Did Brigham Young Order a Massacre?

Columnist Will Bagley and Brigham Young University Professor Ron Walker present opposing viewpoints to the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

- BY WILL BAGLEY AND RON WALKER

Brigham Young-between 1855 and 1865glass negative-wet collodion-Brady-Handy Photograph Collection Library of Congress

In September 11, 1857, 120 men, women and children—pioneers from Arkansas headed for California—were massacred after being promised safe passage through a Southern Utah valley known as Mountain Meadows.

They were murdered by a small Mormon militia and its Indian allies in a horrible ploy: after a four-day gun battle with their attackers, the pioneers accepted a truce that turned out to be a deadly lie. They were clubbed, stabbed or shot at point-blank range, then stripped and left to be scavenged by wolves and buzzards. The only ones spared were 17 children under the age of eight, who were taken in by local Mormon families, and would later testify they saw their parents’ clothes and jewels being worn by locals.

The nation was and remains horrified by what happened at Mountain Meadows. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has steadfastly denied responsibility. At first, it blamed Indians; later, it claimed a rogue church official was responsible—and after two trials, Mormon militia leader John Lee was hanged in 1877 for the killings.

But now, a new book, which has been a bestseller in Utah since it appeared last summer, claims the massacre was ordered by Mormon Prophet Brigham Young. Anxiously awaited is a book due to be published in 2004 by three Mormon church historians that will exonerate Young.

True West asked the authors of both books to lay out their claims. Will Bagley, a history columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, is the author of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Ron Walker is one of the three Mormon historians writing the upcoming rebuttal to be published by Oxford University Press.

Their face-off begins on the next page.