More Lessons from Family History

They were my first cousins, four times removed, according to Ancestry.com; I'll have to take Ancestry's word for that (I don't really understand what "four times removed" means), but my great-great-great-grandfather and their father were brothers. The girls were born in Tennessee, in 1815 and 1818. Most of my ancestors moved west during the 1830s, to Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. By 1837 my great-great-great-grandfather had left Tennessee and was in Arkansas. I think the girls' family must have moved there around the same time, because Nancy Jane, the younger sister, married in Arkansas in 1838 and her older sister Mary married there in 1839. The men they married were brothers; the Dunlap boys also had been born in Tennessee. I don't know if the two families, the Whartons and the Dunlaps, were from the same area of Tennessee, or if the young people met in Arkansas. In those days, families were large; Mary and Jesse Jr. had ten children, and Nancy Jane and Lorenzo had eight. They lived in what is now Madison County, Arkansas. I have read that Jesse Dunlap ran a general store, a mill, and a blacksmith shop; I don't know about Lorenzo.

By 1857, the two families were ready to move west, to California. I've read that Jesse's family left with three wagons, nine yoke of oxen, thirty cattle, three guns (plus pistols and knives), provisions, gear for trail, and $320. Lorenzo's family had one wagon, four yoke of oxen, and twelve cattle. They were part of a wagon train that assembled at Beller's Stand in April 1857. Jack Baker lead the group, which set off, following the Cherokee Trail west.

In September 1857, the wagon train was camped in an area known as Mountain Meadows in southwestern Utah. There, they were attacked by Mormon militiamen and their Indian allies. All of the emigrants, except for a few small children, were murdered. The seventeen survivors included three of Mary and Jesse's children and two of Nancy and Lorenzo's children. The children were cared for initially by the families and neighbors of the men who had murdered their parents and siblings, until 1859, when the Federal government sent the Army to retrieve them. The children were returned to Arkansas and were raised by relatives.

I had never heard of the Mountain Meadows Massacre until I found mention of it attached to the lives of Mary and Nancy Jane, first cousins of my great-great-grandfather. Historian Will Bagley has written a compelling book about it, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows, which provides the historical context for this dreadful event. The Mormons and the Federal Government were on the verge of war in 1857, and Mormon leaders were preparing for the defense of Utah from an invasion by the United States. It is not clear that Mormon leaders ordered the massacre of the emigrants at Mountain Meadows (although Bagley believes they did), but they did create the environment that led otherwise law-abiding men to massacre men, women, and children. The historical record is clear; closing the overland road through the Great Basin was Brigham Young's trump card, and he was prepared to play it as the conflict with the Federal Government escalated. Bagley quotes Brigham Young:

"If the United States send their army here and war commences, the travel must stop; your trains must not cross this continent back and forth. To accomplish this I need only say a word to the [tribes,] for the Indians will use them up unless I continually strive to restrain them. I will say no more to the Indians, let them alone, but do as you please. And what is that? It is to use them up; and they will do it."

"Use them up" means "kill them."

It was decades later that one man, John Lee, was tried and convicted of the murders at Mountain Meadows, in what passed for justice at the time.

I don't know if Brigham Young and his inner circle actually gave an order to kill the emigrants or not. The journal pages, the diaries, and the letters that might have clarified the role of Brigham Young and the other leaders of the Mormon Church of the day have disappeared. But the records of the speeches they made and the sermons they gave have not been lost. These are the men who created the environment that allowed the Mountain Meadows Massacre to happen, and so history has held them responsible.