There were two routes from the East. One, the northern, by the Oregon Trail, and the other, the southern, by way of the Santa Fé Trail, both starting from Westport, now Kansas City. A few years before they had started from Independence, some miles farther east. The Oregon Trail was followed as far as Fort Bridger,[108] a post established by the famous trapper of that name, on Ham's Fork in Green River Valley, 1843, and also as far as the great bend of Bear River, when the immigrants made for Salt Lake and thence by way of the Humboldt to and over the Sierras; or south about on the trail of Escalante and Jedediah Smith, till it struck the old Wolfskill (Spanish) Trail, which was then followed down the west side of the Wasatch Range to the Mountain Meadows on the head of the Santa Clara, across the Beaver Dam Mountains, down the Virgin nearly to the Colorado, and then across southern California. From Santa Fé two routes were open; one by way of the Gila and the other northward over Wolfskill's trail, the "Old Spanish Trail," to Green River at Gunnison Valley, and then across the mountains to join the other trail coming down from Salt Lake not far from the present town of Nephi. The northern route by the Humboldt was the one most travelled. The interesting incidents connected with these trails and the California gold rush would fill a volume. There were battles, scalpings, starvation, captivity, and privations of all kinds. Sometimes a whole family was destroyed at one blow, as in the case of Oatman, who had ventured on without company. He was attacked by Apaches on the Gila, the slaughter being speedy and, as the murderers thought, complete, excepting two daughters, whom they sold to the Mohaves. A son, however, recovered sufficiently to escape. One of the daughters died; the other was discovered five years later by Henry Grinell, and was bought by him from her Mohave owners and sent to her brother in Los Angeles.[109]
Another affair which stirred the outer world a few years after this, 1857, was the "Mountain Meadows Massacre." Just at this moment, owing to a quarrel between the Federal Government and Brigham Young, a small army under Colonel Albert Sydney Johnston, famous later as a Confederate leader, was sent in a half-hearted and futile way against the Mormons. This move was a great error on the part of the authorities, and it hardly appears as if they were in earnest. Either a well-equipped, powerful army should have been sent that could have reduced the Mormons if they had done anything deserving such treatment, which appears not to have been the fact, or they should have been dealt with by arbitration and argument as free-born citizens of the United States. The army operations were a ridiculous fiasco, but nevertheless gave the Mormons ground for the assertions that they were invincible. A caravan of one hundred and fifty people from the Arkansas-Missouri region was now on its way from Salt Lake to California by the southern trail. Between people from that region and the Mormons there had always been bitter feeling, and it was now aggravated by the presence of the threatening army and by contemptuous taunts which the immigrants are said to have freely spread along their route, accompanied by vile epithets. It is also said that they stole fowls and other property and abused those who remonstrated. The result was that when they reached Mountain Meadows, where they intended, as was the custom, to rest before starting on the more difficult journey beyond, they were attacked by a number of natives and Mormon fanatics. The attack was a local matter and had no authority then or afterwards from the officials of the Church. The immigrants were well armed and made a good fight, believing the attacking party to be natives all. When the Mormon participants appeared on the scene and told the Gentiles if they would lay down their arms the Mormons would guarantee safe exit from the valley, they accepted the proposition as an honourable one; they were anxious to spare their wives and children further exposure. They went forth, therefore, in confidence, but as they neared the south end of the valley the miscreants, as treacherous as the lowest savage, violated without compunction their pledge. The immigrants were coolly butchered, for they were now helpless. Only a few little children were spared, and John D. Lee, the leader of the Mormon villains, perpetrated, according to account, crimes unspeakable in connection with murder of the most cold-blooded character.
In Council.
General Sherman Third from Left of White Group.
Photograph from United States Government.
A pile of stones was reared on the spot where the bodies were buried, and as one looks down upon it to-day from the waggon-road, which runs somewhat farther up the slope than at that time, the grim spectres of Death and Dishonour appear still to hover above the scene of blood; where savages were put to shame in an exhibition of terrible depravity. A dismal pall seems to pervade the once pure valley and doubtless always will. At the north end the cutting of floods in the stream-bed has destroyed a large part of the tillable soil, and springs that once flowed abundantly have disappeared. Several houses stand there, but they have a forlorn and dilapidated appearance. The hand of Fate has laid a blight on the place, and it will yet be many a long year before that awful tragedy will not live again as the traveller passes over the fatal road. No Mormon I have ever met thought for a moment of excusing the action of the fanatics who led the massacre. On the contrary, it has always been unequivocally condemned.
Even Lee was at least ashamed of the part he played, and he tried to persuade me in 1872 that he was innocent, that he attempted to prevent the crime, and that he had wept when he found it was to be done. Yet immediately after the event he admitted to other Mormons that he had taken part. He was "cut off" from the Church and for years lived an outlawed life in the most inaccessible places, but he was caught and, in 1877, executed at the scene of his hideous deed. The massacre was most unlucky for the Mormons, as the world refused to believe that it was not secretly sanctioned. Unfortunately for the poor immigrants one man who probably could have saved them, and who certainly would have tried desperately to do it, was absent from his home at the Meadows at that time, being on his way to Salt Lake. This was Jacob Hamblin, the Leatherstocking of Utah, or "Old Jacob," as he was familiarly called when I knew him some fourteen years after the massacre. On another occasion when a fanatic, stationed on the Muddy to assist immigrants, concluded to kill a man, and said to Jacob, "This man must go up," Jacob answered, "If he does I go up first, mark that," and the man went free and never knew his danger; for it would have been a reckless nature that would have dared to oppose the wrath of Old Jacob.
Had he been at Mountain Meadows on that awful day he would have saved the immigrants or would have died with them.