Nose to the Grindstone

MASSACRE AT MOUNTAIN MEADOWS--A Failed Exercise in Histriography


I am glad that Gordon Hinkley lived long enough to Dedicate
the Mountain Meadows Massacre Monument. My Grandparents had
recently died, but worked so many years in Utah Historical
Preservation of many artifacts. In 1973, my Grandfather
wheedled a museum and two Forest Rangers to see to the museum
construction and babysitting. It is still there, but without
his wooden Indian Nickel with the address and phone number
on the back. He'd press it into the departing visitor's hand
saying, ''Don't take a Wooden Nickel.''

A good caveat for any not rooted in Utah History, confronted
with the huge about of blather that has been written about
19th Century History--the mind must keep and store its deamons,
and a fresh Source is always tittilating.

A Cedar man had a collection of Carriages, and my Grandfather
had a corner where he could show his more important artifacts.
My Grandma kept a DUP Museum above a realtor's.

Mostly the Rangers went on trips with my Grandfather to
Document the settling of Southern Utah. He took them to
Salt Creek to show them how the pioneers had used burlap
to dry briney spring water that leached out of a small
spring for table use, in 1973 he took me to meet them and
we hiked up Fiddler's Canyon where there was a megalith
perhaps 3 or 4 by 10, with the sad history of the tribe,
it may have served as a warning to shamans that some
Southern Utah Shamans traded slaves to the Spanish.

First there was a bareheaded man with a serpents' tongue.
Next came men with hats and a woman and child in a corral.
Lastly came a figure of a handshake, probably indicating
the closing of a trade.

My grandfather had marked where, by looking through a small
deep window, and noting the position of certain rocks, the
quarter and cross quarter days of the year, and other
pertenate dates could be noted and remembered. Higher up
the canyon were broad flat rocks used for ceremonies for the
ill and one for the dying, or the old or sick who felt
their dying day had come.

Good Wonders

This is my Grandfather's term.

Synonyms: A likely thought, interesting, possibly, probably, I don't know but it's likely thought/good wonder, probable hypothesis, likely hypothesis, good hypothesis.

Antonyms: Not likely . . . explanation. I don't figure so.

I wish he were still alive. He developed FMS about the same time I did--when I was nine. This was a pandemic year for what was then called Royal Free Disease after an
Epidemic involving three hundred people associated with The Royal Free Clinic in New South Wales. Studies have shown it to be very similar to various post war diseases and syndromes, some of which are mediated by familial genetics, or the cluster of pathogens transmitted at birth from parents to children.

Severity may be a function of genetic factors, particularly when generations share a
factor which damages the immune system or causes severity through exposure to
major carcinogens or mutagens, or as in the case of the British Millers Disease,
known to run in the families of millers, who worked with grain or flour infested by rodents. My Grandfather and Greatgranfather worked in the ZIon's Cooperative Association Mill in Cedar Canyon.

The Church had a miller who also was a fiddler who was married to my Great Grandmother. She must have loved him. Maybe she could sing, I've never heard.
She traveled with him during her childbirthing years and moved 22 times in
one five year period. Then she wanted to settle down, so she built a small house
with the help of her boys and her oldest daughter, Hannah Gibbs, born in about
1854 in Europe, she was Danish, but Gibbs doesn't sound like a Danish name to me.

Hannah's father joined the Church, but did not continue on to join the Wiily's or Martin Handcart company. Micah Martina Margretta Martina Gibbs Peterson
Elder Smith was a strongly built and robust woman who ran the Post Office during
a Small Pox epidemic when she was Eighty so her youngest daughter could take
her daughters into quarenteen. This was when being Post Mistress involved handling
grain and after the railroad came through, heavy catalogue items.

My Greatgrandmother lost two boys, leaving her with four girls. My grandmother
was strongly built, so to preserve the femininity of the others, she helped her father
with haying and other very heavy work. He died of Typhus when she was thirteen.
He was not robust and suffered from allergies.

The church established Benificial Life and tried to get church members to join. There was a painfull controversy about whether women known to have the sight should qualify. When she saw the death of her husband she realized that she didn't know
where her insurance papers were. She passed her time in waiting, praying that for
once her lights had failed her, and finally found the Insurance papers between the
leaves of a book. This is evidence of the truth of one of my favorite axioms--if you
lose something, really lose it, it's always nearby and probably in the most obvious
place. I am privileged to be old enough to have been held in her arms. She died
in French Camp, California when I was an infant.

I guess that's why I get a strange sense sometimes. I wasn't thinking about the sequahennial anniversity of the Mountain Meadows Massacre when I began this
blog. I had a huge abscess beneath my psoas muscle--after it burst and had
drained through a little rubber catheter the casing was oblong--big enough to
show the darker outline of a number of vertebrae and a large section of large
intestine.

I had a 5MK kidney stone that encapsulated my kidney, concealing it from
the CTT Scan. This ruptured when the radiological surgeon began to work
on the stone. Actually, those in the vacinity all agreed that it exploded. The
noise was so loud that it drew a number of those in the vacinity to mull
over what you call it when that happens. M.E.--sometimes called Post M.E.
in the old British Commonwealth Countries--kills, when it does kill
because there is so much pain that the patient doesn't know when to
call pain, even when localized, an event. I barely made it to the hospital
because the HMO nurses would not put me in contact with the Doctor.
If you call an Ambulance too often, well, it's like crying "wolf."

I've had this for nigh onto 30 years, so far as the time that has passed
since the onset of severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

I suspect that researchers, descendents and church and civil beaurocrats
will be talking about the Monument and the gravesites at the Meadows.
The one on the site matches many other registered monuments throughout
Utah that my Grandparents, Children, and Grandchildren built. You
can't see the beauty of the rocks used from the photos on the Fancher
family site. And I havn't gotten to see them. My Grandmother had died
during a Priesthood blessing before the Monumentment was built.
{My light just blinked off and on again.] I'm sure she is pleased to see
the recognition of our dismal humanity that the Monument represents.

I wish those involved had built it in time for her to help, but she
did throw her weight behind it. Whatever the contention that caused
in town, and she did detest bickering and contention. I think
the site could use some picknic tables and campfire pits, but
then there is the peoblem of Coyotes. There are probably hundred
of small graves containing remains not identifiable by denomination.

The Mountan Meadows Monument

In the mid 1980's, my grandmother, who had done much of
the back labor in excavating John D. Lee's Mill, wrote me to
say that a descendent of one of the victims came to the Lee
family reunion to ask for a formal apology to the families.
My grandmother was involved in the decision to erect a memorial to the victims of their times.

A memorial listing all who are known to have died there was erected on the site with her strong moral and physical support.
Brigham Young hitched a rope to the original gravestone and pulled it down. Mormons of my and previous generations do and did not put crosses on their Gravestones, and the army did
put one on John D. Lee's. He was Brigham Young's adopted son [Gene England, BYU, 1976] and according to Juanita Brookes he quoted the bible when it fell over saying ''Vengence
is mine sayeth the Lord.'' I don't know whether this was on the
Army Cross or not, but the idea that one man could be held accountable for a massacre committed by many the Lord may know, but I certainly do not, neither did Brigham Young.

The massacre was caused by many, complex and hopelessly
intertwined forces, rooted in the genocides of New York, Ohio.
Missouri, Illinois, Winter Quarters, the trail West and the starvation and disease suffered during the trail building in 1847
and the first Winter in the Valley. The drought of that year,crop
failure, and the inability to plant a proper crop due to the strenuous need to evacuate many thousands of people Southward and build housing for them. Every available hand
was involved in the move, the harrassing of Federal troops on the Westward trail in which my Great,Great grandmother's husband Clayborn Elder participated.Young boys piled hay and prepared houses in the City of Salt Lake for quick burning.

The threat of Genocide by an Army from California was real. At the time of the Civil war 1/3 of the Federal Army was stationed on the East banks of the Great Salt Lake and near Cedar City.
They were recalled after the Civil War began at Fort Sumpter.