Unsung Victims of Mountain Meadows

By David L. Asay

Visiting the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre today is a sobering moment. Viewing all the names of those who perished in September of 1857 brings a profound sense of loss. Those victim's names have been memorialized in stone and a marker memorializes the tragedy that struck down 120 men, women and children. This eve

• Language: English
• Publisher: GENESIS PUBLISHING HOUSE
• Release date: Jul 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988465508

Book preview

Prologue and Chronology

The Massacre at Mountain Meadows was the most atrocious and heinous act perpetrated in the history of the Utah territory. It was called the darkest deed of the nineteenth century.

In April and May of 1857: the Baker-Fancher Train of emigrants left Arkansas to settle in southern California. The train was made up of approximately 140 men, women and children.

June 1857: News of the murder of Parley P. Pratt in Arkansas reaches the Latter-Day Saints in Utah. He had been killed in May of 1857.

July 1857: Word reaches the leaders of the LDS Church in Utah that a federal army is on its way to the territory of Utah to quiet a rebellion as federal official term the situation. Earlier in April of 1857 a federal judge, surveyor and U.S. Marshall fled the territory and complained to President Buchanan.

August 1857: Baker-Fancher train of emigrants reaches Salt Lake City and head south along the Mormon Road through Utah. The train is not made welcome because these people are not trusted, they are Gentiles, food is scarce because of insect destruction the prior year and the word is passed down that no one is to sell to them.

Apparently, according to some historians, some rowdy Missouri men join the train heading through Utah and rumors and gossip flows as they head south.

August 1857: Apostle George A Smith visits the Saints in southern Utah and observes their preparations to deal with an armed force and to discourage unwanted Gentile influences.

September 4, 1857: Baker-Fancher party arrives in Cedar City. The welcome in Cedar city is cold and they are not allowed in town.

Paiute Indians are encouraged to discourage these emigrant trains, harass them and steal cattle. It is reported that a couple of chiefs meet with Isaac Haight and John Higbee and receive orders to kill the Baker-Fancher party and take the spoils.

September 6, 1857: Brigham Young preaches a sermon that declares that the Almighty recognizes Mormon Utah as a free and independent people, no longer bound by the laws of the United States. This sermon did not reach Cedar City by this time, but it expressed a common sentiment of the Saints.

September 7, 1857: Baker-Fancher party reach Mountain Meadows and will take a few days to rest and take care of their stock before pressing across the Nevada desert and into California. They awaken to gunfire from an unknown number of attackers and the Baker-Fancher party are well armed and hold them off for a few days.

September 10, 1857: The siege continues, but in Cedar City, the town bell is rung calling members of the militia to assemble. Reinforcements are sent out to Mountain Meadows and the numbers approach 100 men from surrounding communities. Haight also send a letter to Brigham Young asking him what they should do. The response doesn’t arrive in time

September 11, 1857: Mormon leaders devise a plan to end the stand-off. With white flag in hand, the Mormon leaders approach the encampment and pledge to give the emigrants safe passage back to Cedar City if they will surrender their arms. The Baker-Fancher party is divided into two groups: the women and children march out in the first group, the men follow behind at a certain distance. It is reported that John Higbee gives the order to Do your duty! and the men emerge from both sides of the single file line and open fire. The same happens with the women and children where it is mostly the Indians who attack and kill them. By the time it is over there are 120 dead and 17 or 18 small children surviving.

September 13, 1857: Messenger from Brigham Young arrives instructing militia to let them leave in peace.

April 1859: Judge Cradlebaugh issues arrest warrants for John D. Lee, Isaac Haight and John Higbee. By May 1859 even an arrest warrant is issued to Brigham Young.

There are other particulars of the aftermath of the Massacre that will be accurately portrayed in the coming chapters of the book.

Chapter 1

Ihave lived some sixty-five years and certain family members have prevailed upon me to write my history with the intent that my posterity may come to know of the times that I’ve lived and the cares and trials endured together with the blessings and goodness of Almighty God. I am not favored with the gift of writing. One only has to read my missionary journal to determine that I am not much for words. Yet I shall endeavor to tell my story so that my posterity and other readers may gain insight and strength in whatever trials they face.

My father was Isaac Chauncy Haight and he died in 1886. My mother was Eliza Ann Snyder and she also has passed away not too long after my father and just after I had returned from my mission to New Zealand in 1887. She passed after a long illness in 1888. I miss them dearly.

I was the third child born to Isaac and Eliza on June 5, 1848 is Salt Lake City. My name is David Snyder Haight. My older brother, Isaac C, died within a month of his birth during hard times in Winter Quarters. My mother didn’t speak of those harsh times too much, but I learned of the trials of my parents through my father. Father had joined the Mormon Church in 1839 and moved his family to Nauvoo. My older sister, Caroline, was about two years old.

I had a sister named Temperance K. (we called her Keturah) who was born in Nauvoo so I guess that would make me the fourth child, but I guess my mother didn’t reflect much on baby Isaac C, because she always told me that I was the third. I guess since I survived, that was why I got counted. Long before I was born, my family was forced out of Illinois and finally made their way west in 1848. I guess that those trials in Nauvoo and being forced to leave everything created a stain in the heart of my father. Persecution was evil and he taught his children of the history of Mormon persecution over the early years of my life.

My father had been a school teacher, of sorts. So he took to teaching his children of his experiences and the facts of the general subjects like Arithmetic, Spelling and History. I was also taught to work at a young age and to care for my family above all since I was the oldest boy.

My father married a couple of other wives. His first was Mary Spring, but when father was called on a mission to England in 1850, she decided she would move to California and live. At the close of father’s mission, he met and married two other ladies, Eliza Ann Price and Annabella Sinclair. Thus I had two new step-mothers when he arrived in Salt Lake after his mission in 1853.

When I was five years old, father was called to head the Deseret Iron Works and we moved to Cedar City. Those were interesting times and I had to grow faster than I had planned, not that I had a plan anyway. Life was different in those days and it was hard to get a hold on the rapid changes that were happening. My sister, Mary Ann, had been born while father was on his mission and now we had a serious family and two other step-mothers.

It was around those times when I first met David Bulloch. He became a good friend and we used to have some grand times growing up. He was older than I was and that meant that he would teach me some of the ways of my youth. I’m not sure why he took a shine to me; I was probably just some little kid to him, but he took me under his wing and became friends. It would be good because there were times and trials ahead where I would need someone to talk to.

When we first arrived, we secured lodging in the old original fort which was up against a knoll to the east. It wasn’t well protected from the Lamanites, so we helped build the new fort to the south about a mile and nearer to Coal Creek. This was deemed to be a safer site and afforded better protection on all sides in case of an attack by Indians. As I mentioned, I had to grow up fast, being the only boy at this point in our growing family. Winter came and that was the coldest time that I can remember. I could never seem to get warm.

I learned a great many things in my early years, not in a classroom or school setting, but from many things that were thrust upon me. I suppose that I could say that the first thing I learned was hard work, though in my younger years, it valued but little in my other interests. Survival was taught to me by a need to live, eat and breathe. In that first winter, there was a time when I was caught in the snow outdoors and could scarcely find my way to our meager four walls.

I had been sent out to fetch firewood just before sundown during a snowstorm. The store of firewood was under a squat cedar tree laden with snow and some fifty feet from our dwelling and just outside the fort enclosure. In the waning light, I was able to see my way to the firewood under the tree, but by the time I had loaded my arms with wood and turned to look back, I could not see my footprints in the rapidly falling snow and I became disoriented. Here I was, 6 years old, under one of countless Cedar trees and dependent solely upon my recollection of where the fort was in relation to the trees.

It was a cold, lonely experience. Is a six year old supposed to learn this truth about this world in such a harsh environment? I looked up into the darkened sky, the falling of so many flakes of snow was completely mesmerizing and I was so scared. I felt as if I was being attacked by myriads of swirling enemies, small yet deadly and I was absorbed in the view before me, frozen in place.

I remember that I started to cry. This was so unfair. How do I find the comfort of the fire again and the smiles of my mother and sisters? It was unnerving. Here I stood shivering, afraid of the unknown despite the teachings of father and mother and my sister, Caroline. I knew snow. It was a fact of my Utah winters. But this six year old was terrified and just stood there, looking up, arms laden with firewood and crying.

It is easy not to engage in rational thought when fear takes control. Fear takes up root when survival appears to be threatened although help is a mere fifty feet away. I wonder if others get so enraptured with fear that they forget to call upon God. I had been taught in my six year old frame that there was a God in yonder heavens and he heard the prayers of a child. Yet as I stood rooted in place, shivering and crying; was prayer the first thing that occupied my thoughts?

In the distance and to my left, I saw a light slowly materialize out of this wintry gloom. It took the shape of a doorway and I realized that there ahead was the doorway to our enclosure, meager though it may be. It meant safety. I bid the tears cease and I raised my voice in a plea for help. It seemed as if in the blink of an eye, my mother was there and wrapping me in her arms, then carefully leading me to safety. Six year old lessons in survival!

I realized that life is frail and may be fleeting in these mountain valleys. It is easy to give up and die; much harder to take control of the situations that may be trials and overcome simply to survive. I learned the value of life, how it was such a gift of immense value when it is so easy to lose. I thought back to my young little brother whom I never knew, who lived for almost a winter month and then died in mother’s arms. Those arms knew death and life and she watched out for me. Many mothers would lose little ones in these difficult times and I could later picture these little ones, mothers unconsoled, little ones laid to rest in shallow frozen holes.

I don’t want this story to appear that I was more introspective than I really was. I was likely described as an unruly child as many younger children were in our settlement. I don’t even think that it was fair to say unruly. I knew pleasing pastimes as well and was quite jovial most of the time. But there was a facet to me that tended to contemplate and attempt to fit experiences into a bigger picture that I might learn.

Learning was an entirely different matter. Schooling, as we think of it in our later days, was not the same when I was six or seven. School was in the fields, gardens, sheep and cattle pens and mills. It was building a settlement that could survive and protect itself. Speaking of protection, this was a time when the Lamanites were unsettled and making trouble to the north. Chief Wakara was unhappy and making others unhappy with him.

Years after, I learned that this was called the Walker War and consisted of a southern tribe of Ute Indians unhappy with continually having their food supply depleted as more and more white people encroached on their lands. I had gleaned some of the talk about forts being needed and Cedar endeavored to build this new fort for safety. The old fort up against the hills was deemed unsafe. There was a fort in Parowan and Johnson Springs to the north of us and we felt the need to be watchful and protected.

Several men were asked to go and defend our areas from bands of marauding Lamanites. I still wonder if they should be called Lamanites or Indians because I heard it both ways. Sometimes Brother Brigham referred to them as Lamanites so it was common to refer to them as such, but they still created that disconcerting feeling and made us wonder if we would be safe here. Around our area, we were led to believe that the Lamanites were of a different tribe and called Paiutes and they were more peaceful, especially if we shared with them.

These years were keeping us on edge. We decided to train a militia and my father was a chief leader of the militia. He explained to me that we were commissioned as a force or regiment of the Nauvoo Legion which had dated back to those Nauvoo years and the Prophet Joseph. I understood little of what that all meant, but it did help me to calm my nerves that we were organized and could defend our settlement.

I was asked to learn the names of some local Paiute chieftains. One was named Tutsegavits or something like that and the other was called by an easier white name, Jackson. That perplexed me because the name was much easier to pronounce. My first encounter with an Indian was with a squaw (I think that’s what they were called) who lived out west of town. She had ventured into our little community while I was out tending the garden early in the summer of 1856.

She was accompanied by a boy about my own age and was looking to trade for some garden produce and eggs. She had a roll of buckskin that she was willing to trade for. A couple of men had escorted her to town and she was met by a couple of sisters whose husbands were called as missionaries to these people. She was warm and friendly despite the language difficulties. She knew how to gesture and I came over as she was pointing toward our garden area. I greeted the boy, but we really couldn’t communicate much except to make gestures as I tried to teach him to say hello.

My mother saw us gathered and she came over. Mother Eliza Ann was well respected in the community. After all my father was the mayor, led the militia here and was called as the stake president so he was the leading Church leader in the whole county. So my mom was highly regarded as well and proved to be a capable woman full of Christ-like charity. A deal was made with the woman and she obtained some vegetables and eggs and was soon on her way.

This community had learned that it was far better to be