[The following takes place during the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Context of the event, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a series of attacks on the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train, at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. The attacks began on September 7, 1857, and culminated on September 11, 1857, resulting in the mass slaughter of the emigrant party by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district and purportedly aided by Native American allies. The extent to which Native Americans participated in the massacre is disputed and up until recent decades much of the blame for the massacre was unjustly attributed to the Native Americans. The militia, officially called the Nauvoo Legion, was composed of southern Utah's Mormon settlers (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS Church). Intending to leave no witnesses and thus prevent reprisals, the perpetrators killed all the adults and older children—about 120 men, women, and children in total. Seventeen children, all younger than seven, were spared.”]
When the emigrant men reached those troops, they smiled and waved, letting out a cheer of gratitude to their supposed protectors. The men came to a smooth open patch surrounded by oak brush; suddenly, Higbee sat erect in his saddle, fired a shot into the air, and gave the fateful order to his brethren: “Halt! Do your duty!” Or, as some later reported, it was not Higbee but either Lee or Klingensmith who shouted, “Halt! Do your duty to Israel!” With that, each Mormon shot the emigrant man next to him. The Mormon apostate refugees, who were still wearing their endowment garments, were “blood atoned” by the ritual slitting of throats.
”Higbee, I wouldn’t do this to you,” a wounded apostate pleaded with the man he recognized as a Cedar City elder.
”You would have done the same to me or just as bad,” Higbee reportedly said before cutting the man’s throat.
Most of the men died instantly, and those who attempted to escape were “picked off by a second firing” or chased by armed horsemen who had been bringing up the rear. At the sound of the shots, the women and children began yelling and running. Higbee then gave the order to kill them all.
[…]
”From the survivors went up such a piercing, heart-rending scream – such a shriek of blank despair – then the flight of all except one young woman, who sprang to Lee, and clung to him for protection,” read one account of the mayhem. The children in the first wagon huddled together. One-year-old Sarah Dunlap was shot in the elbow, sending all of the children into a frenzy. “One of the Mormons ran up to the wagon, raised his gun and said ‘Lord my God, Receive these spirits. It is for Thy Kingdom that I do this,’“ reported Sallie Baker. She then watched as McMurdy fired at two men who were comforting each other, killing them both with one bullet. She saw the wagon driver bludgeon a fourteen-year-old boy to death with the butt of a gun. “In the midst of all the confusion the two Dunlap girls Ruth, 14, and Rachel, 16, made a wild dash across the valley to some scrub oak thinking they were safe but evidence showed they suffered far worse than the other women.”
Afterward it was reported that the two sisters were raped, stripped of their clothing, and then brutally murdered by Lee after they promised to love him and obey him all their lives – a charge Lee would deny for the rest of his own life. Rebecca and Louisa Dunlap saw their twin sisters, Lucinda and Susannah, killed, and would later identify their murderers.
Source:
Denton, Sally. “Mountain Meadows, September 7-11, 1857.” American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857. Vintage Books, 2004. 137-38. Print.
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