Mountain Meadows Massacre
Collected Legal Papers, Initial Investigations and Indictments
Edited by Richard E. Turley, Janiece L. Johnson and LaJean Purcell Carruth
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
560 Pages | 7 x 10 | 4 b&w illus., 8 tables
$65.00
On September 11, 1857, a group of Mormons aided by Paiute Indians brutally murdered some 120 men, women, and children traveling through a remote region of southwestern Utah. Within weeks, news of the atrocity spread across the United States. But it took until 1874—seventeen years later—before a grand jury finally issued indictments against nine of the perpetrators. Mountain Meadows Massacre chronicles the prolonged legal battle to gain justice for the victims.
The editors of this two-volume collection of documents have combed public and private manuscript collections from across the United States to reconstruct the complex legal proceedings that occurred in the massacre’s aftermath. This exhaustively researched compilation covers a nearly forty-year history of investigation and prosecution—from the first reports of the massacre to the dismissal of the last indictment in 1896. Volume 1 contains the first half of the story: the records of the official investigations into the massacre and transcriptions of all nine indictments. Eight of those indictments never resulted in a trial conviction, but the one that did is documented extensively in Volume 2.
Historians have long debated the circumstances surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the most disturbing and controversial events in American history, and painful questions linger to this day. This invaluable, exhaustively researched collection allows readers the opportunity to form their own conclusions about the forces behind this dark moment in western U.S. history.
The editors of this two-volume collection of documents have combed public and private manuscript collections from across the United States to reconstruct the complex legal proceedings that occurred in the massacre’s aftermath. This exhaustively researched compilation covers a nearly forty-year history of investigation and prosecution—from the first reports of the massacre to the dismissal of the last indictment in 1896. Volume 1 contains the first half of the story: the records of the official investigations into the massacre and transcriptions of all nine indictments. Eight of those indictments never resulted in a trial conviction, but the one that did is documented extensively in Volume 2.
Historians have long debated the circumstances surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the most disturbing and controversial events in American history, and painful questions linger to this day. This invaluable, exhaustively researched collection allows readers the opportunity to form their own conclusions about the forces behind this dark moment in western U.S. history.
Richard E. Turley Jr. is Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Books he has authored, coauthored, or edited include Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy, and Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Andrew Jenson and David H. Morris Collections.
Janiece L. Johnson is Visiting Professor of Religion at Brigham Young University, Idaho.
LaJean Purcell Carruth is a historian for the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a transcriber of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century documents written in Pitman, Taylor, and Pernin shorthands.
“Richard E. Turley, Janiece L. Johnson, and LaJean Purcell Carruth have done a great service in offering the Mountain Meadows Massacre papers to the general public. The editors present the documents with an even hand, and the introductions carefully analyze each source.”—Thomas G. Alexander, author of Brigham Young, The Quorum of the Twelve, and the Latter-day Saint Investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre