History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

550 THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.
ranges of hills, some fifty feet high and four hundred
yards apart. On either side of their camp were ravines
connected with the bed of the stream.
It was Saturday evening
when the Arkansas families
encamped at Mountain Meadows.
On the sabbath they
rested, and at the usual hour
one of them conducted divine
service in a large tent, as had
been their custom throughout
the journey. At daybreak on
the 7th, while the men were
lighting their camp-fires, they
were fired upon by Indians, or
white men disguised as Indians,
and more than twenty
were killed or wounded, 13 their
cattle having been driven off
Moitntain Meadows.
meanwhile by the assailants,
who had crept on them under
cover of darkness. The sur-
vivors now ran for their wagons, and pushing them
together so as to form a corral, dug out the earth
deep enough to sink them almost to the top of the
wheels; then in the centre of the inclosure they made
a rifle-pit large enough to contain the entire company,
strengthening their defences by night as best they
could. Thereupon the attacking party, which numbered
from three to four hundred, withdrew to the
hills, on the crests of which they built parapets,
whence they shot down all who showed themselves
outside the intrenchment.
The emigrants were now in a state of siege, and
though they fought bravely, had 1 ittle hope of escape.
All the outlets of the valley were guarded; their am-
13 Seven were killed and sixteen wounded. Lee's Confession, in Mormonism
Unvailed, 226-7; see also Forney's Rept, in Sen. Doc, 3Gth Cong. 1st Sess.,
ii. no. 42, p. 88.