Posted on 07/14/2011 2:54:04 PM PDT by Colofornian
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.
For most of the families, it would be their final resting place.
"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.
Francher and Bolinger say the massacre was America's first 9/11.
"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.
And how many of those were attacks that occurred on 9/11?
Whom have I converted, and to what? Do I have an ability to convert that I do not even know about?
***With the discovery of the clothes, all LDS claims of non-participation in the Mountain Meadows Massacre were rendered transparent falsehoods.
Had the officers not restrained their troops, the murders would have been avenged at that moment.***
This is told by an eye witness “Indian” John Nelson in his book, Life Among the American Indians: Fifty Years on the Trail : a True Story of Western Life”
http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeamongameric00oregoog/lifeamongameric00oregoog_djvu.txt
Ignore “Invincibly Ignorant”, his screen name speaks volumes. He is an ex-Christian (supposedly) who trolls the LDS threads and defends the LDS.
He was referring to your screen name similarity to Elsie’s. He keeps making the claim that we haven’t converted anyone (well it is the Holy Ghost who converts not man).
You just happened to get stuck in an ongoing fight.
the LDS Church admitted the massacre
- - - - -
No, they have not. The LDS church never ever admits doing anything wrong, they make excuses but never admit being wrong.
What they did, was state they were sorry it HAPPENED. They still deny any LDS involvement (outside John D. Lee who was a scapegoat) even though the facts show many other LDS were culpable and Brigham Young knew about it and other LDS leaders planned, authorized, and carried it out.
Another example of this half witted apologies is a few years ago, some LDS missionaries vandalized a Catholic shrine and took pictures of them mocking and desecrating the chapel. LDS response was “We are sorry that the missionaries were involved in damaging property”. No apology, nothing. They were sorry there was property damage not that the even occurred.
Not many people seem to mind that the Catholic Church is regularly called the kingdom of the Antichrist and such around here on a regular basis, so how is posting factual information about American history any worse than that?
JMHO
Regards
Rules place mark
To increase knowledge:
...little did they know that Brigham Young had declared war on the United States two weeks before...
IQ question for you:
In a school of 400 plus kids how many will have birthdays on 9/11? In a school of 4000?
The title caught my attention as I looked down the currect topics. I do not pay attention to any particular forum at FR. I blindly stumbled in and commented to this topic. I will try to not make that mistake again.
Regards
When did that happen?
How true How true. There are no rules.Finally said openly.
Straw man.
How many terrorist attacks occured on 9/11 against the United States?
2 that I know of...MMM and 9/11/01.
JOSEPH SMITH: But....
This never gets old... :)
Just a sample of related 9/11 events:
9/11/1777 Battle of Brandywine
9/11/1814 Battle of Lake Champlain
9/11/1842 Mexican expedition captures San Antonio, see http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/chron/civilwarnotes/mcculloch.html
9/11/1874 “One day’s journey east of Fort Wallace, the John German family, consisting of his wife and seven children, prepared to continue on their way west when they were attacked by a band of Cheyenne. Only the four youngest, all girls, were spared” see http://www.ftwallace.com/HFort.html
The last is interesting because it is a terror raid, and typical of small ones which go pretty much unrecorded except perhaps in genealogies and local record books. But certainly there were terror attacks in the US on 9/11, beside the infamous Mormon one some are trying to provoke discord over.
Stop bearing a grudge, already.
thank you for the info, there are more 9/11 attacks.
And it isn’t a ‘grudge’, it is about telling the Truth, something Mormons very often fail to do. They not only lie to outsiders but the leadership lies to the members who are very gullible when it comes from comments by the “General Authorities”.
I’m hear to open eyes.
The first three you mention bvw are military events - not massacres of innocent civilians - and would not count as a ‘terrorist’ attack.
the John German family attack in 1874 was a massacre, but it wasn’t the first. The 1847 MMM was nearly 30 years earlier and involved the cold blooded massacre of over 140 unarmed men, women and children. In fact, MMM terrorist attack was not exceeded until OKC bombing of the Murrah Fed Bldg.
Good catch ‘zilla. As always. :)
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