Mormon writers routinely assert that some members of the Baker-Fancher train committed atrocities against southern Mormons and local Indians, such as poisoning cattle or springs, insulting church leaders, boasting that they were amongst the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, etc. Those acts incited the rage of the local Mormons to the point of massacring the emigrants. But Historical research shows that such reports of atrocities were concocted by Mormons in order to explain and justify the massacre.

In 2003, I posted some historical documentation on this issue to alt.religion.mormon in a response to a TBM posting as Wombat.

Wombat wrote:

>Knowing what happened without knowing why isn't enough. Much is written on
how the Mormons were entirely at fault, how the train of settlers were simply
passing through quietly and were attacked without warning or provocation. So
long as the story is told as such, any conclusions must be suspect.

That's exactly what happened. It was the murderous Mormons who invented tales
of the Fancher party's alleged improprieties.

>Without offering any apology for any involved,

<chuckle> Your entire post is nothing more than apologetics.

>I wish to point out the following points regarding the wagon train:

>They had reportedly poisoned a spring at Corn Creek.

And this was reported by whom? The Mormons who murdered them?

>As they passed through the northern portions of Utah they were reported to
have "robbed [the] hen roosts and gardens" of the residents. As they passed
through they openly expressed hatred towards the church and named their oxen
after church leaders.

And all of this was reported by the Mormons who murdered every man, woman, and
child who was old enough to tell the story, right? Historian Juanita Brooks wrote:

"That the [Fancher] company, or some of them, belonged to the mobbers of
Missouri and Illinois was one point [that the Mormons had alleged]; that they
swore at the church leaders was another. The poisoned meat story was unlikely,
while the poisoned springs was quite clearly fabricated; to poison a running
stream of any size would take a great amount of poision, and if several of the
Saints had died, their names and homes and other details would have been
given." ("Mountain Meadows Massacre," Juanita Brooks, p. 142.)

>A short time before the group of Arkansas settlers left on their journey
Parley Pratt was murdered by his wife's ex-husband, who was never called to
stand trial.

Correction: Hector McLean was Eleanor's current, though estranged legal
husband. He was not tried for murdering Pratt because it was justified as a
"crime of passion," for Pratt's attempt to take his wife and children to Utah
to live under polygamy.

>This event was known by both the Mormons in Utah and the settlers from
Arkansas and could only have served to heighten tensions.

It's possible that the southern Utah Mormons were aware of Pratt's murder, but
that shouldn't have prejudiced them against the Fancher party in the least.
The Fancher party had left Arkansas in the spring, and were already traveling
on the plains when Pratt was murdered in June of 1857. Thus, no one in the
Fancher party could have been responsible for Pratt's death, and that means
that the Mormons merely used the fact that they were from Arkansas, where Pratt
was murdered, to justify their mass murder.
Seeing as how the Mormons took a secret oath in the temple endowment ceremony
to "avenge the blood of the prophets", it's likely that they used that as
further twisted "justification" to commit the crime. That is exactly what John
D. Lee reported.

>Clearly the travelers were spoiling for a fight - any account of the events at
Mountain Meadows must include an understanding that no matter what happened,
this was _not_ a case of mormons attacking an innocent group of pioneers
without any grounds whatsoever.

Once again, that is the version of events from the murderous Mormons, who had
motive to lie. There are several accounts which state that the Fancher party
did nothing wrong, except perhaps taking provisions when the Mormons refused to
sell to them, and letting their cattle graze on wild grasses.

"When the Arkansas families arrived at Salt Lake City, they found the Mormons
in no friendly mood, and at once concluded to break camp and move on. They had
been advised by Elder Charles C. Rich to take the northern route along the Bear
River, but decided to travel by way of southern Utah. Passing through Provo,
Springville, Payson, Fillmore, and intervening settlements, they attempted
everywhere to purchase food, but without success. Toward the end of August they
arrived at Corn Creek, some fifteen miles south of Fillmore, where they
encamped for several days. In this neighborhood, on a farm set apart for their
use by the Mormons, lived the Pah Vants, whom, as the saints allege, the
emigrants attempted to poison by throwing arsenic into one of the springs and
impregnating their own dead cattle with strychnine. It has been claimed that
this charge was disproved; and what motive the Arkansas party could have had
for thus surrounding themselves with treacherous and blood-thirsty foes has
never been explained. In the valleys throughout the southern portion of the
territory grows a poisonous weed, and it is possible that the cattle died from
eating of this weed. It has been intimated that those who accused the
emigrants of poisoning the Pah Vants were not honest in their belief, and that
the story of the poisoning was invented, or at least grossly exaggerated, for
the purpose of making them solely responsible for the massacre. The fact has
never been so established....." (Bancroft's "History of Utah," pp. 547-548.)

"It is alleged by the Mormons, and on good authority, that during their journey
from Salt Lake City to Cedar the emigrants were guilty of further gross
outrage. If we can believe a statement made in the confession of Lee, a few
days before his death, Isaac C. Haight, president of the stake at Cedar,
accused them of abusing women, of poisoning wells and streams at many points on
their route, of destroying fences and growing crops, of violating the city
ordinances at Cedar, and resisting the officers who attemped to arrest them.
These and other charges, even more improbable, have been urged in extenuation
of the massacre; but little reliance can be placed on Lee's confession, and
most of them appear to be unfounded. It must be admitted, however, that rather
than see their women and children starve, they perhaps took by force such
necessary provisions as they were not allowed to purchase." (ibid., pp.
548-549.)

Also, Brigham Young had illegally declared martial law in the Territory, and
required emigrants to obtain "permits" to travel through the area. In his
"Mountain Meadows Massacre," Josiah Gibbs wrote:

"An estimable lady (a Mrs. Evans), yet living at Parowan, visited the camp of
the emigrants at Parowan with other Mormon girls, and is earnest in her
statement that in every respect the emigrants conducted themselves as ladies
and gentlemen. Her statement was made to a gentleman of high repute in the
official life of Utah, and is published without the knowledge of either of
them.
The charge that the emigrants resisted arrest at Cedar clearly proves that they
declined to ask for permits, and for which the inexpressibly detestable
ecclesiastical tyrant, Isaac C. Haight, commanded their arrest. The demand was
made by the emissaries of a fanatical and brutalized priesthood that was then
in open rebellion against the United States. In resisting arrest by the servile
agents of the Mormon "prophets," because they ignored the right of bigots and
rebels to prevent them from passing through a portion of the domain of the
United States until they secured passes, they were guiltless of infraction of
any law, rule or order of their country, and were justified in their
resistance."

The questions which every honest student of this issue should ask themselves
are: "If members of the Fancher party had committed the atrocities which the
Mormons alleged, then when the Mormons had persuaded them to give up their
arms, why didn't the Mormons simply arrest the suspected offenders and try them
on the charges?" And, "Why did the Mormons kill every man, woman, and child
who were old enough to remember and tell what happened?"

The answer is obvious: The Fancher party was not guilty of what the Mormons
alleged, and the Mormons killed them all so that they could steal their cattle
and property, and split it with the Indians. All the allegations of atrocities
by the Fanchers were nothing more than a ruse invented to justify the mass
murder of 120+ American citizens. That mass murder---without benefit of judge,
jury, or due process in any form---demonstrates the horrible reality of the
Mormon "blood atonement" practice, where "justice" was administered not by
legal officers, but by the "priesthood."

Wombat quoted:

>The official report by Major Carleton is quite strongly against the Mormons.
However, this must be taken in light of comments within that same report such
as:

>"the evil must always exist as long as the Mormons themselves exist."

>"In their infancy as a religious community, they settled in Jackson County,
Mo. There, in a short time, from the crimes and depredations they committed,
they became intolerable to the inhabitants, whose self preservation
compelled them to ride and drive the Mormons out by force of arms. At
Nauvoo, again another experiment was tried with them. The people of Illinois
exercised forbearance toward them until it literally "ceased to be a
virtue." They were driven thence as they had been from Missouri, but
fortunately this time with the loss on their part of those two shallow
imposters, but errant miscreants, the brothers Smith."

>"The expenses of the army in Utah, past and to come (figure that), the
massacre at the Mountain Meadows, the unnumbered other crimes, which have
been and will yet be committed by this community, are but preliminary gusts
of the whirlwind our Government has reaped and is yet to reap for the wind
it had sowed in permitting the Mormons ever to gain foothold within our
borders.

>They are an ulcer upon the body politic. An ulcer which it needs more than
cutlery to cure. It must have excision, complete and thorough extirpation,
before we can ever hope for safety or tranquility. This is no rhetorical
phrase made by a flourish of the pen, but is really what will prove to be an
earnest and stubborn fact. This brotherhood may be contemplated from any
point of view, and but one conclusion can be arrived at concerning it. The
Thugs of India were an inoffensive, moral, law-abiding people in
comparison."
- James Henry Carleton, Brevet Major, U.S.A., Captain in the First Dragoons.

>Hardly an unbiased witness.

I responded:

There isn't so much as a solitary phrase of Carleton's report that was untrue,
and cannot be supported by volumes of corroborating documentation. The Mormons
continued to commit crimes and engage in anti-government, anti-social behavior
until the Reed Smoot hearings in 1904.

Randy J.

Addendum to my original post: Utah historian Will Bagley noted, "all information about the emigrants' conduct came from men involved in their murder or its cover-up...In light of their origins, all reports of the reckless behavior of a company composed mostly of women and children must be regarded with profound skepticism...these impressions of the Fancher party's behavior were based on hearsay. Reliable accounts consistently identified the company's large cattle herd, not intentional insults, as the main cause of friction...Such confusion [in the Mormons' allegations of atrocities] led historian Josiah Gibbs to conclude that the poison stories were sheer nonsense...without the poison tales, there is no proof the Fancher party did *anything* to provoke Utah's Indians." (Excerpts, "Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows," pp. 99-110.)

Thanks Randy for your excellent series of posts.

I've enjoyed every word.