"Horrible Massacre of Emigrants!!" The Mountain Meadows Massacre in Public Discourse

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The Mountain Meadow Massacre 

Revolting Crime On the Plains in 1857, Now an Historic Incident. Laid at the Door of the Mormon Church. 

By Rev. R. B. Neal. the Evangelist and Anti-Mormon Leader

The scores of young elders (?) of Mormondom who are zealously going in pairs up and down and all over the face of the earth, preaching "the gospel of Nephi" are doing much honest lying about the Mountain Meadow massacre.

The crime has no parallel in the history of the nation for hellish atrocity. It took place at Mountain Meadow, Utah Territory in September, 1857.

In 1859 Major J. H. Carleton, U. S. A., was directed to go to the scene of the terrible massacre, bury the bones of the victims and gather all the facts he could about it.

Document No. 605, 57th Congress.

gives his report in full. It, for some reason, was not published until 1902 and then only 5,000 copies were ordered printed by the House of Representatives. If five million or more copies had been published when Capt. Carleton first made his report, and scattered broadcast over the earth a solar plexus blow would have been given to the monster Mormonism.

It is not too late for the public to get the benefit of this report. Send to your congressmen for a copy if you can't get it, urge him to have more published. If you get a copy have it printed in your church and county paper. In this way only can the public be fully and rightly posted on this dark deed and call a halt to Brigham Young's lies on the lips of these young elders about it.

Capt. Carleton says:

"The scene of the massacre, even at this late day, was horrible to look upon. Women's hair, in detached locks and masses. hung to the sage bushes and was strewn over the ground in many places. Parts of little children's dresses and of female costume dangled from the shrubbery  
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or lay scattered about; and among these, here and there, on every hand, for at least a mile in the direction of the road, by two miles east and west, there gleamed, bleached white by the weather, the skulls and other bones of those who had suffered. A glance into the wagon when all these had been collected revealed a sight which can never be forgotten."

This was written about two years after and on the scene of the massacre. He gathered many of the disjointed bones of thirty-four persons and buried them. He says:

"Around and above this grave I caused to be built of loose granite stones, hauled from the neighboring hills, a rude monument, conical in form and 50 feet in circumference at the base, and 12 feet in height. This is surmounted by a cross hewn from red cedar wood. From the ground to top of cross is 24 feet. On the transverse part of the cross, facing towards the north, is an inscription carved in the wood. 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord: And on a rude slab of granite set in the earth and leaning against the northern base of the monument there are cut the following words.

"'Here 120 men, women, and children were massacred in cold blood early in September, 1857. They were from Arkansas'

"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 18, which had been fractured and slit, doubtless by two blows of a bowie knife or other instrument of that character.

"I saw several bones of what must have been very small children. Dr. Brewer says from what he saw he thinks some infants were butchered. The mothers doubtless had these in their arms, and the same shot or blow may have deprived both of life."

The Mormon authorities attempted to put the crime upon Indians. Such wounds as the above and the fact that the Pah-Ute Indians were armed at that time with only bows and arrows, stamp their statements false. Capt. Carleton says he learned from the Indian agent that in 1857 there were but three guns in the whole Pah-Ute tribe He says: "I doubt if they had many more in 1857.

The Indians said to him. "We know the Mormons charge us with the massacre but where are the wagons, the cattle, the clothing, the rifles and other property belonging to the train? We have not got them, have not had them. No: you find all  
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these things in the hands of the Mormons."

Capt. Carleton says: "There are now wagons, carriages and cattle in the possession of the Mormons which can be sworn to, it is said, as having belonged to these emigrants by those who saw them on the plain."

Captain Carleton's painstaking report is more than confirmed twenty years after by the confession of John D. Lee, the [main] "Danite," for this murder for the Mormon church.

In the shadow of death and to die on the Mountain Meadow ground, by the bullets of Uncle Sam's soldiers, he confessed his part and told of the part of the church, whose servant he simply was. He says on page 318 of his confession, speaking of an order that was instituted. "to decoy the emigrants from their position and kill all that could talk," that it, the order "was in writing." He says:

"Brother Higbee handed it to me and I read it. The orders were that the emigrants should be decoyed from their stronghold, and exterminated, so that no one would be left to tell the tale: then the authorities could say it was done by Indians. Haight told me the next day that he got his orders from Bishop Dame.

"After the council, I went away myself, and bowed in prayer before God. Brother Hopkins, a man that I had great confidence in, came to me from the Council, saying that he believed it was all right, for the brethren in the Priesthood were united in the thing. At the solicitation of Brother Hopkins. I returned with him to the Council. When I got back the Council again prayed for aid. The Council formed a prayer circle, and kneeling down, so the elbow  
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would touch elbow, the Danites prayed for Divine instructions. After prayer, Brother Higbee said:

"'I have the evidence of God's approval of our mission. It is God's will that we carry out our instructions to the letter: He then said to me: 'Brother Lee. I am ordered by President Haight to inform you that you shall receive a crown of celestial glory for your faithfulness and your eternal joy shall be complete.' I was much shaken by this promise.

"The meeting was then addressed by me. I spoke in about this language:

"'Brethren, we have been sent to perform a duty. It is a duty that we owe God, our church and our people.'

"The orders are that all the emigrants must die. Our leaders speak with inspired tongues, and their orders come from the God of heaven. We have no right to question what they have commanded us to do; it is our duty to obey. * * *"

Think of that "prayer circle" and "elbow-touch" of these Mormon leaders, fiends in human form.

Then think, to borrow the words of Capt. Carleton: Of the melancholy procession of that great number of women and children followed at a distance by their husbands and brothers, after all their suffering, their watching, their anxiety and grief, for so many gloomy days and dismal nights at the corral, thus moving slowly and sadly up to the point where the Mormons and Indians lay in wait to murder them; these doomed and unhappy people literally going to their own funeral; the chill shadows of night closing darkly around them, sad precursors of the approaching shadows of a deeper night, brings to the mind a picture of human suffering and wretchedness on the one hand, and of human treachery and ferocity upon the other, that cannot possibly be excelled by any other scene that ever before occurred in real life."

Then act. Send for House Document No. 605, 59th Congress. Secure a copy of John D. Lee's confession. Arm yourself, and the public as far as you can, with the facts of this "the bloodiest exposition" in the annals of our history of "man's inhumanity to man" and help fasten the stain and sin, this "most wanton, cowardly, cruel and bloody murder of the 19th century," committed in God's name, upon the Mormon church where it rightly belongs.