Remembrances of the Mountain Meadows massacre

There have been several remembrances of the Mountain Meadows massacre including: commemorative observances, the building of monuments and markers, and the creation of associations and other groups to help promote the massacre's history and ensure protection of the massacre site and grave sites.

In May 1859, Major James H. Carleton, of the U.S. Army, and Cavalry arrived at Mountain Meadows with orders to bury the bones of the massacre's victims. After searching the area, the remains of 34 victims were buried on the northern side of a ditch. (This ditch was a defensive trench dug by the emigrants to protect themselves from their attackers.) Around and above this grave a rude monument was built of loose granite stones, creating a cairn. It was conical in form, fifty feet in circumference at the base, twelve feet in height and supported a cross hewn from red cedar wood. From the ground to the top of the cross was twenty-four feet. On the transverse part of the cross, facing towards the north, was an inscription carved in the wood.

On a crude slab of granite set in the earth and leaning against the northern base of the monument were cut the following words:

Prior to this, while waiting to rendezvous with Major Carleton at Mountain Meadows, assistant surgeon Charles Brewer was placed in charge of a burial detail by Captain Reuben T. Campbell of Camp Floyd. Brewer gathered the remains of 39 victims, burying the remains in three mass graves located one and one-half miles north of Carleton's monument. Each of these gravesites were marked by a mound of stones.

During a tour of southern Utah Brigham Young, along with some 60 other Saints visited the massacre site in May 1861. After viewing the inscription on the cross, Wilford Woodruff recorded President Young as saying “it should be vengeance is mine and I have taken a little.” The cross was then torn down and the rocks of the cairn were dismantled, leaving little of the original marker. Sally Denton, in her book, records Young as saying "Vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little" before having the monument torn down.

In May 1864, Captain George F. Price and a company of Cavalry found the 1859 memorial and grave had been desecrated. The monument had been torn down, the cross taken away and the stones forming the monument scattered on the valley floor; while the mass-grave underneath had been defaced.

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Wikipedia