MASSACRE AT MOUNTAIN MEADOWS An American Legend and a Monumental Crime

Hardback. Few incidents in the history of Western America have aroused more controversy than the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In September, 1857, a large and prosperous group of emigrants, the Fancher Party, was passing through the territory of Utah on its way to California. At Mountain Meadows, where they had stopped to rest and to water and feed their stock, they were ambushed and tricked into surrendering. More than 120 men, women and children were then cold-bloodedly murdered by Indians and members of the Mormon church, some of whom were disguised as Indians. Twenty years later, just a single church member, John D. Lee was tried and executed as the principal agent of the crime, despite overwhelming evidence that he was merely carrying out the orders of his church superiors. The whole story of what really happened at Mountain Meadows and of the events leading up to the massacre will not be found in the history and reference books. The author was the first to delve beyond the "facts" of the crime that had long been accepted. Through painstaking research into contemporary sources including eyewitness accounts and official government documents and reports, and through his discovery of the testimony of a "missing witness" who had travelled with the doomed Fancher Party until shortly before the massacre, he tells a far different and horrifying story. He clearly demonstrates that the massacre of the Fancher Party was not an isolated incident but the logical and culminating act of a society whose leaders believed themselves superior to the rest of mankind and who maintained that their own ecclesiastical laws took precedence over the laws of their country. This was the first complete account of one of the most calculated and shameful mass murders in the violent history of America's violent frontier. With Appendix, Notes, Bibliog. and Index. 317pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Vg+ in sl. frayed and torn Nr. Vg. dw.