This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
One hundred and fifty years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the biggest question remains: Was Brigham Young involved?
Some historians and descendants clearly lay blame for the 1857 slaughter of Arkansas emigrants on Young, who ruled the Utah territory politically and ecclesiastically. They reason Young must have personally endorsed an action of such magnitude taken by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Others insist no evidence directly links him to the crime.
So who's right?
Historian and author Will Bagley believes Young gave the order and is to blame for the atrocity. The Mormon leader, Bagley says, "acted guilty, lied about it for 20 years and didn't go after the Mormon perpetrators."
He points to a meeting Young, who also served as an agent of Indian affairs, held in Salt Lake City with a dozen chiefs, during which he encouraged them to attack wagon trains and suggested they had a right to the emigrants' property.
"That's a criminal act," says Bagley, author of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows.
Bagley believes the Fancher party didn't reach Cedar City until Sept. 4 and on Sept. 7 was attacked by 60 to 70 Mormons and some Paiutes (though both the dates and size of the Mormon contingent are in dispute).
"How long does it take to assemble a force that big stationed in several places? Longer than a long weekend," which suggests to him the attackers already had an order to act.
Bagley is convinced Young offered a kind of confession in May 1861. Stopping at the Meadows with 125 friends, he spied the rock pile the army had raised on the victims' graves, with its inscription, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord."
Young reportedly repeated the phrase, then added, "and I have taken a little."
"It reveals the motivation and the authority for the murders," Bagley says.
Mormon historian Ronald W. Walker, co-author of the forthcoming volume Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, says it's not that clear-cut. "Young's statement about vengeance most likely was based on reports to him that emphasized emigrant misconduct [reportedly bragging about killing Mormon founder Joseph Smith]."
It was the "antagonistic" U.S. Army that reported the figure of 60 to 70 Mormons at the first attack, Walker says. Other sources say it was mostly John D. Lee and some Indians. Additional militia members slowly arrived during the five-day siege.
As for the meeting with the Indian leaders, none of the chiefs in attendance participated in the massacre.
To Walker and his co-authors, Richard Turley and Glen Leonard, the most compelling reason for rejecting Young as the instigator is how conditions evolved in southern Utah.
"The day-by-day ebb and flow of events wasn't consistent with an agenda," Walker says. "They were constantly changing their minds, arguing with each other."
If it was ordered by Young, he says, "that had to be one of the best-kept secrets ever. How do you get all these people involved and then, after the fact, telling a consistent story? Conspiracies break down because people spill the beans, he says. "In this case, nobody did."
Does that mean Young was blameless?
Not entirely, Walker says. Young's preaching "tended to inflame emotions. Because of that, he does bear a measure of culpability."