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

 

Perils of the Plains: The Mormons and the Late Massacre. 

Three emigrant families arrived, yesterday, in Sacramento, by the Carson Valley route. They report, says the Union, many sad evidences of outrage and murder?.

Reports brought in by these families tend strongly to corroborate the suspicion already existing against the Mormons as the instigators, if not the perpetrators, of the recent wholesale massacre of immigrants at Santa Clara canon?. Before [Mr. Pierce's] family left Salt Lake, vague declarations of a threatening character were made, to the effect that, next year "the overland emigrants must look out;" and it was intimated that the last trains this year might be destroyed. From the Mormon train which recently left the Carson Valley, and which these families met on the way, similar statements were vaguely communicated, one Mormon woman even going so far as to congratulate an old lady in one of these families on her safe arrival so near her destination, and assuring her that "the last trains of this year would not get through, for they were to be cut off." We give these statements as we received them from members of these families, and, admitting their correctness, which we have no reason to doubt, they certainly go far to confirm a terrible suspicion.