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

 

The Immigrant Massacre. 

Angels, October 14, 1857

EDITORS ALTA: This morning, while conversing with some immigrants, who have lately arrived via the Plains from Arkansas, and are living within a few miles of this place, I related to them the circumstances of the massacre. They immediately informed me that they knew who the parties were. They stated that there were three, and perhaps four, companies from Arkansas, while the balance of the company was made up of Missourians, who fell in with them; of these latter, they knew nothing, but the Arkansas companies, consisted of Faziers, Camerons and the two Dunlaps, and perhaps Bakers. They were from the counties of Marion, Harrol and Johnson. They say when they saw them, they were encamped six miles from Salt Lake City, that they had been there for some time, and that they intended to stay there until the weather got cool enough for them to come by the South Pass, expecting to make a stay of eight weeks all together. Baker had not arrived there when they left, but as they can learn nothing from him or his company, they concluded that he had fallen in and decided to come into California with these companies. The two Dunlaps had each nine children, some of them well grown. If these are the persons who were slaughtered, who can be so blind as not to see that the hands of Mormons are stained with this blood. How could so large a company remain among them for two months and they not learn one name? and why would the Indians kill every being, except those that were too young to communicate anything to their friends, or hardly tell a name, or tell who were the murderers of their parents, and brothers and sisters; or even discriminate between white men and Indians? Why all this concealment? and in the very face of it the Indians tell what they have done and sell all their spoils to the whites. It will do to lay this blood upon them, but I feel certain that investigation will throw it off. P.