All of the plunder from the Massacre filled the tithing room of Bishop Philip Klingensmith's Cedar City Ward, tithing room.
The following is an except from the book THE INDIAN WARS OF THE FAR WEST
BY J. P.' DUNN, JE., M.S., LL.B. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, 1886 (pages 297 - 301):
It is just after noon , and the day is bright and clear. Tramp, tramp, tramp ; they march down from the camping place. The men have reached the militia, and give them
three hearty cheers as they take their places, murderer and victim, side by side. Tramp, tramp, tramp. They are rounding the point of the ridge which has served as a screen for the Mormons and Indians for the past week. A raven flies over them, croaking. What called him there ?
The wagons have just passed out of sight over the divide. The men are entering a little ravine. The women are opposite the Indians. They have regained confidence, and several are expressing their joy at escaping from their savage foes. See that man on the divide! It is Higbee. He makes a motion with his arms and shouts something which those nearest him understand to be: " Do your duty." In an instant the
militiamen wheel, and each shoots the man nearest him ; the Indians spring from their ambush and rush upon the women ; from between the wagons the rifle of John D. Lee cracks, and a wounded woman in the forward wagon falls off the seat.
CEDAR CITY WARD
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Swiftly the work of death goes on. Lee is assisted in shooting and braining the wounded by the teamsters Knight and McMurdy, and as the latter raises his rifle to his shoulder he cries; " O Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for thy kingdom that I do this." The men all fell at the first fire but two or three, and these the horsemen ride down, knock over with their clubbed guns, and finish with their knives. Their throats are cut, that the atoning blood may flow freely. The women and older children are not hurried out of the world quite so quickly as the others. Some are on their knees begging for life.
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Others run shrieking over the Meadows. Swiftly the work of death goes on. Lee is assisted in
shooting and braining the wounded by the teamsters Knight
and McMurdy, and as the latter raises his rifle to his shoulder
he cries; " O Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for thy
kingdom that I do this." The men all fell at the first fire but two or three, and these the horsemen ride down, knock
over with their clubbed guns, and finish with their knives.
Their throats are cut, that the atoning blood may flow freely.
The women and older children are not hurried out of the
world quite so quickly as the others. Some are on their
knees begging for life. Others run shrieking over the Meadows.
They receive but two answers—the tomahawk crashing
through the skull, and the knife plunging through the heart.
These are all left to the Indians, for fear there may be " innocent
blood " among them, which no Mormon may shed.
There is alarm on this account already, for one of the emigrants
had carried his infant child in his arms, and the bullet
that pierced the father's heart went through the babe's brain.
It is decided, however, that it was accidental and that no
criminal wrong is done. Several of the Mormons run to the
Indians, to see that they do their work properly. Among
them is Lee. It is discovered that two of the girls are missing.
Some one saw them run to a ravine fifty yards away.
Lee and one of the Cedar City chiefs run to the place and
find there the Indian boy, Albert, who lives with Hamlin.
He says the girls came there, and shows where they hid in
the brush. They drag them forth and brutally ravish them.
This was the only act on that field that was not inspired.
Was it wrong, under the Mormon code of morality ? The
question is too subtle for me to answer; certainly it was not
punished. Lee next tells the chief the girls must be killed.
The chief answers : " No, they are too pretty to kill; let us
save them ;" but he meets a grim refusal. The unhappy child
that Lee holds, with the terror of death upon her, flings her
arms round his neck and promises to love him as long as he
lives, if he will spare her life. The wolf has keener fangs
but no more merciless heart. He throws her head back with
his arm, and with one stroke of his keen bowie-knife severs
her neck to the spine. The chief brains the other with his
tomahawk.
The author is a descendent of Bishop Philip Klingensmith, or P.K., the man whose conscience stirred a confession to his role in the atrocity. P.K. is portrayed as conflicted, but not strong enough to refuse orders. “I expect I'll be answering for what I've done every minute of every day for the rest of my life.” Attitudes vary among other Mormon characters, from blind followers of millenialism, to those whose complicity is driven by fear. (Click here for more information)
This finished the slaughter at the Meadows, but there remained
a little more to do. The trail of the three scouts,
who went out on the night before, had been discovered, and
Ira Hatch, with a party of Indians, was sent after them. The fugitives were found sleeping, in the Santa Clara Mountains,
and, from the volley fired at them, two slept on in death. The
third fled with a bullet-hole through his wrist. He met two
Mormons, who were much afflicted over his sad plight, and
persuaded him that he could not get across the desert. They
induced him to turn back with them, promising to smuggle
him through Utah . They soon met Hatch's party and the
man was killed; but they did permit him to pray first. The
paper calling for assistance, which he carried, was in Mormon
custody for some time, and is said to have been destroyed by
John D. Lee. The man killed by Hatch's party brings the
number killed to one hundred and twenty-one—ten at the
camp, yonng Aden at Richards' Springs, one hundred and
seven on the Meadows, and the three messenger scouts. The
main massacre was on Friday, September 11, 1857 . There
has been some confusion as to this, arising from a failure to
consult calendars. Judge Cradlebaugh fixed the date as September
10; Dr. Forney as " Friday, September 9 or 10;" all
the Mormon witnesses, and Lee, in his confessions, fixed the
day of the week as Friday, and the second Friday in September
was the llth, in the year 1857. On the evening of the
same day the surviving children, seventeen in number, ranging
in age from three to eight years, were taken to amlin's,
and afterwards divided out among Mormon families. (distribution of Mormon plunder)
The property still remained to be disposed of. A part of it was given to the Indians, and for this, Lee as Indian agent,
in his report of November 20,1857, charged the government over fifteen hundred dollars. The bodies of the dead were searched by Higbee and Klingensmith, the Bishop of Cedar City, and the money found is supposed to have been kept by
them. The remaining property was put in Klingensmith's custody temporarily, and afterwards, on instructions from Brigham Young, was turned over to Lee and sold by him for the benefit of the Church. The bodies were stripped entirely naked, and fingers and ears were mutilated in tearing from them the jewelry, to them no longer valuable. The bloody clothing and the bedding on which the wounded had lain were
piled in the back room of the tithing-office at Cedar City for some weeks, and when Judge Cradlebaugh examined the
room, eighteen months later, it still stank of them. These
goods were commonly known as " property taken at the siege
of Sevastopol ." • Carriages and wagons of the emigrants were
in use long afterwards, and some of the jewelry is said to be
worn yet in Utah . The value of all the property taken, as
nearly as it can be ascertained, was over $70,000. People
in Arkansas who saw the organization of the train estimated
its value at $100,000.
It was for many years a hotly debated question whether
Brigham Young was connected with this crime or not. To
those who were familiar with the subordination of the Mormon
Church, its system of espionage, its compulsory confessional,
its obedience to "counsel," and its prompt punishment
of everything contrary to the will of those in authority, his
guilt was a matter of course. But many did not believe it.
In 1875 he published a deposition in which he acknowledged
himself accessory after the fact, saying that, within two or
three months after the affair, Lee began giving him an account
of it, and,says the deposition, "I told him to stop, as,
from what I had already heard by rumor, I did not wish my
feelings harrowed up by a recital of detail." Lee and Klingensmith say they reported it fully to him, and Hamlin says
he did also. To Lee, by his account, Young professed to be
much shocked by the killing of the women and children, but,
after considering it over-night, he said: " I have made that
matter a subject of prayer. I went right to God with it, and
asked him to take the horrid vision from my sight, if it were
a righteous thing that my people had done in killing those
people at the Mountain Meadows. God answered me, and at
once the vision was removed. I have evidence from God
that he has overruled it all for good, and the action was a
righteous one and well intended. The brethren acted from
pure motives. The only trouble is that they acted a little
prematurely ; they were a littie ahead of time. I sustain you
and all of the brethren for what they did. All that I fear is
treachery on the part of some one who took a part with you,
but we will look to that." There is testimony also that he
was accessory before the fact, and his proclamation, that "No
person shall be allowed to pass or repass, into or through or
from this territory without a permit from the proper officer,"
surely indicates that he was in an aggressive mood at the time.
But this is now immaterial. He has passed beyond human
punishment, aud his moral guilt is sufficiently established out
of his own mouth. On occasions of self-gratulation he sometimes
exposed his methods. On August 12,1860, he said, in
the Tabernacle: " All the army, with its teamsters, hangers-on,
and followers, with the judges and nearly all the rest of the
civil officers, amounting to some seventeen thousand men,
have been searching diligently for three years to bring one
act to light that would criminate me; but they have not been
able to trace out one thread or one particle of evidence that
would criminate me; do you know why ? Because I walk
humbly with my God, and do right so far as I know how. I
do no evil to any one; and as long as I can have faith in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ to hinder the wolves from tearing
the sheep and devouring them, without putting forth my
hand, I shall do so. I can say honestly and truly, before God
and the holy angels and all men, that not one act of murder or
disorder has occurred in this city or territory that I had any
knowledge of, any more than a babe a week old, until after the
event had transpired ; that is the reason they cannot trace any
crime to me. If I have faith enough to cause the devils to eat
up the devils, like the Kilkenny cats, I shall certainly exercise it.
Joseph Smith said that they would eat each other up as did
those cats. They will do so here and throughout the world.
The nations will consume each other and the Lord will suffer
them to bring it about. It does not require much talent or
tact to get up opposition in these days; yon see it rife in
communities, in meetings, in neighborhoods, and in cities;
that is the knife that will cut down this government. The
axe is laid at the root of the tree, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit will be hewn down."
His guilt is most fully shown in the subsequent course of
himself and the Mormon Church. It was unquestionably the
intention of the Mormon Church to keep the participation of
white men in the massacre a secret, and lay the blame on the
Indians.
