Complaints against the Emigrants

As the Baker-Fancher party arrived in Salt Lake City, reports came in that the party had some wild men from Missouri travelling with them. Missouri was one of the places the Mormons had been driven out from, so when it was learned that men travelling with the Baker-Fancher party had been speaking about how the Mormons needed to be wiped out, the whole party was judged. The party faced further difficulties in Salt Lake when Brigham Young and his advisors forbade selling grain to outsiders. Gunpowder and lead were also in short supply in Salt Lake, something that the Baker-Fancher party was in need of. It is worth noting that the emigrant party travelled with about fifty thousand dollars worth of goods and property (1857 value), more than other emigrant trains and most residents in southern Utah.

The Baker-Fancher party ran into additional problems soon after leaving Salt Lake. The emigrant group needed a place for their cattle to feed and graze, yet there was not as much public land for passing cattle to feed on as there had been in years’ past. The party instead got into a dispute with settlers in Provo about where the cattle should graze, with the groups nearly coming to blows. The problem persisted as the party moved south. The following map shows the trail south through the territory that the emigrant party would have taken.

The Baker-Fancher party was also accused of poisoning water and cattle along the road. George A. Smith, travelling northward on his way back from his tour of southern Utah, and his party testified that the emigrants offered an ox who died during the night to the local Native Americans for food. One of Smith’s party said they saw the emigrants pour something over the ox, but others later refuted his story. Regardless of evidence, the belief that the emigrants had poisoned the area persisted as several died and those who handled the cattle got sick. When the news reached Cedar City about the poisoning, the story brought with it increased anger against the emigrants. A few years later, in 1859, an investigation proved that the emigrants did not poison the water or the cattle.

Figure 1

When the Baker-Fancher party arrived in Cedar City, they again faced trouble trying to trade for supplies. Years later Cedar City residents recalled the emigrants loudly venting their frustration about not being able to get supplies, saying if “old Brigham, and his priests would not sell their provisions, by G-d they would take what they wanted any way they could get it.” Additionally, some Cedar City residents heard Isaac Haight, mayor and religious leader of Cedar City, give a speech that outlined the supposed wrong-doings the emigrant group committed on their way South. Another belief that persisted about the Baker-Fancher party was that some emigrants had boasted that they possessed a gun that killed Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This belief further incensed Cedar City residents against the emigrants. No one in the emigrant party has ever been found to be linked to the murder of Joseph Smith.

1. T. B. H. Stenhouse, The Rocky Mountain Saints: A Full and Complete HIstory of the Mormons, from the First Vision of Joseph Smith to the Last Courtship of Brigham Young (New York: D. Appleton, 1989), 427-29.

2. Daniel H. Wells, General Orders, Aug. 1, 1857, Letter Book, 93, Nauvoo Legion (Utah) Adj. Gen., Records, 1851-70, Church History Library.

3. In 2007, the value of the emigrant’s property was valued at over a million dollars. Walker, Turley, and Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy, 105. See Appendix B in that work for a full breakdown of prices.

4. McQuarrie to Lund, 6-7, Collected Material concerning the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Church History Library.

5. Silas Smith, JDL I-BT 5:221, 237-39; Hamblin Journal, 81-82, in Hamblin Papers; Smith to St. Clair, Nov. 25, 1869, Historian’s Office, Letterpress Copybook 2:941-49, CHL.

6. Joleen Ashman Robison, Almon Robison, Utah Pioneer, Man of Mystique and Tragedy (Lawrence, KS: Richard A. Robison, 1995), 83.

7. J. Forney to A.B. Greenwood, Sept. 29, 1859, in Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, for the Year 1859 (Washington: George W. Bowman, 1860),, 370; James Henry Carleton, Report on the Subject of the Massacre at the Mountain Meadows, in Utah Territory, in September, 1857, of One Hundred and Twenty Men, Women and Children, Who Were from Arkansas (Little Rock, AR: True Democrat Steam Press, 1860), 17.

8. “Lee’s Confession,” Sacramento Daily Record-Union, Mar. 24, 1877.; “Lee’s Last Confession,” San Francisco Daily Bulletin Supplement, Mar. 24, 1877.

9. Campbell, Andrew Jenson interviews, Jan. and Feb. 1892, Mountain Meadows file, Andrew Jenson, Collection, Church History Library.

10. Cedar City Ward, Parowan Stake, Relief Society Minute Book, Sept. 10, 1857, CHL.

Figure 1. Walker, Turley, and Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy, 102. Map by Sheryl Dickert Smith and Tom Child.