The Great Salt Lake Trail

by Henry Inman; Buffalo Bill

The men now resumed their march, the militia forming in single file, each one walking by the side of an emigrant, and carrying his musket on the left arm. As soon as the women were close to the ambuscade, Higbee, who was in charge of the detachment, gave a signal, which had evidently been prearranged, by saying to his command, “Do your duty”; and the horrible butchery commenced. Most of the men were shot down at the first fire. Three only escaped from the valley; of these, two were quickly run down and slaughtered; the third was slain at Muddy Creek, some fifty miles distant.

The women and those of the children who were on foot ran forward some two or three hundred yards, when they were overtaken by Indians, among whom were some Mormons in disguise. The women fell on their knees, and with clasped hands sued in vain for mercy, clutching the garments of their murderers. Children pleaded for life, but the steady gaze of innocent childhood was met by the demoniac grin of the savages, who brandished over them uplifted knives and tomahawks. Their skulls were battered in, or their throats cut from ear to ear, and, while still alive, the scalp was torn from their heads. Some of the little ones met with a more merciful death, one, an infant in arms, being shot through the head by the same bullet that pierced its father's heart. Of the women none were spared, and of the children only those who were not more than seven years of age.

To two of Lee's wagoners was assigned the duty, so called, of slaughtering the sick and wounded. Obeying their instructions, they stopped their teams and despatched their unfortunate victims. Some were shot; others had their throats cut.

The massacre was now completed, and after stripping the bodies of all articles of value, Brother Lee and his associates went to breakfast, returning after a hearty meal to bury their dead.

It was a ghastly sight that met their eyes on their return, and one that caused even the assassins to shudder and turn pale. The bodies had been entirely denuded by the Indians. Some of the corpses were horribly mangled and nearly all of them scalped. The dead were piled in heaps in a ravine near by and a little earth thrown over them. This was washed off by the first rains, leaving the remains to be devoured by wolves and coyotes.

It was not until two years after the massacre that they were decently interred, by a detachment of United States troops sent for that purpose from Camp Floyd.

On arriving at Mountain Meadows, the soldiers found skulls and bones scattered for the space of a mile around the ravine, where they had been dragged by the wolves. Nearly all of the bodies had been gnawed by those ghouls of the desert, so that few could be recognized, as their dismembered skeletons were bleached by the sun. Many of the skulls had been crushed by the butts of muskets, or cloven with tomahawks; others were shattered by firearms discharged close to the head.

A few remnants of apparel, torn from the backs of women and children as they ran from their merciless pursuers, still fluttered among the bushes, and near by were masses of human hair, matted and trodden in the earth.

Over the last resting-place of the victims was erected a cone-shaped cairn, twelve feet high. Against its northern base was a slab of rough granite with the following inscription: “Here 120 men, women, and children were massacred in cold blood, early in September, 1857. They were from Arkansas.” Surmounting the cairn was a cross of cedar, inscribed with the words: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

The survivors of the awful slaughter were seventeen children, from two months to seven years of age, who were carried, on the evening of the massacre, by John D. Lee and others to the house of Jacob Hamblin, and afterward placed in charge of Mormon families at various points in the territory. All of them were recovered in the summer of 1858, with the exception of one, who was rescued a few months later, and though thinly clad, they bore no marks of ill-usage. In 1859 they were conveyed to Arkansas, the Congress of the United States having appropriated ten thousand dollars for their rescue and restoration to relatives.