Senseless Ramblings

The Hiraeth Series

This is a story that is adjacent to the third day blog of the larger Hiraeth Series. It is a dark and sad story, but is relevant to the history of the path I have taken to California. In the previous posts I have make quick comment about the settlers of the U.S. western expansion in the mid-1800’s Their crossing of Nebraska. The intimidation they must have felt at seeing the Rocky Mountains. The deserts of Utah. This is the story of one of those groups of settlers. They beat the obstacles that distance and remoteness placed in their way. Despite all of that, they met their end in southern Utah, in a manner that was as brutal as it was wrong, unfounded and dishonorable.

Off Utah Highway 18, about 32 miles north of St. George, Mountain Meadows is a beautiful grassland sitting among the surrounding hills. Driving by today, it is a serene and peaceful place, dotted with some ranches. You could easily drive by without thinking twice about it or knowing that 168 years ago, a horrible bloodbath took place down on the valley floor.

The Baker-Fancher Party was a group of approximately 140 settlers. They had left their homes in Arkansas to start anew in California. Like all settlers, they were determined people with great hopes.

The path they followed took them through Salt Lake City and down what is referred to as the “Old Spanish Trail,” also sometimes called the “Mormon Road.” This was a well worn trail to California that had been used by many pioneers.

Early on the morning of September 7, the party was attacked by a group of the Nauvoo Legion, a Mormon militia. The Nauvoo Legion had also recruited several Paiute Indians, in an attempt to make the attack look like an attack by the Native American tribe, rather than the Mormon militia.

Despite the sudden surprise attack, the pioneers were able to pull their wagons into a circle, and defend their position. Despite some deaths on both sides, the fighting continued for five days. By the end of the siege, the Baker-Fancher Party was getting low on water and ammunition, but determined to continue to defend if needed.

On the side of the Nauvoo Legion, members of the militia were concerned that the settlers had come to realize that this was an attack by white men, only being aided by the Native Americans. This led the militia commander, a man named William Dame to order his forces to kill the travelers. This is also where a plan was devised that is so irreprehensible, so dishonorable that it makes me angry almost two centuries later.

Knowing that the travelers had to be running low on water and ammunition, Dame sent in a group of the militia under a white flag of truce. The militia told the travelers that they would ensure that they got safely to Cedar City, about 50 miles to the northeast. The militia ensured the travelers that they were safe, to turn over their weapons, and be safely escorted. In doing so they were able to get the travelers to leave the defensive trenches they had created.

Once the militia had the weapons and had been able to move the travelers away from their defensive area, other members of the militia who had been hiding, came in and attacked. All the adults and older children in the Baker-Fancher Party were killed. Only 17 children ages six and under were spared. They were taken to live with local Mormon families, and the livestock and good that belonged to the settlers were auctioned off.

Members of the militia initially started to bury some of the members of the party, but in the end just left the remaining corpses to the wild animals.

In 1859, the U.S. Army rode to the meadow. The skeletons of many of the members of the party still littered the ground. The bones were gathered and placed in a mass grave which was actually one of the trenches the settlers had dug while defending themselves. After the burial, the soldiers built a rock cairn over the gravesite. The cairn has been rebuilt a couple of times, but still using many of the original stones used in 1859.

The location is a U.S. historic site now, but it is maintained by the Mormon Church. For many, many years the Mormon Church denied being part of the massacre, but at the end of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st, different leaders of the church made formal apologies to the descendants of the Baker-Fancher Party, and also to the Paiute Indians for trying to place the blame on them.

To this day, the Mormon Church denies that leader Brigham Young had any knowledge or involvement in the orders to kill the travelers, however many historians take issue with that, stating that at that time in Utah, Brigham Young was aware of everything that occurred and that nothing was done that had not received his approval.

We can’t undo the past. We can only learn and move on. As I walked around the monument, though, I couldn’t help but notice all the memorial stones to the party members that list their names, ages, and relationship to other travelers. This group was very young. I was amazed by the number of children and very young adults who were so senselessly deprived of that dream that were seeking in California.

May they forever rest in peace.

Keep rambling…

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