Springs and the Calligraphy Highway pt 3: Meadow Mountains

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After a gentle walk along the river an reservoir at Pine Valley, we packed up. We were invited to stay another night, but Monday will come, alas, and with it bring work.

We drove back out and turned north. A few miles from Central is the site of a notorious, inexplicable mass murder: the Mountain Meadows massacre. There are four separate sites; a men's memorial and a women's memorial, a gravesite with cairn, and an overlook of the cairn and the valley where the tragedy took place in autumn 1857.

No one really knows why the massacre happened. The Fancher pioneer party, who had camped near a spring to let their beasts forage, were besieged, during which several men died. Then, under a white flag, over a hundred men, women and children were murdered. Only the toddlers were spared - those thought too young to talk. Apparently at least one baby died from the same bullet that killed its father. There is a report that some of the girls were raped before they were murdered.

There's no doubt that the mass murder was carried out by local Mormons and Indians working in concert. One local Mormon leader ended up taking the fall for it. John D. Lee went on the run (back when that was totally a thing in the wild west) and operated Lee's Ferry above the north-eastern end of the Grand Canyon for several years before he was indicted and executed. (Before there was a bridge at Navajo Crossing, the ferry service a few miles upstream was the last even remotely predictable crossing of the Colorado for a few hundred miles. The area was extremely remote - it's still fairly remote! - and they didn't arrest him until 1874.)

But really, John Lee can't actually have been the only one who was responsible - why was he made the scapegoat? Why was this thing done in the first place? How can it ever have seemed like a good idea to anyone? There were plenty of inflammatory factors, but how the transition was made from outrage over trespassing, even allegations of well-poisoning, etc to planned mass murder including children, is beyond me - maybe always will be beyond me. There are some failures of imagination that I can't feel are failures of character.

The overlook is peaceful enough, and so is the valley's gently rolling, tree-dotted, fenced pastureland. The landmark site is well cared for and has been brought into being by the descendants of the murderers and the victims. It is a good place for quiet reflection. As we read the names of the dead, my sight blurred. Sometimes, we humans are a strange and terrible species, and sometimes it is a strange and terrible world we make.