Setting history straight

The date is etched in blood in Utah and Mormon church history and, on a more intimate level, the family trees of people like Karen Maxwell, a mother of eight and choir teacher from Salt Lake City.

On Sept. 11, 1857, Mormon militiamen led the slaughter of 120 men, women and children on a wagon train bound for California in an incident known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Chief among the instigators was Isaac Haight, a local militia and church leader. Several generations later, Mrs. Maxwell would come to know of him as her grandfather’s grandfather.

For years, Mormon church officials downplayed the role Mormons played in the mass killing, first blaming Indians and then finding a scapegoat in church member John D. Lee, the only man executed for his role.

Now, a new book drawing on existing material and documents previously unavailable to scholars lays the blame largely on southern Utah church and militia leaders. They were otherwise good people, the authors say, who were caught up in the frenzy of the times and took up guns to try to cover up terrible mistakes.

The long-awaited release of “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” forces a re-examination of a dark episode for a faith community that puts families first. Mormons believe the family unit lasts for eternity, dutifully practice genealogy and cherish their pioneer past. So for descendants of massacre perpetrators, the book’s gritty detail and naming of names can bring a painful reckoning.

Some are learning for the first time about their ancestors’ culpability. Others, like Mrs. Maxwell, are learning new details. She knew of Mr. Haight’s role, but didn’t know his wife took in 17 young emigrant children who were spared. She also discovered that another ancestor refused to take part.

“It’s important to know you had an ancestor who was out there,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “It personalizes it and brings it home and makes you ask yourself some of the important questions. What would I have done? If my ancestors did that, am I capable of doing this? We need to realize how something like this can come about.”

The new volume is the work not of Mormon critics but former or current employees of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church. Among them is assistant church historian Richard Turley, who said church leaders fully endorsed the “no-holds-barred, let-the-chips-fall-as-they-may” approach.

“Our feeling was we just had to face it head-on, let people deal with the truth and not with mythology,” Mr. Turley said. “I know it’s very uncomfortable, and I’ve gotten a lot of hate mail. People have said, ‘Why peel off the scab?’ It’s because the wound is not healing. It needs major surgery.”

He and co-authors Ronald Walker and Glen Leonard relied on hundreds of researchers rifling through archives nationwide, a specialist in 19th century shorthand and newly available accounts from massacre participants from the archives of the First Presidency, the church’s highest governing body.

The book tells the story in narrative form:

Utah was a tinderbox in September 1857. Concerned about the Mormon practice of polygamy (disavowed by the church in 1890) and a blooming theocracy out West, President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a perceived rebellion. Mormons already driven from other states feared exile or death.

Mormon leaders girding for war ordered that no guns or grain be sold to emigrants, heightening tensions with California-bound settlers. Against that backdrop entered the Fancher-Baker wagon train, a group of mostly young families from Arkansas but also a few provocateurs who allegedly taunted the Mormons.

Judging the emigrants a threat, southern Utah Mormon leaders engineered what they hoped would appear to be an Indian attack on the wagon train at Mountain Meadows, a grazing spot.

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