The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a series of attacks during the Utah War that resulted in the mass murder of at least 120 members of the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train. The massacre occurred in the southern Utah Territory at Mountain Meadows, and was perpetrated by settlers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints involved with the Utah Territorial Militia who recruited and were aided by some Southern Paiute Native Americans. The wagon train, made up mostly of families from Arkansas, was bound for California, traveling on the Old Spanish Trail that passed through the Territory.
John Doyle Lee was an American pioneer, and prominent early member of the Latter Day Saint Movement in Utah. Lee was later convicted of mass murder for his complicity in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre and sentenced to death. In 1877, he was executed by firing squad at the site of the massacre.
Juanita Pulsipher Brooks was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history. Her most notable contribution was her book related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to which her grandfather Dudley Leavitt was sometimes linked, and which caused tension between her and the church authorities. She also made significant archival contributions in the form of collected pioneer diaries documenting early Mormon history in the Dixie, Utah area. Brooks remained a faithful believer throughout her life.
George Albert Smith was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement. He served in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and as a member of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Chief Walkara was a Shoshone leader of the Utah Indians known as the Timpanogo and Sanpete Band. It is not completely clear what cultural group the Utah or Timpanogo Indians belonged to, but they are listed as Shoshone. He had a reputation as a diplomat, horseman and warrior, and a military leader of raiding parties, and in the Wakara War.
Jacob Hamblin was a Western pioneer, a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a diplomat to various Native American tribes of the Southwest and Great Basin. He aided European-American settlement of large areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona, where he was seen as an honest broker between Latter-day Saint settlers and the Natives. He is sometimes referred to as the "Buckskin Apostle", or the "Apostle to the Lamanites". In 1958, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
The Baker–Fancher party was a group of American western emigrants from Marion, Crawford, Carroll, and Johnson counties in Arkansas, who departed Carroll County in April 1857 and "were attacked by the Mormons near the rim of the Great Basin, and about fifty miles from Cedar City, in Utah Territory, and that all of the emigrants, with the exception of 17 children, were then and there massacred and murdered" in the Mountain Meadows massacre. Sources estimate that between 120 and 140 men, women and children were killed on September 11, 1857, at Mountain Meadows, a rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail, in the Utah Territory. Some children of up to six years old were taken in by the Mormon families in Southern Utah, presumably because they had been judged to be too young to tell others about the massacre.
Leavitt is an Anglo-Norman surname variant or surname and may refer to:
Although the Mountain Meadows massacre was covered to some extent in the media during the 1850s, its first period of intense nationwide publicity began around 1872. This was after investigators obtained the confession of Philip Klingensmith, a Mormon bishop at the time of the massacre and a private in the Utah militia. National newspapers also covered the John D. Lee trials closely from 1874 to 1876, and his execution in 1877 was widely publicized. The first detailed work using modern historical methods was published in 1950, and the massacre has been the subject of several historical works since that time.
Mormon public relations have evolved with respect to the Mountain Meadows Massacre since it occurred on September 11, 1857. After a period of official public silence concerning the massacre, and denials of any Mormon involvement, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took action in 1872 to excommunicate some of the participants for their role in the massacre. Since then, the LDS Church has consistently condemned the massacre, though acknowledging involvement by some local Mormon leaders.
Kanosh was a nineteenth-century leader of the Pahvant band of the Ute Indians of what is now central Utah having succeeded the more belligerent Chuick as principal chief. His band had "a major camp at Corn Creek." He is remembered for having been "friendly toward early Mormon Pioneer settlers."
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was caused in part by events relating to the Utah War, an armed confrontation in Utah Territory between the United States Army and Mormon Settlers. In the summer of 1857, however, Mormons experienced a wave of war hysteria, expecting an all-out invasion of apocalyptic significance. From July to September 1857, Mormon leaders prepared Mormons for a seven-year siege predicted by Brigham Young. Mormons were to stockpile grain, and were prevented from selling grain to emigrants for use as cattle feed. As far-off Mormon colonies retreated, Parowan and Cedar City became isolated and vulnerable outposts. Brigham Young sought to enlist the help of Indian tribes in fighting the "Americans", encouraging them to steal cattle from emigrant trains, and to join Mormons in fighting the approaching army.
The conspiracy and siege of the Mountain Meadows Massacre was initially planned by its Mormon perpetrators to be a short "Indian" attack, against the Baker–Fancher party. But the planned attack was repulsed and soon turned into a siege, which later culminated in the massacre of the remaining emigrants, on September 11, 1857.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950) by Juanita Brooks was the first definitive study of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
The Battle Creek massacre was a lynching of a Timpanogos group on March 5, 1849, by a group of 35 Mormon settlers at Battle Creek Canyon near present-day Pleasant Grove, Utah. It was the first violent engagement between the settlers who had begun coming to the area two years before, and was in response to reported cattle theft by the group. The attacked group was outnumbered, outgunned, and had little defense against the militia that crept in and surrounded their camp before dawn. The massacre had been ordered by Brigham Young, the Utah territory governor and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The formation of the Mormon settlement of Utah Valley soon followed the attack at Battle Creek. One of the young survivors from the group of 17 children, women, and men who had been attacked grew up to be Antonga Black Hawk, a Timpanogos leader in the Black Hawk War (1865–1872).
Thomas Leavitt House, a brick house built in the nineteenth century in Bunkerville, Nevada, United States, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Leavitt is a hamlet in southern Alberta, Canada within Cardston County, located about 13 kilometres (8 mi) west of Cardston on Highway 5. It falls within the Canadian federal electoral district of Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner.
Thomas Rowell "Tom" Leavitt was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the founding settler of Leavitt, Alberta, Canada, which the former Utah sheriff and marshal founded at age 53 after an arduous 800-mile (1,300 km) journey in covered wagons, fleeing a crackdown on polygamy that sent fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across the border to Mexico and Canada.
In 1857, at the time of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Brigham Young, was serving as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as Governor of Utah Territory. He was replaced as governor the following year by Alfred Cumming. Evidence as to whether or not Young ordered the attack on the migrant column is conflicted. Historians still debate the autonomy and precise roles of local Cedar City LDS Church officials in ordering the massacre and Young's concealing of evidence in its aftermath. Young's use of inflammatory and violent language in response to a federal expedition to the territory added to the tense atmosphere at the time of the attack. After the massacre, Young stated in public forums that God had taken vengeance on the Baker–Fancher party. It is unclear whether Young held this view because of a possible belief that this specific group posed a threat to colonists or that they were responsible for past crimes against Mormons. According to historian William P. MacKinnon, "After the war, Buchanan implied that face-to-face communications with Brigham Young might have averted the Utah War, and Young argued that a north–south telegraph line in Utah could have prevented the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
Warren Foote (1817–1903) was a Mormon pioneer and settler. He was captain of a company which crossed the plains from Council Bluffs, Iowa, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in September 1850.
