Mountain Meadows Massacre!
Hill5045
What if John Wayne Gacy could have made the arguement that he owned his
porperty and the victims were on the property so he owned the victims also.
No one would let Gacy get away with that but that's what the Mormon Church is
getting away with. The church owns the property so they also own the victims
of the massacre.
This could only be done if the Mormons completely dominated the state. Where
are all of the apologists that try to tell us that the Mormons have no control
in Utah. Where else (except in a totalitairian country) could the perpetrator
of a crime buy the ground that its' victims were buried in and then argue that
they now own the victims bodies. And then refuse to let researchers find out
the true grotesqueness of this crime, like how many children were really killed
and how many women were shot in the back. How many of the prisoners died
execution style with a bullet behind the ear.
The people will never know, the Mormons own their own crime scene and they
refuse to let us find out.
The one and only true church indeed!
Markg91359
>How powerful do you have to be to buy your own crime scene.
>What if John Wayne Gacy could have made the arguement that he owned his
>porperty and the victims were on the property so he owned the victims also.
What an absurd raving....makes no sense. I think you are a Mormon bigot at
times.
>No one would let Gacy get away with that but that's what the Mormon Church is
>getting away with. The church owns the property so they also own the victims
>of the massacre.
This event occurred in 1857. Its history, not a contemporary crime scene.
>This could only be done if the Mormons completely dominated the state.
The massacre has been thoroughly researched. There isn't anything new.
Mormons and Indians massacred 120 settlers from Arkansas. I fail to see what
Mormon domination of the state has to do with this.
>Where
>are all of the apologists that try to tell us that the Mormons have no
>control
>in Utah. Where else (except in a totalitairian country) could the
>perpetrator
>of a crime buy the ground that its' victims were buried in and then argue
>that
>they now own the victims bodies.
This is just ridiculous, I'm still not getting the point.
>And then refuse to let researchers find out
>the true grotesqueness of this crime,
Read the Juanita Brooks book on it..."Mountain Meadow Massacre". There are
limits to how far you can go with this.
>like how many children were really killed
All children over age 7 were killed, it was revolting to say the least....but
it was also 143 years ago.
>and how many women were shot in the back. How many of the prisoners died
>execution style with a bullet behind the ear.
120 people were killed. I don't dispute the word "murdered" at all.
>The people will never know, the Mormons own their own crime scene and they
>refuse to let us find out.
The church opened its archives to let Juanita Brooks write her book 35 years
ago.
Look the Massacre was horrible....it involved murder of unarmed people.
Mormons were involved. John D. Lee appears to have been the commander of the
whole thing. But, its been thoroughly written up. Plays have been written
about the thing. Articles constantly appear about in the papers on the
anniversary. Honestly, it is time just to accept it as a terrible fact of
history and move on.
It doesn't justify it, but the context cannot be forgotten. It was a but a few
years after the time the Mormons suffered terrible persecutions from people in
that region of the country.
Mark
Hill5045
>Hill wrote:
>
>>How powerful do you have to be to buy your own crime scene.
>>What if John Wayne Gacy could have made the arguement that he owned his
>>porperty and the victims were on the property so he owned the victims also.
>
>
>What an absurd raving....makes no sense. I think you are a Mormon bigot at
>times.
This ugly scar called MMM will remain open as long as the church refuses to let
the scene be studied.
Why am I a bigot just because I wonder how the church got away with buying the
crime scene. You have to admit it is an unusual situation.
Why don't you rebut my premise instead of calling me names.
Whoops! I forgot groupthink has softened your brain, nevermind.
>>No one would let Gacy get away with that but that's what the Mormon Church
>is
>>getting away with. The church owns the property so they also own the
>victims
>>of the massacre.
>
>This event occurred in 1857. Its history, not a contemporary crime scene.
Wrong again Old testament breath. The concerned parties are still fighting
over the scene and the bodies and the misc buttons etc. This problem will stay
current as long as the church makes unilateral discisions on the disposition of
the site and bodies.
>>This could only be done if the Mormons completely dominated the state.
>
>The massacre has been thoroughly researched.
Wrong, yet again! The site and the bodies have not been researched and they
are the most important thing of all.
There isn't anything new.
There was an article in the SL Trib just this week so I will disagree with you
on that.
>Mormons and Indians massacred 120 settlers from Arkansas. I fail to see what
>Mormon domination of the state has to do with this.
Then re-read my comments, I have explained it very well.
>>Where
>>are all of the apologists that try to tell us that the Mormons have no
>>control
>>in Utah. Where else (except in a totalitairian country) could the
>>perpetrator
>>of a crime buy the ground that its' victims were buried in and then argue
>>that
>>they now own the victims bodies.
>
>This is just ridiculous, I'm still not getting the point.
groupthink has dulled the senses!
>>And then refuse to let researchers find out
>>the true grotesqueness of this crime,
>
>Read the Juanita Brooks book on it..."Mountain Meadow Massacre". There are
>limits to how far you can go with this.
Apparantly you don't know me very well!
>>like how many children were really killed
>
>All children over age 7 were killed, it was revolting to say the least....but
>it was also 143 years ago.
But the coverup takes place as we speak. Remember Nixon? It wasn't the
original crime that got him but the coverup!
>>and how many women were shot in the back. How many of the prisoners died
>>execution style with a bullet behind the ear.
>
>120 people were killed. I don't dispute the word "murdered" at all.
>
>>The people will never know, the Mormons own their own crime scene and they
>>refuse to let us find out.
>
>The church opened its archives
so they say, did they open ALL if them? Of course will have to take their word
on that, wont we.
to let Juanita Brooks write her book 35 years
>ago.
>
>Look the Massacre was horrible....it involved murder of unarmed people.
>Mormons were involved. John D. Lee appears to have been the commander of the
>whole thing. But, its been thoroughly written up. Plays have been written
>about the thing. Articles constantly appear about in the papers on the
>anniversary. Honestly, it is time just to accept it as a terrible fact of
>history and move on.
Let's move our attention from the crime to the coverup.
Hank
is was the REAL Mormons who did the MMM and therefore the LDS church was
not involved in any way. Realistically, though, he would claim it was
the anti-polygamists doing the massacre-ing (sp?).
In article <20000908160418...@ng-fg1.aol.com>,
--
Hank
I've upped my standards, now up yours!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Mormon...@webtv.net
Hill5045
> I think thats the trouble with this world is so much presumations and
>little facts. Already you modernize and act of defense for a UN war
>crimes tribrunal. How many Indians did the US killed that same way ? or
>how many Christians or religious orginzations did that to the Mormons?
>Or to the African American slaves? If you can come up with the numbers
>of these and combine it with the Mt. Meadows Massacre I think you'll
>find a big difference between the amount of casulities Mormons did to
>try to defend themselves while at war with the U.S. which at the time
>was a Mostly Christian run Government. But even after all thing you
>blame the Church and not the indiviuals who were involved. They probably
>did because they saw to much being lost over a new religion which didn't
>do nothing to anyone and some much being done to them.....Later
You see, this is the problem. The Mormon Church claims to be the only true
church on the face of the earth and all other churches are deluded. But we
behave just like the other churches. What does that say about our special
status as gods' people.
Where are our fruits of righteousness. Shouldn't the only true church behave
much better than all the false churches.
Just wondering!
G dog
>
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TheJordan6
>Date: Sun, Sep 10, 2000 10:23 EDT
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>
> I think thats the trouble with this world is so much presumations and
>little facts. Already you modernize and act of defense for a UN war
>crimes tribrunal. How many Indians did the US killed that same way ? or
>how many Christians or religious orginzations did that to the Mormons?
>Or to the African American slaves? If you can come up with the numbers
>of these and combine it with the Mt. Meadows Massacre I think you'll
>find a big difference between the amount of casulities Mormons did to
>try to defend themselves while at war with the U.S. which at the time
>was a Mostly Christian run Government.
You have a basic flaw in your assumptions, which is undoubtedly a product an
indoctrination in Mormonism. The Mormons didn't kill the victims of MMM
because they were "defending themselves while at war with the U. S." They
killed them for two primary reasons: One, to avenge the murder of Parley P.
Pratt, who was shot by an Arkansan, Hector McLean. Pratt had "plural married"
McLean's wife, Eleanor; Hector lured Pratt to Arkansas on the pretense of
giving up their children to Eleanor and Pratt to take back to Utah and raise as
Mormons. The "Oath of Vengeance," which every Mormon swore to in the temple
endowment ceremony, mandated death to the killers of the "prophets." Pratt,
being an apostle, was of course also a "prophet." Mormons knew that Pratt was
killed in Arkansas; therefore, when the Fancher train came through, and it was
learned that they came from Arkansas, the Mormons made them the object of their
"vengeance."
The other reason for the MMM was because the Mormons wanted the Fancher party's
cattle and goods. The party had passed through SLC on their way to California;
Brigham Young & Co. had viewed the wealth of the train, and he conspired with
Kanosh, the murderous Paiute chief, to ambush and kill the party, while the
local Mormons hid nearby to divvy up the loot with the Paiutes. The cattle and
other goods were taken back to SLC and delivered to the Tithing Office, which
indicates that the massacre was an officially-directed act form the highest
leaders of the church.
The Fancher party was in no way a threat to the Mormons. Johnson's army was in
Wyoming at the time, heading east towards SLC, while the Fancher party had
already made its way through SLC and into southern Utah, as one of many wagon
trains of emigrants heading to California. So the Mormon contention that the
Fancher party was a threat to the Mormons, or that they were in any way
associated with Johnson's army or the US government in the least, was an excuse
trumped up by Mormons to attempt to justify the murder of 120 men, women and
children.
Hinckley's Mountain Meadows Efforts Made Limited Progress
(The Dilemma of Blame)
Salt Lake Tribune 14Mar00 N6
http://www.sltrib.com/03142000/utah/33530.htm
By Christopher Smith: Salt Lake Tribune
MOUNTAIN MEADOWS, UTAH -- While the LDS Church sought last fall to
heal the wounds opened for 142 years, the legal and practical issues
of the attempt limited what could be said and how it could be
delivered. That, combined with the accidental discovery of the
remains of 29 of the victims thwarted much of what was gained by
building the memorial.
The descendants of the victims have long hoped for some kind of
apology from the LDS Church for the massacre, "What we've felt would
put this resentment to rest would be an official apology from the
church," says Scott Fancher of the Mountain Meadows Monument
Foundation in Arkansas, a group of direct descendants of the victims.
"Not an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgement of neglect and of
intentional obscuring of the truth."
But they weren't to get that, and current Mountain Meadows
Association president Gene Sessions says that the Church can't give
it, "You're not going to get an apology for several reasons, one of
which is that as soon as you say you're sorry, here come the
wrongful-death lawsuits," says Sessions. "If President Hinckley ever
contemplated he was going to open this can of worms he never would
have bothered to do this, because it asks embarrassing questions. It
raises the old question of whether Brigham Young ordered the massacre
and whether Mormons do terrible things because they think their
leaders want them to do terrible things."
LDS author Levi Peterson tries to explain the dilemna that the Church
and Church members face this way, "If good Mormons committed the
massacre, if prayerful leaders ordered it, if apostles and a prophet
knew about it and later sacrificed John D. Lee, then the sainthood of
even the modern church seems tainted," he has written. "Where is the
moral superiority of Mormonism, where is the assurance that God has
made Mormons his new chosen people?" Historian Will Bagley, who has
written a forthcoming book on the tragedy agrees, "The massacre has
left the Mormon Church on the horns of a dilemma," says Utah
historian Will Bagley, author of a forthcoming book on Mountain
Meadows. "It can't acknowledge its historic involvement in a mass
murder, and if it can't accept its accountability, it can't repent."
Another historian, David Bigler, says that part of the problem is
that the Mormons that committed the massacre were different from
today's LDS Church members, "The problem is that Mormons then were
not simply old-fashioned versions of Mormons today," says historian
David Bigler, author of Forgotten Kingdom. "Then, they were very
zealous believers; it was a faith that put great emphasis on the Old
Testament and the Blood of Israel." Sessions says for this reason the
individual members couldn't help getting involved, "Somebody made a
terrible decision that this has got to be done," he says. "I don't
justify it in any way. But I do believe it would have taken more guts
to stay home in Cedar City on those days in 1857 than it would to go
out there to the meadows and take part. You couldn't stay away. You
would have been out there killing people."
The LDS Church isn't alone in having to explain such problems. The
Catholic Church apologized recently for its treatment of the Jews
during its long history, a treatment that is much worse than Mountain
Meadows. And other religious groups have apologized for atrocities
also.
Ever since the massacre, historians have struggled to explain it.
While the massacre has been the subject of alternate explanations,
such as the often used story that Indians were behind the massacre,
historians say the evidence doesn't support these alternatives. The
first major book to deal with the tragedy was LDS historian Juanita
Brooks' "The Mountain Meadows Massacre." Brooks explained the
massacre by pointing out that the emigrants were from an Arkansas
county adjacent to where LDS Apostle Parley P. Pratt had recently
been murdered. Others said that the group included some Missourians
that persecuted Mormons 20 years earlier.
But none of these explanations are entirely satisfying to many
historians. Bagley's forthcoming "Blood of the Prophets" includes new
evidence which supports some assertions and blunts others. Bigler
says that no one explanation will give the whole truth, "When you
have 50 to perhaps more than 70 men participate in an event like
this, you can't just say they got upset," says Bigler, a Utah native.
"We have to believe they did not want to do what they did any more
than you or I would. We have to recognize they thought what they were
doing is what authority required of them. The only question to be
resolved is did that authority reach all the way to Salt Lake City?"
But when Juanita Brooks brought up this issue 50 years ago in "The
Mountain Meadows Massacre," she was labeled an apostate by some.
So it comes as no surprise that President Hinckley, delivering words
of reconciliation at the September 11, 1999 dedication of the rebuilt
monument, added a legal disclaimer, "That which we have done here
must never be construed as an acknowledgment of the part of the
church of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful day," The
disclaimer came at the recommendation of attorneys.
When Hinckley gave an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune on
February 23rd, he was asked where he would place the blame. He told
the Tribune, "Well, I would place blame on the local people. I've
never thought for one minute -- and I've read the history of that
tragic episode -- that Brigham Young had anything to do with it. It
was a local decision and it was tragic. We can't understand it in
this time."
At the dedication, Hinckley declared, "Let the book of the past be
closed," believing it pointless to continue speculating about why the
massacre happened. "None of us can place ourselves in the moccasins
of those who lived there at the time," he said in an interview. "The
feelings that were aroused, somehow, that I cannot understand. But it
occurred. Now, we're trying to do something that we can to honorably
and reverently and respectfully remember those who lost their lives
there."
Sesssions, the Weber State University historian believes that the
issue is slowly reaching that point. He says that Hinckley's efforts
at reconciliation last year "may be the most significant event to
happen in Mountain Meadows since John D. Lee was executed." He says
that attitudes among Church members are changing.
Randy J.
Maroon293
>of a crime buy the ground that its' victims were buried in and then argue
>that
>they now own the victims bodies.
Oooo! Good one! Can I use that?
--Jim
Maroon293
Yes, and it was just was WRONG! And last I heard, Utah is part of the United
States. Was even way back when the church commited this crime.
The Mormons even to this day try to blame the Indians, so don't go all holy on
us with that one.