These images relate to the Mountain Meadows Massacre (September 7–11, 1857), an event that saw Mormon frontier soldiers attack and kill 140 innocent Arkansans, who were part of the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon, as they crossed the Utah Territory. The massacre was retaliatory, as Mormon “Apostle,” Parley P. Pratt, had been killed by one of his wives estranged ex-husbands, in Arkansas, that same year, albeit in a completely unrelated incident, and did not involve these particular Arkansans. This massacre is an early example of murderous Mormon thuggery, of which, is often a response to “violations” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ theocratic dogmas.
These scenes are of Mormon visits to the site of the massacre, a monument to the victims in Arkansas, John D. Lee’s tomb, the gravestone of William C. Stewart, one of the Mountain Meadows Massacre assassins, and at the very bottom, a news article on the execution of John Doyle Lee, one of the Mormon perpetrators/murderers.
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