The Mountain Meadows Massacre

 

You can name a place "Zion," but naming it doesn't make it so. 

It took a century or more for the LDS to come to terms with what happened at Monument Mountain in September of 1857, when, in 35 wagons, more than 140 emigrants from Arkansas, on their way to California, camped in this very field, while several hundred head of cattle, horses and oxen were out here grazing.

The emigrants were, like so many others, bound for what they believed would be a new life out west, on the trail--the northern route--to California, when they were accosted by revengeful Mormons and the Paiutes the settlers recruited to aid them in a fight the Mormons considered defensive. About that they were wrong.  

For several days, there were skirmishes. Several men died. 

And then, a truce. The locals walked into camp beneath a white flag, determined, they said, to bring hostilities to an end. The deal they cut was easy enough: you give up your arms and we will guarantee your safety. The hostilities will end. It's that simple, that easy.

A system to bring the fight to an end was created. The Mormons said the emigrants would leave the encampment in groups--the wounded and small children first, in wagons, women and other children following on foot; then the men and boys, followed by the Mormon militiamen, of course, to make sure things were done right and in good order.

And then, unsuspectedly and on command, the militiamen simply pulled out their rifles and sidearms and murdered the Arkansans--all of the wounded, the men, and the boys, and all of the women, many of whom died trying to protect their children from fire. Only a few children remained.

Two years later, the badly mangled bodies of the victims were buried by a delegation of U. S. cavalry. Two years later. 

Historians estimate that as many as 50 militia and an untold number of Paiutes shed all that blood. It took twenty years, but one of them, a man named John H. Lee, was tried, convicted, and executed not far from the scene of the massacre. 

That door up top of the post is just one of many in what appears to be some kind of dormitory in Colorado City, Arizona, on a big house built by Warren Jeffs to hold his many wives, some of them as young as 12. Jeffs today, you may remember, is in prison for rape.

But the truth, I believe, holds for everyone, not just the Mormons: You can call a place Zion, but that doesn't make it so.