War Hysteria Preceding The Mountain Meadows Massacre - Interactions On Road Toward Mountain Meadows

Interactions On Road Toward Mountain Meadows

The Mormons considered the emigrants of an alien status because of Young's orders forbidding travel through Utah without a required pass – which the Baker–Fancher party did not have. However, Captains Baker and Fancher may not have been aware of Young's martial law order since it was not made public until September 15, 1857.

The Fancher and Duke parties (respectively from Arkansas and Missouri) having assisted each other on their western journeys, it was believed by some locals that the Fancher party was joined by eleven members of a Missouri militia calling itself the "Wildcats". (Yet there is debate on whether these miners and plainsmen stayed with the slow-moving Baker-Fancher party after leaving Salt Lake City, or actually existed.)

Meanwhile the Mormons that the Baker-Fancher train encountered along the way were obeying Young's order to stockpile supplies in expectations of all-out war with approaching U.S. troops and declined to trade with the Fanchers. This friction was added to by the "range war" that would be expected to erupt between local populations and any emigrants' leading vast herds of cattle – and indeed, both the Fancher and Duke parties' stock would compete with locals' for grazing and sometimes would break through the Mormon colonists' fences. With the murder and the expulsion of U.S. Government surveyors, there was no demarcation of the territorial lands claimed by Native Americans, Mormons, and those that the Americans purchased from Mexico (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). Yet in the war panic, such mundane complaints escalated into more ominous charges.

For example, according to John D. Lee, "They swore and boasted openly... that Buchanan's whole army was coming right behind them, and would kill every God Damn Mormon in Utah.... They had two bulls which they called one "Heber" and the other "Brigham", and whipped 'em through every town, yelling and singing... and blaspheming oaths that would have made your hair stand on end."

While Jacob Hamblin was in Salt Lake City he heard that the Fanchers had "behaved badly robbed hen-roosts, and been guilty of other irregularities, and had used abusive language to those who had remonstrated with them. It was also reported that they threatened, when the army came into the north end of the Territory, to get a good outfit from the weaker settlements in the south."

John Hawley traveling to his home in Washington, U.T., overtook the Fancher Party 150 miles South of Provo and traveled with them 3 days. Hawley found them to be men of families and a large drove of cattle all going to locate in California. The captain told him they had trouble with the Mormons at Salt Creek and Provo when their cattle crossed into the Mormon's herd ground and a Dutchman in their party would not obey the authorities. The captain told him that they intended to obey all the laws and rules of the territory. Hawley went on to say "I am satisfied the Saints gave them more trouble than they ought".

In his report of his investigation of the massacre, Superintendent for Indian Affairs in Utah Territory, Jacob Forney said: "I strict inquiry relative to the general behavior and conduct of the company towards the people of this territory ..., and am justified in saying that they conducted themselves with propriety."

In Forney's interview with David Tullis who had been living with Jacob Hamblin, Tullis related that "he company passed by the house...towards evening.... One of the men rode up to where I was working, and asked if there was water ahead. I said, yes. The person who rode up behaved civilly."

In addition, William Rogers later related where Shirts related he "saw the emigrants when they entered the valley, and talked with several of the men belonging to it. They appeared perfectly civil and gentlemanly."