It wasn't long, however, before charges started to surface that Indians were not the only participants, but that there were whites involved. The Mormon Battalion was a group of After Lee's execution, territorial authorities wanted to continue the investigations with a view to bringing more of the guilty parties to justice. The extermination order is the name commonly used to refer to an executive order signed on October 27, 1838, by Lilburn W. Boggs, the governor of Missouri during the Mormon-Missouri War of 1838. It was led by a local leader and member of the church, John D. Lee over a Mormon militia. Two months later, Benjamin LeBaron, 32, and his brother-in-law Luis Widmar were beaten and shot to death after armed men stormed their home in Chihuahua. Most recently, at the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Massacre (September 11, 2007), then-Elder Henry B. Eyring was permitted to speak, and offered, “May the God of Heaven, whose sons and daughters we all are, bless us to honor those who died here by extending to one another the pure love and spirit of forgiveness which His Only Begotten Son personified.” (LDS Newsroom Report), Church officials and three organizations of descendants — the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation, Mountain Meadows Association and Mountain Meadows Massacre Descendants — have worked to heal old wounds. That hasn't stopped some people, for polemical reasons, from using a broad brush to denigrate the Church and its early leaders relative to the crimes of September 1857. On September 11, 2011, flags flew at half-mast at the memorial site. Officials and family members believe that Mexican drug cartels carried out the attack, though there's a question of which cartel did so. 1 The order sought to put a quick end to the conflict by calling for the Mormons to be “exterminated or driven from the State if necessary.” 2. Lee was the only person ever brought to trial for his involvement in the massacre. Within a few miles the two met three white men, whom they asked for help, but then they were attacked by the white men. It appears that one incident which factored into their eventual murderous decision was the killing, the night before, of one of the emigrants by white men. The content of the various polemical accounts of the massacre varies considerably, but the intent of them is always and everywhere the same: to explain the massacre as a consequence of the doctrine, beliefs, practices or culture of the Mormon Church, and thus destructive of its truth claims. This trial ended with a hung jury. Five children who were hospitalized in Tucson will survive, Willie Jessop, whose son married Dawna Langford's daughter, told CNN. You must not meddle with them. On their way to Utah Territory, members of the Mormon Battalion spent the winter before the Mexican-American War in Pueblo. One of the most widely used wagon trails to California branched off the Oregon trail in Northern Utah, and ran almost due South through Salt Lake City to eventually join the Old Spanish Trail. In the 1980s descendants of the victims and the perpetrators met together to start bridging the divide and make peace with the past. But former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda told CNN on Tuesday evening two attacks in two places by the same group makes it more likely that they were targeted. Almost as soon as news of the massacre reached the eastern United States, enemies of the Church began exploiting it for polemical purposes. Certain themes continue to re-emerge in polemical accounts of the massacre. For the next two weeks, they drew their clothing allowance of $42 per man, received their equipment (Model 1816 smoothbore flintlock muskets and a few Harper's Ferry Model 1803 Rifles), and were more formally organized into a combat battalion. The claim that it was the worst massacre in American history is a common one; accusations of direct complicity on the part of Brigham Young, of subsequent institutional cover-up or of the "scapegoating" of John D. Lee, are common. Shortly before July 24th, 1847, the first party of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. When the Saints were forced to leave Nauvoo in 1846, one of the biggest challenges they faced was financing the migration. There were no reports of problems related to the Baker-Fancher party until they reached Fillmore (about 150 miles south of Salt Lake City). Although the particular item of evidence is new, the thesis which it is pressed into service to support actually dates to the nineteenth century; for example, in her book Wife No. The Luisenos asked the battalion to guard them as they buried the dead. Lee's second trial occurred the following year; the prosecutor was U.S. District Attorney Sumner Howard, and Boreman was again the presiding judge. “Nits Make Lice”: The Dehumanization of Children at the Haun’s Mill Massacre of 1838 and the Bear River Massacre of 1863. Thus it was that on September 11, a flag of truce was carried to the Baker-Fancher party by William Bateman. So far a human nature can discern, I say that the men of the Mormon Battalion are the saviors of this people and did save them from carnage and death. This terrible massacre occurred at what is now known as “Oatman Flat,” about 100 miles east of Yuma, Arizona. It is at this point that the exact nature of the events becomes sketchy; most are provided by Lee, and the veracity of his testimony is naturally suspect. The Utah Territorial Militia was known as the Nauvoo Legion and accused of perpetrating the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre in which 120–140 non-Mormon settlers were murdered. The victims were "all shot while in vehicles while driving," family member Alex LeBaron told CNN on Tuesday. They were driving together for safety reasons, said Kendra Lee Miller, whose sister-in-law was killed in the attack. One of the two was killed, and the other was able to make his way back to the Baker-Fancher party. The night of September 10 and the following morning the white men debated what to do. Though other Mormons were certainly as culpable as Lee (he did not act alone), he was the only one executed. The weather could also be dangerous, with winter coming early to the high country and sudden storms occurring during all seasons of the year. After serving briefly in the Mexican-American War as a member of Brigham Young's "Mormon Battalion," Lee joined the gathering masses of Zion in Utah. In 2009, Eric LeBaron was kidnapped and returned unharmed a week later. However, the governor maintained that if whites were involved, they would be pardoned under the general amnesty granted by the governor to the Mormons in June 1858. T The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saint men, led by Mormon company officers commanded by regular U.S. Army officers. Historic battles and associations with the Mormon Battalion occurred in this area. The Baker-Fancher train consisted of California-bound emigrants who started their journey in Arkansas and Missouri. ", Alex LeBaron said the families were allegedly attacked "separately but simultaneously by two different groups of the same cartel," he said. Joe Biden sworn in as 46th president of the United States, Youth poet laureate recites stunning poem at Biden inauguration, President Donald Trump departs the White House, See Trump's final message as President as his family looks on, Trump pardons 73 people, commutes sentences of 70 others, 12 Army National Guard members removed from inauguration duty, Mexico is scrambling to find whoever ambushed and killed 9 Mormon family members, leaving 200 bullet casings. Mountain Meadows massacre The widely publicized Mountain Meadows massacre of September 11, 1857, during the Utah War, was a mass killing of about 130 emigrants, mostly from Arkansas and heading for California. The first trial occurred in 1875, before the anti-Mormon judge Jacob Boreman. Next day terms with the past orders and other messages between various militia officers and! Support and we will discuss if we need assistance, '' Langford said on is how higher! 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