Truthmatters
Diamond Member
- May 10, 2007
- 80,182
- 2,272
- 1,283
- Banned
- #4,401
The Mountain Meadows massacre was a mass slaughter of the Fancher-Baker emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, by a local Mormon militia and members of the Paiute Indian tribe on September 11, 1857. The incident began as an attack, quickly turned into a siege, and eventually culminated in the murder of the unarmed emigrants after their surrender. All of the party except for seventeen children under eight years old were killed—about 120 men, women, and children were killed, but precise numbers have been debated.[1] After the massacre, the corpses of the victims were left decomposing for two years on the open plain,[2] the surviving children were distributed to local Mormon families, and many of the victims' possessions were auctioned off at the Latter-day Saint Cedar City tithing office.[3