A gruesome vigil.

[**The following takes place in a Mormon camp, later known as “Camp Israel,” during their exodus West in 1846.**] >The battalion left behind a camp at Mount Pisgah overcome with disease. So many of the Mormon refugees were dying of cholera, pneumonia, and malnutrition, especially the young, that burial parties working day and night could not keep up with the calamity. In dozens of cabins and shelters, parents sat a gruesome vigil over their dead children until graves were dug, constantly waving off the plump bluebottle Iowa flies that swarmed over the bodies. A plague of “black canker” that darkened the limbs had wiped out a third of the settlers – “the graveyards on the bluffs filling so fast that some of the dead could not even be given burial robes,” wrote DeVoto. __________________________ **Source:** Denton, Sally. “Winter Quarters – Council Bluffs, 1846.” *American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857.* Vintage Books, 2004. 51-2. Print.