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

 

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In another column will be found the details of the horrible slaughter by the Indians of more than one hundred emigrants, at a point three hundred miles this side of Salt Lake City. After reading them, the conclusion can hardly be resisted, that the Mormons have had something to do with this cruel butchery. The statement that the Indians were impelled to fall upon the emigrants because they gave them money instead of goods for the things which they had purchased from them, and also that they placed poison in the body of an ox which had died, and also poisoned the pools, is not entitled to much weight, for, as the Star—the paper from which we copy—very justly remarks, "it is hardly creditable that a party traveling along a highway would act in the manner described, and endanger the lives of those coming after them." We are loth to believe that the Mormons, as bad as they may be, could have instigated this massacre; but when we reflect that there are grounds for believing that they had a hand in the murder of Gunnison and his party—that there is in Salt Lake City an organization of blood-thirsty scoundrels, known as the "Destroying Angels," who stop at no villainy, and that the persons murdered were from the State in which the Sainted Parley received the reward for his crimes, it is impossible to divert the mind from the suspicion that others besides the Indians had a hand in this horrible butchery. It will also be seen, that the San Bernardino Mormon, whose letter detailing the circumstances is given in another column, expresses the belief that it will be attributed to the Mormons, and it is an old maxim, that he who "excuses, accuses himself;" but our readers are competent to form an opinion on the subject themselves. All the facts relating to the subject, as far as known, are before them.