Editing Mountain Meadows Massacre (section)

===Killings and aftermath===
{{Main|Killings and aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre}}

{{multiple image |direction=horizontal |align=center |total_width=660
|header={{larger|Four of the nine [[Nauvoo Legion|Nauvoo Legion militiamen]] indicted in 1874 for murder or conspiracy}}<br />(''Not shown:'' William H. Dame • William C. Stewart • Ellott Willden • Samuel Jukes • George Adair, Jr.)
|image1=JohnDoyleLee.jpg
|caption1='''[[John D. Lee]]''' - Only suspect convicted and executed. Constable, judge, [[Indian Agent]]. Lee conspired in advance with Haight; led initial siege; falsely offered emigrants safe passage; led unwitting train of victims to their surprise execution.
|image2=Isaac Haight.jpg
|caption2='''[[Isaac C. Haight]]'''— [[Stake (Latter Day Saints)#Stake officers|Stake President]], battalion commander, director of Deseret Iron Company.<ref name=IronMission/>
|image3=John H. Higbee.jpg
|caption3='''John H. Higbee''' - Accused by Lee and others of giving the command to begin the killings.{{sfnp|Lee|1877|p=236}} Higbee later disavowed responsibility and blamed Lee for the massacre.{{sfnp|Bagley|2002|pp=326–329}}
|image4=Philip Klingensmith.jpg
|caption4='''Philip Klingensmith'''- a [[Bishop (Latter Day Saints)|Bishop]] in the church and a [[private (rank)|private]] in the militia. Participated in the killings. After disaffiliation from the LDS Church he [[Turn state's evidence|turned state's evidence]] against his fellow conspirators.
}}
On Friday, September 11, 1857, two militiamen approached the Baker–Fancher party wagons with a white flag and were soon followed by [[Indian Agent]] and militia officer [[John D. Lee]]. Lee told the battle-weary emigrants that he had negotiated a truce with the Paiutes. Under Mormon protection, the wagon-train members would be escorted safely back to Cedar City, {{convert|36|mi|km}} away, in exchange for turning all of their livestock and supplies over to the Native Americans.{{sfnp|Shirts|1994|loc=Paragraph 9}} Accepting this offer, the emigrants were led out of their fortification, with the adult men being separated from the women and children. The men were paired with a militia escort and when the signal was given,{{sfnp|Lee|1877|p=236}} the militiamen turned and shot the male members of the Baker–Fancher party standing by their side. The women and children were then ambushed and killed by more militia that were hiding in nearby bushes and ravines. Members of the militia were sworn to secrecy. A plan was set to blame the massacre on the Native Americans.

[[Image:Image-Nancy Sephrona Huff.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Survivor Nancy Saphrona Huff (4) was taken away along with her family's possessions by John Willis to reside at his house until she was returned to relatives in Arkansas two years later.<ref name=Vengeance/>{{rp|p=80}}]]

The militia did not kill small children who were deemed too young to relate what had happened. Nancy Huff, one of the seventeen survivors and just over four years old at the time of the massacre, recalled in an 1875 statement that an eighteenth survivor was killed directly in front of the other children. "At the close of the massacre there was eighteen children still alive, one girl, some ten or twelve years old, they said was too big and could tell, so they killed her, leaving seventeen."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Huff Cates |first1=Nancy S. |title=The Mountain Meadow Massacre. Statement of one of the Few Survivors. |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/85240667/ |via=[[Newspapers.com]] |newspaper=[[Daily Arkansas Gazette]] |access-date=September 13, 2021 |date=September 1, 1875}}</ref> The survivors were taken in by local Mormon families.{{sfnp|Bagley|2002|p=56|ps=:"Without a Name of a Home –John M. Higbee"}} Seventeen of the children were later reclaimed by the U.S. Army and returned to relatives in Arkansas.{{sfnp|Brooks|1991|pp=101–105}} The treatment of these children while they were held by the Mormons is uncertain, but Captain James Lynch's statement in May 1859 said the surviving children were "in a most wretched condition, half starved, half naked, filthy, infested with vermin, and their eyes diseased from the cruel neglect to which they had been exposed."<ref name=CollectedLegal1/>{{rp|p=247}} Lynch's July 1859 affidavit added that they when they first saw the children they had "little or no clothing" and were "covered with filth and dirt".<ref name=CollectedLegal1>{{cite book |editor1-last=Turley |editor1-first=Richard E. |editor1-link=Richard E. Turley|editor2-last=Johnson |editor2-first=Janiece L. |editor3-last=Carruth |editor3-first=LaJean Purcell |title=Mountain Meadows Massacre: Collected Legal Papers, Initial Investigations and Indictments|volume=1 |publisher=[[University of Oklahoma Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZTopDwAAQBAJ |access-date=September 13, 2021 |date=2017 |isbn=978-0806158952 }}</ref>{{rp|p=250}}<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/60808571/mountain-meadows-massacre-recounting/|title=Mountain Meadows:An Official Accounting of the Atrocity Written in 1859|via=[[Newspapers.com]]|newspaper=[[St. Louis Globe-Democrat]]|date=26 July 1875|volume=1|issue=68|page=1}}</ref>

[[File:Christopher Fancher.jpg|thumb|upright|Survivor Christopher "Kit" Fancher as an adult.]]

[[Leonard J. Arrington]], founder of the Mormon History Association, reports that Brigham Young received the rider, James Haslam, at his office on the same day. When he learned what was contemplated by the militia leaders in Parowan and Cedar City, he sent back a letter stating the Baker–Fancher party was not to be meddled with, and should be allowed to go in peace (although he acknowledged the Native Americans would likely "do as they pleased").<ref name="Brigham Young 1986 p. 257"/><ref name=BYletter/> Young's letter arrived two days too late, on September 13, 1857.

The livestock and personal property of the Baker–Fancher party, including women's jewelry, clothing and bedstuffs were distributed or auctioned off to Mormons.<ref name="King"/><ref>{{Cite news| last=Klingensmith| first=Philip | title=Mountain Meadows Massacre, Affidavit of Philip Klingensmith| editor-last=Toohy| editor-first=Dennis J.| newspaper=Corinne Journal Reporter|date=September 24, 1872 | location=Corinne, Utah | volume=5| issue=252| pages=1| url=http://udn.lib.utah.edu/u?/corinne,5359| access-date=February 11, 2019| via=[[University of Utah]]}}</ref> Some of the surviving children saw clothing and jewelry that had belonged to their dead mothers and sisters subsequently being worn by Mormon women, and the journalist J.H. Beadle said that jewelry taken from Mountain Meadows was seen in Salt Lake City.{{sfnp|Bagley|2002|pp=174–175}}