left without burial. Seventeen children were saved, and afterward distributed in Mormon families.*

In 1859 General Carlton raised a cairn of stones over the bleached skeletons of the emigrants. On one of the stones he caused to be written: "Here lie the bones of

* An Englishman, who, while still very young, married a Mormon woman, but was not himself a convert to the faith, has related to his son the incidents of a journey he made from Utah to California the year after the horrible butchery of the emigrants at Mountain Meadow. He saw the skeletons of some of the victims, and a fine gold watch which had been found close to this locality, and from certain marks was known to have belonged to some one of them. Farther on in this journey he visited a village where some children of the emigrants were housed by different Mormon families. Only one of them was old enough to remember and tell of the story of the massacre. The fate of that child is uncertain, but the others were sent to their relatives in the East for adoption. One of that fated band who were en route for California escaped, and, as Mr. relates, reached a settlement beyond Utah, where he believed he was in safety; but the Indian savages employed by the Mormons in the fiendish work hunted him down, caught him unaware, and actually filled his body with arrows.

An English lady who has visited Utah during her travels in America is responsible for the following story. She says it was related to her by a missionary teacher to whom the experience occurred, in Utah. The lady teacher asked a neighbor, a carpenter, to make some repairs to the schoolhouse. The work was accomplished at noon-time, while the children were away, and the man said one day: "I believe you are a Christian, and I want to ask if you think I can be forgiven for helping in the Mountain Meadow Massacre? I want to tell you; it is on my mind all the time; but if you betray me my life will be of no account." The teacher said she would not betray his confidence, and she believed, whatever his sins might be, they would be forgiven if he repented of them.

The carpenter then told her how a lovely, golden-haired little girl was sent to a spring for water that dreadful day, and that he was one of those commanded to shoot her down. That her look of entreaty was forever before his eyes-and then the strong man wept at the remembrance, while making this confession, of a barbarity that he dared not refuse to accomplish.

one hundred and twenty men, women, and children from Arkansas, murdered on the 10th day of September, 1857." Upon a cross-beam he caused to be painted : Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay

66

it."

Brigham Young ordered this monument to be destroyed, and said the inscription should have read: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I have repaid it." John D. Lee was tried and executed by our Government for his part in the Mountain Meadow butchery. He was but the instrument of Brigham Young's hatred to McLean and the Gentiles generally, and was bound to carry out the malignant wishes of his leader, however willing or unwilling he may have been to do so. To Mormons freedom of thought is as impossible, it is said, as to idiots and to slaves. Elder W. C. Penrose, a church magnate, and editor, at the present time, of the Deseret News, the official church paper, has recently been giving, on successive Sunday evenings in Salt Lake City, some carefully-prepared lectures on "Blood Atonement" and "Mountain Meadow Massacre"-themes upon which hitherto a discreet silence has been kept, or, if alluded to, have been called "absurd Gentile lies" and "mere bugaboos." "His line of defence (writes a correspondent of a Boston paper) concerning the ruthless slaughter of the emigrants, is that they did evil things against the Indians of Southern Utah, and that three or four wicked bishops in those parts concluded not to let them escape from the Territory alive, but wrote to Brigham Young for advice, and then helped the redskins to cut their throats before the messenger returned. The. Mormon monarch knew nothing of the shocking performance until some weeks later, and for thirteen years was duped into the belief that only Indians were concerned in it.

Alas for Penrose! the facts are against his theory. There is not a shadow of doubt that Brigham knew the whole story, and that for nineteen years he did his best to conceal the facts and shield the criminals from justice." It is said that he gave Lee several new wives as a reward for conducting the massacre. The policy of the Mormons in regard to the Indians, whom they call "Lamenites," from the first has been to conciliate them in every way; that every tribe should be visited by their missionaries, to instruct them in their faith, and by intermarriage and every other means to bring them under Mormon control. This influence has been used to prejudice the red men against the United States Government and to stir up the tribes to open hostilities toward unprotected settlements; and in cases of collision between the Mormons and United States troops to assist their professed friends, the Saints. The Danites and the Indians have been allies in ambush fights and murders of travellers through the Territories; and in many horrible deeds of violence, where innocent men, women, and children on the frontiers have been slain by the red men, the incentive for vengeance has been given by Mormon agents. Men wise in the affairs of our nation and in the policy of the Mormon Church have predicted that if Uncle Sam ever rigidly attempts to abolish polygamy and to force the Saints into an outward show of morality, there will be serious trouble; that a civil war will eventuate, in which the " Lamenites" and the Mormons will act as a unit against the Gentiles. The Indians are commonly called "the Battle-axes of the Lord" throughout the Territory. They are a most degraded people, the Mormon missionaries having done little or nothing toward their civilization. Some of the terrible deeds attributed to the Lamenites have been committed

by Mormons painted and dressed as Indians, as the following extract will prove :

"I am in possession of the evidence that bands of these Salt Lake Mormons, armed, dressed, and painted-having the appearance of Indians are stationed on the way to California and Oregon, for the purpose of robbing the emigrants. Many murders and robberies have already been committed by these demons in human shape, which have been published to the world and attributed to the Indians. WILLIAM SMITH."

*

William was the Prophet's brother, and wrote the above nearly eight years before the "Mountain Meadow Massacre."

* "Melchizedek and Aaronic Herald." By Isaac Sheen. Vol. I., No. 8. Covington, Ky., February, 1849.

CHAPTER XI. *

Polygamy in Utah--The Granting of Woman's Suffrage in 1871The Edmunds Bill-Sketch of Brigham Young.

THE Sons of Joseph Smith, the first Mormon Prophet, have denied that their father practised or approved of polygamy at any time in his career; but the evidence against such assertion is so strong and multiplied that we cannot fail to accept it. The best authorities upon this subject state that it was both preached and practised by Smith and his followers at Nauvoo, much to the horror and disgust of his first wife. Indeed, it was one of the sins of the Mormons at Nauvoo which their neighbors held in the greatest dislike, and which made up the sum total of a depravity which they determined to be rid of at any sacrifice. It was Brigham Young's policy immediately after the settlement of the Saints in Zion to have a "revelation" concerning polygamy, or "celestial marriage," for his people. He told them the "peculiar institution" should have the fulness of its glory in Utah, "where the faithful can sit under their own vine and fig-tree, none daring to make them afraid." Marriage was no longer a civil contract; it was to be a sacrament of the church and a sacred tenet of the faith. Nevertheless, Utah belonged to the United States, and it was

* Frequent quotations are made in this chapter from Mrs. Joseph Cook's 66 Face to Face with Mormonism," read before the Woman's Home Missionary meeting in Boston, March 27th, 1884, and Miss Kate Field's lecture entitled the "Mormon Monster," delivered in Boston, in the autumn of 1884.