The Beginning to the End

When I began this blog it was 3 months before the Memorial at Mountain Meadows where LDS President Hinkley's soon to be Counsellor placed the massacre on failures of judgement among
the local Church Leaders. Cheif among these was the failure to
wait for orders from their superiors. It was a long way to California and there was plenty of time to decide to do at the
proper level of authority.

The panic of Southern Utah saints, far better understood by our
current understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, than
by the evil that lies in the hearts of otherwise honorable men.

My assesment of the situation springs from deep family roots.
My Great Grandfather was Bishop of the Cedar City Ward,
and I have dealt with what my Grandfather overheard and told me, and the information readily available in the California
Library system when I was a teen.

I know that other members of my family want to write accounts
of what my Grandfather told them, and so I have held to my
own opiions and conversations I had with Gene England of BYU who was interviewing in Canada and Saint George at the time
I was talking to my Grandfather about it.

I hope more written material is found, but since the saints
living in California were doing so very quietly, while massacres of Ohlone Indians were happening all around them--
a Genocide of 40,000 Ohlones, more than 100 times the number of Navahos killed on their trail of tears, information is hard to come by.

A boyfriend of mine was standing in a small store behind a man
who signed his check W.W.Phelps, the musician who wrote
Come Come Ye Saints, a kind of anthem when I was growing up.
They had a long and interesting conversation in the parking lot. It was near the Centerville Community established by
Ssmuel Brannon for the early California Saints. How many
such opportunities were lost in the writing of Massacre at
Mountain Meadows.