The Mountain Meadows Massacre, easily the darkest and most violent episode in our church's history,

happened on September 11, 1857, when a group of Latter-day Saints, aided by some Paiute Native Americans,

participated in the wholesale slaughter of around

120 men, women, and children belonging to a wagon train of emigrants from Arkansas, en route

to California. This atrocity occurred against the backdrop of the 1857 Utah War, when the

feelings of Latter-day Saints were already set on edge.

As federal U.S. troops marched toward Utah with unknown intentions,

church leaders used defiant rhetoric and counseled the Saints,

who had been victims of government-sanctioned violence before,

to conserve their resources and be ready for anything.

It was in this unfortunate atmosphere of hysteria that

those in the Arkansas wagon train found themselves as they passed through Utah. So by the time

these emigrants purportedly said and did offensive things towards some Latter-day Saints,

the stage had already been tragically set for the highly irrational and totally unjustified violent response they received in return.

Today on Church History Matters, we walk through the details of how this atrocity unfolded under the direction of local Latter-day Saint leaders,

and think about what possible lessons we in the present might glean from this darkest

hour of our history. I'm Scott Woodward and my co-host is Casey Griffiths. And today Casey and I

dive into our sixth episode in this series on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint history. Now let's get into it.

Hello Casey. Hello. Once again, Scott, how are you?

I'm doing good. We are.

You took a deep breath. You were like, okay. We're talking about some pretty heavy stuff today, Casey.

That was the deep breath.

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