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I was at a Sunday meeting in the spring of 1857, in Provo, when the news of the San Pete castration was referred to by the presiding bishop – Blackburn ... and Blackburn shouted in his Sunday meeting – a mixed congregation of all ages and both sexes – ‘I want the people of Provo to understand that the boys in Provo can use the knife as well as the boys in San Pete. Boys, get your knives ready, there is work for you! We must not be behind San Pete in good works.’
... The subject of Eunuchs came up ... Brigham said the day would come when thousands would be made Eunochs in order for them to be saved in the kingdom of God. Wilford Woodruff, diary entry 1857 vol 5 @ p54
We visited the Mount Meadows Monument put up at the burial place of 120 persons ... The pile of stone was about twelve feet high but beginning to tumble down. A wooden cross is placed on top with the following words, ‘Vengeance is mine and I will repay saith the Lord’. President Young said it should be, Vengeance is mine and I have taken a little. Wilford Woodruff journal 25th May 1861
In 1857 120 men women and children were brutally murdered in south-western Utah. The bloodiest attack on a wagon-train in the history of the American west. In Search of History s2e22: The Mormon Rebellion, History 1997
Joseph Smith’s polygamy infuriated non-Mormon America. It also angered many Mormons … Smith was unrepentant. ibid.
The embattled Saints were at war with the United States of America. ibid.
A wagon-train bound for California entered Utah territory … The Mormons resorted to treachery … The militia opened fire on the defenceless immigrants. ibid.
Mountain Meadows: the Mormons opened fire ... in less than half an hour one hundred and twenty people had been butchered. Ken Burns, The West IV, PBS 1996
I have said that all of the small children were put into the wagons; that was wrong, for one little child, about six months old, was carried in its father’s arms, and it was killed by the same bullet that entered its father’s breast; it was shot through the head.
When we had got out of sight, as I said before, and just as we were coming into the main road, I heard a volley of guns at the place where I knew the troops and emigrants were. Our teams were then going at a fast walk. I first heard one gun, then a volley at once followed.
McMurdy and Knight stopped their teams at once, for they were ordered by Higbee, the same as I was, to help kill all the sick and wounded who were in the wagons, and to do it as soon as they heard the guns of the troops.
McMurdy was in front; his wagon was mostly loaded with the arms and small children. McMurdy and Knight got out of their wagons; each one had a rifle. McMurdy went up to Knight’s wagon, where the sick and wounded were, and raising his rifle to his shoulder, said: ‘O Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for thy Kingdom that I do this.’ He then shot a man who was lying with his head on another man's breast; the ball killed both men.
Knight then shot a man with his rifle; he shot the man in the head. Knight also brained a boy that was about fourteen years old. The boy came running up to our wagons, and Knight struck him on the head with the butt end of his gun, and crushed his skull. By this time many Indians reached our wagons, and all of the sick and wounded were killed almost instantly.
I saw an Indian from Cedar City, called Joe, run up to the wagon ... and Joe shot him in the head.
... Just after the wounded were all killed I saw a girl, some ten or eleven years old, running towards us, from the direction where the troops had attacked the main body of emigrants; she was covered with blood. An Indian shot her before she got within sixty yards of us. That was the last person that I saw killed on that occasion.
When I reached the place where the dead men lay, I was told how the orders had been obeyed. Major Higbee said, ‘The boys have acted admirably, they took good aim, and all of the damned Gentiles but two or three fell at the first fire.’
He said that three or four got away some distance, but the men on horses soon overtook them and cut their throats. John D Lee, The Life and Confessions of John D Lee 17th May 1877
They (the Mormon townspeople) sent messengers requesting that the Paiutes go into town and hear a letter read to them. Many did. They gathered in the meetinghouse to hear Bishop William Allred address them. According to a previous plan, the Circleville men who outnumbered the Indians three to one came in unarmed and intermingled with them. The bishop read the message from Fort Sanford, stressing that the settlers wanted only peace with their band, but the Indians would have to help by lending them their guns. In return, the Paiutes could work for the whites and be paid in goods. When the Indians showed reluctance to give up their weapons, the settlers acted: ‘Each man knowing his place and what was expected of him, grabbed hold of his Indian … to disarm [him]. They all showed resistance but their bows and arrows and knives were taken from them’. Next, ‘their arms were tied to a stick which was passed behind their backs and under their arms’. Bishop Allred would later put his own twist to the incident in his report to LDS church authority George A Smith, writing that it took some time to convince the Indians, but they ‘reluctantly surrendered their weapons’. Captain James Allred (Mormon army) and his men went to the camp to apprehend those who had earlier refused the ‘invitation’.
... The rest of the Paiutes were taken to the meetinghouse, where the women and children were separated from the men and taken to an unused cellar that had been dug for a proposed flourmill. The prisoners numbered about sixteen men and probably about as many women and children (undetermined – I think many more). Linda King Newell, A History of Paiute Country, citing James Munson & Oluf Larsen journals
Towards evening … some of the [captives] succeeded in getting loose and commenced an attack upon the guard, knocking two of them down. The guard was afraid of a general break … hence the guard opened fire and shot two of the Indians ... after a short consultation it was decided that the settlement would be in danger if the Indians were allowed to escape. Though the people loathed the thought of killing them, it was nevertheless concluded to do so. ibid. citing Rex Fullmer’s account from James Munson’s journal
Carrollton Arkansas — On the wildflower-studded slopes of the Ozarks, where memories run long and family ties run thick, a little known and long-ago chapter of history still simmers.
On Sept 11 1857 a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call ‘the first 9/11’.
Many of the locals grew up hearing denunciations of Mormonism from the pulpit on Sundays, and tales of the massacre from older relatives who considered Mormons ‘evil’. The Washington Post News Service, article 20 May 2012, ‘Mitt Romney’s Mormon Faith Tangles with a Quirk of Arkansas History’
This Mormon principle of perfect obedience. These men were ordered to appear at Mountain Meadows so in a way they were victims of their own devotion and obedience. Judith Freeman
A scholarly advocate of Brigham Young acknowledges that only ‘approximately half of those who were members of the Church at the death of Joseph Smith did follow the Twelve through all the difficulties of the succession-exodus period.’ [1844-52] A church which loses 50 percent of its previous members within eight years is in a severe crisis. D Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy p24
... Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders ... repeatedly preached about specific sins for which it was necessary to shed the blood of men and women.
Blood-atonement sins included adultery, apostasy, ‘covenant breaking’, counterfeiting, ‘many men who left this Church’, murder, not being ‘heartily on the Lord’s side’, profaning ‘the name of the Lord’, sexual intercourse between a ‘white’ person and an African-American, stealing, and telling lies. ibid.
5th April 1902. ‘Clyde Felt has confessed to cutting the throat of old man Collins, at his request. The old man was a moral degenerate. The boy is a son of David P Felt’. Grandson of former general authority Clyde Felt is fourteen. Despite this blood atonement murder, Latter Day Saints’ leaders allow [the] young man to be endowed and married in temple eight years later. ibid.