In September 1857 members of the territorial militia in several southern Utah communities banded together under the direction of their local leadership and slaughtered roughly 120 members of a wagon train passing through the Utah territory on the way to California. All the perpetrators were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their leaders were officers in the militia and local ecclesiastical officials. Indeed, many, including the massacre’s key planners Isaac Haight and William Dame, were both at the same time.
The massacre occurred on a peaceful meadow cut by a small creek between low wooded hills approximately fifty miles south of Cedar City, Utah and three hundred south of Salt Lake City. It remains quite rural, but at the time the site was a well-known resting point for wagon trains because of its water and lush grasses. It was called Mountain Meadows.
Despite the meadow’s isolation,...
University of California Press