What Is The Massacre of the Mormons?

A Shadow in the Meadows: A Christian Reflection on a Mormon Tragedy

The history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a story deeply marked by faith, perseverance, and, tragically, violent persecution. From their beginnings, the Mormon people faced mobs, were driven from their homes in Missouri and Illinois, and saw their founding prophet, Joseph Smith, murdered.¹ A search for information on a “massacre of the Mormons” rightly brings this painful history to mind.

Yet, the most infamous and sorrowful event known by a specific name—the Mountain Meadows Massacre—presents a different and profoundly challenging story. In this case, Mormon settlers were not the victims the perpetrators of a terrible crime. It is a dark chapter that stands as what the LDS Church itself has called a “terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct”.³

To understand this event is not to cast blame or open old wounds to walk a path of compassion and truth. It is to ask the difficult questions that every person of faith must sometimes face: How can good people, who believe they are serving God, commit such terrible acts? And where, in the aftermath of such darkness, can we find the light of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation? This is a journey to understand not just a historical event the frailties of the human heart and the enduring power of Christ’s grace.

What Was the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

In the late summer of 1857, a large wagon train of families, mostly from Arkansas, made its way west toward the promise of a new life in California. Known as the Baker-Fancher party, they stopped to rest and graze their livestock in a peaceful, high-altitude valley in southern Utah known as Mountain Meadows.⁴ It was a place of rest that would become a place of unimaginable horror.

At dawn on September 7, a sudden volley of gunfire shattered the morning quiet. The emigrants were attacked by members of a local Mormon militia, some disguised as Native Americans, along with a number of Southern Paiute warriors they had recruited.¹ The Baker-Fancher party, though caught by surprise, were resilient. They quickly circled their wagons, dug trenches, and mounted a fierce defense. For five agonizing days, they held off their attackers, trapped in their makeshift fort with dwindling supplies of ammunition, food, and, most critically, water.⁴

As the siege wore on, the Mormon leaders on the scene grew fearful. They realized that some of the emigrants had likely seen white men among the attackers, which would expose the lie that this was solely an Indian attack.⁴ A decision was made to eliminate all witnesses. On September 11, under a white flag of truce, a Mormon militia major named John D. Lee approached the desperate and exhausted families.⁴ He offered them a false promise: if they would surrender their weapons, the militia would escort them safely back to the nearby town of Cedar City.

Trusting their lives to these men, the emigrants agreed. The wounded and the youngest children were placed in wagons, followed by the women and older children, with the men walking last, each accompanied by an armed militiaman. Once the party was stretched out and vulnerable, a pre-arranged signal was given. The militiamen turned their guns on the unarmed men, Although their hidden allies rushed in to attack the women and children.¹

The slaughter was swift and brutal. In the end, at least 120 men, women, and older children lay dead. Only seventeen of the youngest children, all aged six and under, were spared because they were considered too young to ever be able to tell what had happened there.¹

Who Were the Victims of This Terrible Act?

For many years, the story of the massacre was clouded by attempts to blame the victims, painting them as hostile and wicked people who brought their fate upon themselves. The truth is far simpler and more heartbreaking. They were families—the Bakers, the Dunlaps, the Fanchers, the Millers, the Tackitts—friends and neighbors from the hills of northwestern Arkansas, traveling together toward a shared dream of a better life in California.⁵ They were farmers and cattlemen, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

To remember them is to restore the humanity that was so cruelly stolen from them. Among the dead was Alexander Fancher, a “born leader of men,” and John Twitty Baker, who had left his wife behind, planning to meet her after selling his cattle.⁹ Among the spared was one-year-old Sarah Elizabeth Baker, who was shot through the arm during the chaos, the bullet breaking both bones.⁹

Perhaps the most powerful voice to emerge from the silence is that of Nancy Saphrona Huff, who was just four years old at the time. Her eyewitness account, published years later, cuts through the historical debate with the raw terror of a child’s memory. She recalled being held in a man’s arms when he was shot and fell dead. “I saw my mother shot in the forehead and fall dead,” she testified. “The women and children screamed and clung together. Some of the young women begged the assassins after they had run out on us not to kill them they had no mercy on them, clubbing them with their guns and beating out their brains”.¹¹

After the slaughter, the surviving children were taken into local Mormon homes. Nancy’s testimony carries a final, poignant horror: she remembered seeing the man who took her in, John Willis, wearing her murdered mother’s clothes and using her family’s bed linens. When she claimed them, she was called a liar.¹¹ Her story stands as a sacred testament to the powerful loss and innocence destroyed in that meadow.

How Could People of Faith Commit Such a Heinous Crime?

For any Christian, the most soul-wrenching question is how a community of believers, dedicated to following God, could be responsible for such an atrocity. The answer is not an excuse a tragic lesson in how a perfect storm of fear, trauma, and distorted theology can lead otherwise good people to commit terrible evil.⁸

The Mormon people carried with them a deep and legitimate collective trauma. They had been violently persecuted in the States, driven from their homes, and had seen their leader, Joseph Smith, murdered by a mob.¹ This history created a powerful sense of being a righteous people besieged by a hostile and wicked world. They were determined never to be victims again.

This trauma was ignited by a fresh threat. In 1857, the United States government, viewing the Mormons’ theocratic society in Utah as a rebellion, dispatched a large contingent of the U.S. Army to the territory.⁸ To the this felt like history repeating itself—another “extermination order” was on its way. This “war hysteria” created an atmosphere of intense fear, paranoia, and suspicion toward all non-Mormons, or “Gentiles”.⁴

This political and military crisis coincided with a period of intense religious fervor known as the “Mormon Reformation”.¹ Church leaders, including Brigham Young, delivered sermons filled with “fiery rhetoric,” calling the Saints to purify themselves and stand against their enemies. This included preaching about “blood atonement,” a controversial doctrine suggesting that some grievous sins could only be forgiven through the shedding of the sinner’s blood.⁴

These three forces—past trauma, present fear, and radical religious rhetoric—combined to create a toxic and deadly mindset. This potent combination allowed the perpetrators to dehumanize the Baker-Fancher party. The emigrants were no longer seen as fellow pioneers or families seeking a new home. Fueled by rumors that they were hostile, had poisoned a spring, or had even participated in the murder of a Mormon apostle in Arkansas, they were transformed in the minds of the local militia into enemy combatants—agents of the wicked world that was coming to destroy God’s people.⁴ In this state of mind, killing them was not seen as murder as a righteous act of self-preservation and holy vengeance.

What Role Did Mormon Leaders Like Brigham Young Play?

Untangling the lines of command and responsibility is crucial to understanding the massacre. The historical record is clear that the direct orders for the attack and subsequent slaughter came from local leaders in southern Utah. Isaac C. Haight, a stake president (a position similar to a diocesan bishop) and the senior militia commander in the region, and John D. Lee, a militia major, were the men on the ground who planned and executed the crime.¹

The role of the Church’s highest leader, Brigham Young, is more complex. There is no credible evidence that he directly ordered the massacre. In fact, the opposite appears to be true. After the siege began, local leaders sent a rider to Salt Lake City to ask Young for guidance. His reply, which arrived two days after the killing, was unequivocal: “You must not meddle with them… Let them go in peace”.¹

But this late message does not fully absolve him. While Young did not order the massacre, his leadership created the conditions that made it possible. His defiant and often violent sermons against the approaching U.S. Army fueled the “environment of fear and suspicion” that gripped the territory.¹ His policy of encouraging local Native Americans to raid the cattle of wagon trains set a precedent for hostility against emigrants.¹⁵ The local leaders who committed the atrocity were acting on the spirit, if not the letter, of his wartime rhetoric.

The tragic irony of the “too late” message is that it reveals a leader whose passionate words had outrun his ability to control events. The local militia felt so certain they were doing what their prophet would want that they initiated the attack before his explicit instructions could arrive. Upon learning of the massacre, Young made the decision to conceal the truth. For decades, he and the Church leadership actively promoted the story that the Paiutes were solely to blame, obstructing federal investigations and protecting the guilty men.¹ He bears responsibility not for ordering the crime for fostering the climate that produced it and for the cover-up that followed.

What Became of the Men Who Carried Out the Killings?

In the aftermath of the massacre, an oath of secrecy was sworn among the perpetrators, binding them to silence on pain of death.¹⁸ For years, this cover-up held, and most of the men involved lived out their lives in their communities, escaping legal justice.⁸ The Church did eventually excommunicate a few of the key figures, including John D. Lee and Isaac Haight, in 1870 this was more than a decade after the crime.¹⁹

Only one man was ever prosecuted and punished by the law: John D. Lee.⁴ After years as a fugitive, he was arrested, tried, and ultimately convicted. On March 23, 1877, twenty years after the massacre, he was executed by a firing squad at the very site of the atrocity.

In a confession written before his death, Lee admitted his role but steadfastly maintained that he was following the direct and explicit orders of his religious superiors, Isaac Haight and his commanding officer, William Dame.¹⁸ Lee painted himself as a faithful follower who was being sacrificed to protect more powerful men. “I am now used by the Mormon Church as a scape-goat to carry the sins of that people,” he wrote. “My life is to be taken, so that my death may stop further enquiry into the acts of the members who are still in good standing in the Church”.¹⁸ His words offer a haunting glimpse into the moral compromises and betrayals that followed the initial crime.

How Can We Trust the Story of What Happened?

For any student of history, especially one seeking to understand a painful and contested event, the question of truth is paramount. Piecing together the story of Mountain Meadows is challenging because nearly every source is colored by the biases and motivations of its author.⁸

The primary sources fall into several categories, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The confessions of perpetrators, like that of John D. Lee, provide invaluable insider details they are also deeply self-serving, written to minimize the author’s own guilt and shift blame to others.¹⁸ The testimonies of the survivors, like Nancy Saphrona Huff, are profoundly moving and emotionally true they are the memories of very young children, recorded many years after the event, and can be imprecise on specific details.¹¹ Early government investigations, such as the report by U.S. Army Major James Henry Carleton, were essential in establishing Mormon involvement and burying the dead they also sometimes relied on secondhand rumors that later proved inaccurate.²⁰

Despite these challenges, historians are confident in the core facts of the massacre. This confidence comes not from any single perfect source from the way these different, flawed sources converge and corroborate one another. The perpetrators’ confessions, the survivors’ memories, and the investigators’ reports all align on the essential, tragic narrative: that a local Mormon militia, acting on the orders of its leaders, lured the Baker-Fancher party into a trap with a false promise of safety and then systematically murdered them.

What Is the LDS Church’s Stance on the Massacre Today?

For more than a century, the official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of denial and silence, blaming the massacre entirely on Native Americans.⁴ But in recent decades, the Church has undergone a remarkable and courageous journey toward truth and transparency.

This shift culminated on the 150th anniversary of the massacre in September 2007. At a memorial service at the site, Elder Henry B. Eyring, a senior Church leader, read an official statement on behalf of the First Presidency. He expressed “powerful regret for the massacre” and for the “undue and untold suffering” of the victims and their families. He called the event a “terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct” and stated that responsibility lay with “local leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” in the area.³

This statement was accompanied by a major act of scholarly honesty. The Church opened its complete historical archives to a team of historians, giving them full access to research and publish an unflinching account of the event. The resulting book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2008), is a landmark work that definitively placed responsibility on local Mormon leaders and detailed the context of war hysteria and violent rhetoric that led to the crime.¹

It is noteworthy that the Church has consistently used the term “regret” rather than “apology”.¹⁹ This careful choice of words reflects a subtle but important theological distinction. For an institution that believes in its divine foundation and continuous revelation, admitting a systemic error that would necessitate an “apology” from the Church itself is deeply complex. The term “regret” allows the Church to unequivocally condemn the sinful actions of its members and leaders and to express deep sorrow for the tragedy, while separating those human failings from the divine nature of the institution they represented.

What Is the Catholic Church’s Stance on Such Religious Violence?

The Holy See has not issued a specific statement regarding the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. But a clear Catholic position can be understood by applying the Church’s most fundamental and unwavering teachings on life, violence, and human dignity.

The Church’s teaching is grounded in the sanctity of all human life and the inherent dignity of the human person, who is created in the image and likeness of God. From this principle flows the absolute condemnation of murder as an intrinsic evil.²¹ The massacre would be viewed unequivocally as a collection of grievous sins against God and humanity, a violation of the command “You shall not kill”.²²

The Church has repeatedly and forcefully condemned any attempt to use religion to justify violence. In recent years, popes have decried the “idolatrous sacrifice of children to the god of power” and have made appeals to “stop using religions to incite hatred, violence, extremism, and blind fanaticism”.²⁴ These teachings directly refute the mindset of the perpetrators at Mountain Meadows, who twisted their faith into a justification for slaughter.

A Catholic reflection on this event would be informed by a shared history of persecution in 19th-century America. At the same time the Mormons were facing hostility, Catholic immigrants were the targets of intense nativist prejudice and violence from movements like the “Know Nothings”.²⁵ Like the Mormons, Catholics were often viewed as a dangerous, foreign “other,” loyal to a foreign power (the Pope) and a threat to American democracy.²⁵ This shared experience of being a mistrusted and persecuted minority lends a particular sadness to the Catholic view of the massacre—a tragic case of one persecuted group turning its own trauma and fear outward onto other vulnerable people.

Finally, the modern Catholic Church’s deep commitment to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue would lead it to see the recent efforts at reconciliation as a powerful and hopeful witness to the Gospel.²⁸ The work of forgiveness between the descendants is an act the Church would not only support but celebrate as a living example of Christ’s peace.

Can Healing and Forgiveness Emerge from Such a Tragedy?

Out of the immense darkness of the massacre, a remarkable story of light and hope has emerged in our time. For generations, the event left a legacy of pain, bitterness, and collective guilt that was passed down among the families of both the victims and the perpetrators.³⁰ But in recent decades, a conscious and faith-driven effort has begun to break that cycle of trauma.

Descendant groups—including the Mountain Meadows Association, representing the victims’ families, and the John D. Lee Family Association—have come together not in anger in a spirit of peace.¹² They have held joint memorial services at the massacre site, where descendants of those who were killed and descendants of those who did the killing have stood side-by-side to mourn, to remember, and to forgive. At one such gathering, a descendant of the Fancher family, J.K. Fancher, captured the spirit of the movement, saying, “The most difficult words for men to utter is ‘I’m sorry and I forgive you'”.³¹

Perhaps no symbol captures this spirit of healing more powerfully than the “Remembrance & Reconciliation Quilt”.³² Designed by descendants, the quilt features the green hills of Arkansas on one border and the red hills of southern Utah on the other. Vines on the borders contain a leaf for each of the 120 victims and an appliqued flower for each of the 17 child survivors. The center of the quilt is made of squares created by descendants of both the victims and the perpetrators. Some squares memorialize a lost ancestor; others express powerful sorrow. In this beautiful work of art, a history torn apart by violence is literally stitched back together by love.

These acts of reconciliation represent more than just symbolic gestures. They are a powerful theological statement. They actively create a new, shared story that overwrites the old one of violence and grievance. The narrative no longer ends with a massacre in 1857. It now extends into the 21st century with a new chapter of forgiveness, shared humanity, and grace—a testament to the belief that the power of reconciliation can ultimately be stronger than the legacy of sin.

What Are the Enduring Lessons for Christians Today?

The shadow that fell upon Mountain Meadows in 1857 holds enduring and vital lessons for all Christians. It is a somber reminder of truths we must never forget on our own walk of faith.

The first lesson is a stark warning about the dangers of fear and dehumanization. The massacre demonstrates how a community, even one founded on Christian principles, can be led into powerful evil when it allows fear of the “other” to fester. When combined with a sense of absolute righteousness, fear can poison the soul, transforming neighbors into monsters and justifying unspeakable violence.² It calls us to constantly examine our own hearts for the seeds of prejudice and to see the face of Christ in every person, especially those we are tempted to label as enemies.

The second lesson is about the moral courage to question authority. The tragedy at Mountain Meadows was compounded because so many men obeyed orders that they knew, in their hearts, were a violation of everything they believed. John D. Lee’s own confession is filled with anguish and the admission that he was doing a “cruel part and doing a damnable deed”.¹⁸ The story calls us to cultivate a conscience that is loyal first to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to find the strength to resist any leader, religious or secular, who would command us to betray its core teachings of love, mercy, and peace.

Finally, the story of Mountain Meadows is ultimately a story of hope. The long, painful cover-up only deepened the wound, proving that darkness cannot heal darkness. It was only through the courageous acts of truth-telling, remembrance, and repentance that healing could begin.¹⁹ The powerful example of the victims’ and perpetrators’ descendants choosing forgiveness over vengeance stands as a testament to the Gospel’s power. They show us that no tragedy is so deep that it cannot be touched by grace, and no wound so old that it cannot be healed by love. They remind us that the path of Christ, the path we are all called to follow, is the one that leads away from violence and fear, and toward the difficult, beautiful, and life-giving work of peace.²

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