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Captain Alexander Fancher's California-bound emigrant party

(Murdered during the Utah War by Mormon militiamen pretending to be warring Indians in the Mountain Meadows massacre, September 11, 1857)

As memorialized on The Mountian Meadows mounument in Boone County, Arkansas (erected in Harrison in 1955), a number of parties of left Arkansas in the spring of 1857 bound for California. According to Lynn-Marie Fancher and Alison C. Wallner's 1857: An Arkansas Primer To The Mountain Meadows Massacre

A few of these settlers left in early April of 1857 from Beller's Stand, near the homestead farm of Captain John Twitty Baker, that was located near Harrison. In 1857 this area was part of Carroll County. Later boundary changes set this Harrison area within Boone County.... In addition to the Fancher Train...there were many other wagon trains that joined up along the way, broke off, or joined up again. Those other wagon trains included the Poteet-Tackett Train, the Crooked Creek Train, the Campbell Train, the Parker Train, the Baker Train, and others.(Some of these trains escaped the Massacre.) The Baker Train, named for Captain John Twitty Baker, was the last to arrive in Utah of those who had chosen to join up in Salt Lake and travel south together through Utah....

The Fancher and the Huff parties both left from Benton County, Arkansas, the Poteet-Tackett-Jones party (These three men were relatives) from Johnson County, the Baker party from Carroll County near present day Harrison, the Cameron the the Miller parties (previously from the Osage area) left from Johnson County and the Mitchell, the Dunlap, and the Prewitt parties left from Marion County. They all left at different times with sometimes individuals joining and others leaving the particular parties along the way. John Baker's party was the last to arrive with the rest who had gathered in Salt Lake City, the Fancher party having waited there for more than a week for others to arrive to join up with them, at which time the settlers faced the decision of either taking the northern route towards their hoped-for destination, which would entail their traveling westward across the dessert and Sierra Mountains and then southward through California, or the southern route which would carry them through the settlements in Utah. One couple among those assembled parties did set off westward to safety while the others in her family continued on with the others only to be murdered at Mountain Meadows. (See the deposition made years later by Melinda Cameron.)However about forty families set off southward under under Captain Alexander Fancher as their wagonmaster. Fancher was and experienced leader and cattle driver who had traveled from Arkansas to California twice before in 1850 and 1853, as confirmed by the 1850 census and Fancher family correspondence.

Although there were (/may have been) California-bound Missouri emigrants laying over in Salt Lake that August of 1857 who did have longstanding grivances with the Mormons who had been expelled from Missouri some 19 years earlier (See Mormon War), as a Fancher family historian has said, "There were no known Missourians associated with the Arkansas Emigrant wagon trains. None of the known victims were from Missouri, they were all from Arkansas."

As it was, at the start of the Utah War in 1857, territorial Governor Brigham Young had sealed the border of Utah and forbidden the people from supplying the emigrant companies passing through and also instructed the territorial militia not to protect them from marauding Indians.

With regard an early pile of rock marker that the U.S. Army had placed over the mass grave of the massacred victims, the Fancher family historian has said:

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Mark Twain's comments in 1891

Mark Twain wrote about his understanding of the massacre, based on common public perceptions of Americans during the late 1880s, in Appendix B of Roughing It, published in 1891:

A party of Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of emigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses of their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for five days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the sort of scurvy apologies for "Indians" which the southern part of Utah affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them.

At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They retired to the upper end of the "Meadows," resumed civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrants saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with cheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag of truce!

The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President Haight and Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served a term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next proceeded:

"They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and represented them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having (apparently) visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages; which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leaving everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to the settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, and subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost all shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all the emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and bloody murders known in our history."

Links

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Also see

• Mountain Meadows Massacre
• Mormon Reformation (1856-1858)
• Utah War (1857-1858)