The 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre

September eleven, eighteen fifty-seven. The wagon train had been traveling for weeks, a company of roughly one hundred twenty men, women, and children from Arkansas, making their way toward California through the high desert of southwestern Utah. They had stopped to rest at Mountain Meadows, a grassy valley that had watered livestock and travelers on the Spanish Trail for generations. They did not know that a group of men was watching them.

What happened next belongs to the documented record: members of the Nauvoo Legion's Iron County Militia, the local Mormon territorial force, along with Paiute allies they had recruited, attacked the wagon train. After a days-long siege, the militiamen approached under a white flag and offered the emigrants safe conduct out of the valley. The emigrants surrendered their weapons and walked out. Then the killing began. Children six years old and younger survived. Everyone else was shot or stabbed. The victims were left where they fell. Seventeen children were distributed among local families.

A single man was tried for the massacre. John D. Lee, a militia leader, was convicted and executed by firing squad at Mountain Meadows in eighteen seventy-seven, twenty years after the event. He faced the firing squad in the valley where it happened, reportedly calm.

For a century and a half, the question of who ordered the attack remained contested and largely closed. The chain of command above Lee, including the role of territorial governor Brigham Young, is documented in conflicting ways across the Utah Historical Society archives, the BYU L. Tom Perry Special Collections, and the LDS Church History Library. Historians have not reached consensus on whether Young authorized, was informed of, or was insulated from the decision. The LDS Church issued a formal statement of regret in two thousand seven, one hundred fifty years after the massacre, at a ceremony at the site.

The monument at Mountain Meadows stands above the valley. The grass still grows there. The name of the place is unchanged.