Theses and Dissertations Collection

On 11 September 1857, fifty plus priesthood holders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints ended a five day siege of a California bound wagon train. They lured surviving members out

with a story of protecting them from an on-going Indian attack and a promise of safety back in Cedar

City. Just a short distance outside their wagon fort, all the survivors except for the children under the

age of eight years old were murdered brutally in cold blood, buried in shallow graves, and their living

children were distributed among Mormon families along with possessions and livestock from the

Fancher wagon train.

What would make members of the LDS church, whose beliefs include murder being the

unforgivable sin, participate in a massacre of 140 plus men, women, and children who were simply

trying to pass through Utah Territory to California? In this thesis, the social, political, economic, and

religious considerations that drove this event and allowed the killers on the ground to act in apparent

contravention of a deeply held faith are examined. Wagon train captain, Alexander Fancher is used to

give us a lens into mainstream American pioneers and as emblematic of his wagon train. John D. Lee,

the man in command of the massacre participants on the ground and the only man tried for the crime

is used to give us a lens into the lives of the killers, the LDS church as a whole, and the conditions in

Utah Territory in the 1850s.