extermination order against the Mormons, forcing them to leave Missouri or be killed.

You make for a horrible one-sided historian.

Sorry, but 'twas a bit more complexity of why people acted as they did. Even the Lds Church History; Selections from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism adds three more reasons:
(a) Sidney Rigdon's June 19, 1838 "Salt Sermon" reinforced local Mormon opposition;
(b) Lds militia officer Sampson Avard initiated a vigilante group known as the Danites
(c) Rigdon's July 4, 1838 "inflammatory" sermon was the independence of the church from mobocracy. Rigdon "warned of a war of extermination between Mormons and their enemies if they were further threatened or harassed." (Leland H. Gentry, Church History, p. 343). Lds writer Max Parkin conceded that Rigdon's June 19 and July 4 messages "further incensed the public against expanding LDS influences." (Church History, p. 348).

Certainly, what we almost NEVER hear from contemporary Mormon posters is that apparently the first group to threaten the other with "extermination" in Missouri wasn't Gov. Boggs. 'Twas Lds leader Sidney Rigdon four months prior to that!

Mormons still love to play up a history of persecution myths:
(1): See, for example, the first entry at: Setting the record straight on the 'Hawn's' Mill Massacre In article, it explains how the Mormons love to cite Jacob Haun (real name was spelled Jacob Hawn with a "w"), who was the owner of the Hawn's Mill. But Jacob Hawn was never a Mormon...(In that article, a historian discusses why Jacob and Harriet Hawn were never Mormons. "I like many other historians mainly assumed they were Mormons." But among other proofs, Baugh explained that they arrived earlier to Caldwell County before the Mormons, and no family records report that they were Mormons. So the mill that was attacked wasn't even a Mormon mill, after all. [Rewrite the history books]
(2) From the above-linked article: With 17 Mormons killed and 14 Mormons injured, the historian explained that the massacre on October 30, 1838 was the "singular most tragic event in terms of loss of life and injury enacted by an anti-Mormon element against the Latter-day Saints in our entire church's history." Well, I would hope that historians would present history in a more balanced way. What's NOT mentioned in that article is that 12 days before this attack:
•On October 18, 1838, Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Lyman Wight, D. W. Patten at the head of 40 men made a descent on Gallatin, the county seat of Daviess, and they burned the only store and stole their goods. Previous to the 25th of October a great part of the Mormons residing in Caldwell County had returned home with their dividend of plunder.
* 6 days before this attack: • On October 25, 1838, the Battle of Crooked River: Mormon forces attacked (unknowingly?) the Missouri state militia under the command of Samuel Bogart. This incident became one of the principal points of conflicts in 1838 Missouri. The battle resulted in the death of three militia and the LDS leader, David Patten. One of the militia was taken prisoner by the Mormons. Source: http://www.carm.org/religious-movements/mormonism/are-christians-persecuting-mormons

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Where is Mountain Meadows?