Investigations and prosecutions relating to the Mountain Meadows Massacre
The pursuit of the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows massacre, which atrocity occurred September 11, 1857, had to await the conclusion of the American Civil War to begin in earnest.
Historians still debate the autonomy and precise roles of local Cedar City LDS church officials in ordering the massacre and Young's concealing of evidence in its aftermath.
[3] It is unclear whether Young held this view because he believed this specific group posed an actual threat to colonists or were directly responsible for past crimes against Mormons.
[5] On September 10, 1857, James Holt Haslam arrived in Salt Lake City, after experiencing long delays during his nearly 300 mile journey, to deliver a message from the acting commander of the Iron Brigade, Isaac C. Haight to the Mormon leader Brigham Young.
[7] President Young's message of reply to Haight, dated September 10, read: "In regard to emigration trains passing through our settlements, we must not interfere with them until they are first notified to keep away.
"[8] Yet, by the time the express rider delivered Young's letter to Haight, ordering that the emigrants not be harmed, the murders at Mountain Meadows had already taken place.
Carleton reported that immediately after the massacre John D. Lee, Haight, and Philip Smith [Klingonsmith] went to Salt Lake City to ask Brigham Young what should be done with the property.
Christian claimed that the emigrants had cheated the Native Americans who sold them wheat at Corn Creek, put strychnine in water holes and poisoned a dead ox.
Stoffle and Evans assert that Paiutes had no history of attacking wagon trains[20] and no Native Americans were charged, prosecuted, or punished by federal officials as a result of the Mountain Meadows massacre.
Authors Tom and Holt summarize the state of proof regarding the massacre: The fact that so much evidence, including relevant pages from the journals of many settlers, has been lost or destroyed, testifies to many Native Americans and their sympathizers that much of the official history cannot be considered to be complete or truthful.
However, there is certainly some evidence that Native Americans with base camps on the Muddy and Santa Clara Rivers were at least involved in the initial siege of the wagon train.
"[21]While Native American Paiutes were present, certainly during the initial attack and siege, historical reports of their numbers and the details of their participation are contradictory.
_ "[23] However, as Carleton mentions in his 1857 report, even Hamblin, the Indian agent who blamed the Paiutes for the massacre, admitted to him that in 1856 the Paiute tribe had only three guns, suggesting that it was incredible for them to have acquired sufficient guns to inflict the number of gunshot wounds evident among the victims, most of whom were killed by gunfire, not, as Mormon witnesses claimed, largely by being hit in the head with stones.
[24] Territorial U.S. Indian Agent Garland Hurt, in the days following the massacre, sent a translator to investigate, who returned on September 23 with the report that Paiutes attacked the emigrants and after being repulsed three time the Mormons tricked the wagon train members into surrender and killed them all.
Then in 1859, two years after the massacre, investigations were made by Hurt's superior, Jacob Forney,[31] and also by U.S. Army Brevet Major James Henry Carleton.
In Carleton's investigation, at Mountain Meadows he found women's hair tangled in sage brush and the bones of children still in their mothers' arms.
Both attempted to blame the local Paiute Indians, but Carleton analyzed the contradictions between the evidence he encountered and their statements to suggest that their accounts were false in several respects.
Albert then admitted that, apart from Lee, also present were the Mormons Prime Coleman, Amos Thornton, Richard Robinson, and "Brother" Dickinson from Pinto Creek.
By August 1859, Jacob Forney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah had retrieved the children from the Mormon families housing them and gathered them in preparation of transporting them to their relatives in Arkansas.
Reuben Campbell (US Army) related that Lee sold the children to Mormon families in Cedar City, Harmony, and Painter Creek.
"[36] As early as May 1859, Forney reported that none of the children had ever lived with the Native Americans, but had been transported by white men from the scene of the massacre to the house of Jacob Hamblin.
In July 1859 he wrote of his refusal to pay claims by families who alleged they purchased the children from the Native Americans, stating he knew it was not true.
[43] Further investigations, cut short by the American Civil War in 1861,[44] again proceeded in 1871 when prosecutors obtained the affidavit of militia member Phillip Klingensmith.
[49] Due to an illness, George A. Smith was not called as a witness, but provided deposition testimony denying any involvement in the massacre,[50] as did Brigham Young, who said he could not travel because he was an invalid.
[57] In 1877, before being executed by firing squad at Mountain Meadows (a fate Young believed just, but not a sufficient blood atonement, given the enormity of the crime, to get him into the celestial kingdom).
