Even more damning than the press reports was the report of the professional soldier who inspected the field. Maj. James H. Carleton of the U.S. Army’s First Dragoons was deeply outraged by the evidence of a deliberate mass execution of men, women, and children. “There has been a great and fearful crime perpetrated,” he wrote, branding those who did it “relentless, incarnate fiends.” Outraged at what he saw on the Mountain Meadows killing ground, both he and Capt. Reuben Campbell denounced the Mormon settlers who had committed the atrocity. Contrary to the abuse that Apostle Smith dumped on Cradlebaugh, the officer praised the fearless judge for his work and his determination to bring those responsible to justice. The reports of their visit to the site are the earliest and best accounts of what happened at the massacre from the initial attack, made largely by Mormons painted as Indians, to the final act of betrayal. KINGDOM in the WEST, The Mormons and the American Frontier – VOLUME 12 INNOCENT BLOOD, pages 210-213.



(Paiute leader) Jackson says there were 60 Mormons led by Bishop John D. Lee, of Harmony, and a prominent man in the church named Haight, who lives at Cedar City. That they were all painted and disguised as Indians.

That this painting and disguising was done at a spring in a canyon about a mile northeast of the spring where the emigrants were encamped, and that Lee and Haight led and directed the combined force of Mormons and Indians in the first attack, throughout the siege, and at the last massacre. The Santa Clara Indians say that the emigrants could not get to the water, as the besiegers lay around the spring ready to shoot anyone who approached it. This could easily have been done … The following account of the affair is, I think, susceptible to legal proof by those whose names are known, and who, I am assured, are willing to make oath to many of the facts which serve as links in the chain of evidence leading toward the truth of this grave question: By whom were these 120 men, women and children murdered …

John D. Lee, Isaac C. Haight, John M. Higby (the first resides in Harmony, the last two at Cedar City), were the leaders who organized a party of fifty or sixty Mormons to attack this train.

They had also all the Indians which they could collect at Cedar City, Harmony, and Washington City to help them, a good many in number. This party then came down, and at first the Indians were ordered to stampede the cattle and drive them from the train. They then commenced firing on the emigrants; this firing was returned by the emigrants; one Indian was killed, a brother of the chief of the Santa Clara Indians, another shot through the leg, who is now a cripple at Cedar City. There were without doubt a great many more killed and wounded. It was said the Mormons were painted and disguised as Indians. The Mormons say the emigrants fought “like lions” and that they saw they could not whip them by any fair fighting…

On my arrival at Mountain Meadows, the 16th instant, I encamped near the spring where the emigrants had encamped, and where they had intrenched themselves after they fired upon. The ditch they had intrenched themselves after they were first fired upon. The ditch they there dug is not yet filled up … On the 20th instant I took a wagon and a party of men and made a thorough search for others amongst the sage bushes for at least a mile back from the road that leads to Hamblin’s house. Hamblin himself showed Sergeant Fritz of my party a spot on the right-hand side of the road where he had partially covered up a great many of the bones. These were collected, and a large number of others on the left-hand side of the road up the slope of the hill, and in the ravines and among the bushes. I gathered many of the disjointed bones of 34 persons. The number could easily be told by the number of pairs of should blades and by lower jaws, skulls, and parts of skulls, etc.

These, with the remains of 2 others gotten in a ravine to the east of the spring, where they had been interred at but little depth – 34 in all – I buried in a grave on the northern side of the ditch. Around and above this grave I caused to be built of loose granite stones hauled from the neighboring hills, a rude monument, conical in form and 50 feet in circumstance at the base and 12 feet in height. This is surmounted by a cross hewn from red cedar wood. From the ground to top of cross is 24 feet. On the transverse part of the cross, facing toward the north, is an inscription carved deeply in the wood: “Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.” And on a rude slab of granite set in the earth and leaning against the northern base of the monument there are cut the following words:

Here 120 men, women, and children were massacred in cold blood early in September, 1857. They were from Arkansas.

I observed that nearly every skull I saw had been shot through with rifle or revolver bullets. I did not see one that had been “broken in with stones,” Dr. Brewer showed me one, that probably of a boy of 18, which had been fractured and slit, doubtless by two blows of a bowie knife or other instrument of that character.

The scene of the massacre, even at this date, was horrible to look upon. Women’s hair, in detached locks and in masses, hung to the sage bushes and was strewn over the ground in many places. Parts of little children’s dresses and of female costume dangled from the shrubbery or lay scattered about; and among these, here and there, on every hand, for at least a mile in the direction of the road, by 2 miles east and west, there gleamed, bleached white by the weather, the skulls and other bones of those who had suffered. A glance into the wagon when all these had been collected revealed a sight which can never be forgotten.

The idea of the melancholy procession of that number of women and children, followed at a distance by their husbands and brothers, after all their suffering, their watching, their anxiety and grief, for so many gloomy days and dismal nights at the corral, thus moving slowly and sadly up to the point where the Mormons and Indians lay in wait to murder them; these doomed and unhappy people literally going to their own funeral; the chill shadows of night closing darkly around them, sad precursors of the approaching shadows of a deeper night, brings to the mind a picture of human suffering and wretchedness on the one hand, and of human treachery and ferocity upon the other, that can not possibly be excelled by any other scene that ever before occurred in real life …

Maj. Henry Prince, United States Army, drew a map of the ground about the spring where the entrenchments was dug, and embracing the neighboring hills behind which the Mormons had cover. On the crest of these hills are still traces of some rude little parapets made of loose stones and loopholed for rifles. Marks of bullets shot from the corral are seen upon these stones …

In pursuing the bloody thread which runs throughout this picture of sad realities, the question how this crime, that for hellish atrocity has no parallel in our history, can be adequately punished often comes up and seeks in vain for an answer. Judge Cradlebaugh says that with Mormon juries the attempt to administer justice in this Territory is simply a ridiculous farce…

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