Mitt Romney’s camp is a bit irritated by the release of the movie “September Dawn,” a film detailing the massacre of America citizens by Mormon zealots.

‘Given all the current press attention to Mitt’s being a Mormon — much of it having a negative slant — this only adds fuel to the fire,” a Romney campaign insider told this column Wednesday.

The movie is about what is generally considered the first religiously motivated terrorist act on American soil, the Mountain Meadows Massacre:

On September 1, 1857, frontiersman James Gemmell was in (Brigham) Young’s office when Hamblin, who had accompanied the group of tribal leaders (including Ammon, Kanosh, Tutsegabit, and Youngwids), and George A. Smith on his return to Salt Lake, all of whom had camped near the Baker-Fancher party. When Hamblin told Young that the Arkansas train was near Cedar City, Young said, according to Gemmell, that if he were in charge of the Nauvoo Legion he “would wipe them out.”^[106] These chiefs then met with Huntington and Brigham Young, where the Indian leaders were given “all the cattle that had gone to Cal. the south rout[e].” The Indian leaders questioned this, because previously, the Mormons had told them not to steal cattle. Young acknowledged this, but said “now they have come to fight us & you, for when they kill us then they will kill you.”^[107] Modern scholars generally agree that Brigham Young was authorizing Indian leaders to steal emigrant cattle.^[108] And there is evidence that a policy that Indians should steal emigrants’ cattle was put into effect against emigrant groups other than the Baker-Fancher party.^[109]

According to historian Richard Turley: “Cedar City was the last place on the route to California for grinding grain and buying supplies, but here again the emigrants were stymied. Badly needed goods weren’t available in the town store, and the miller charged a whole cow—an exorbitant price—to grind a few dozen bushels of grain. Weeks of frustration boiled over, and in the rising tension one emigrant man reportedly claimed he had a gun that killed Joseph Smith. Others threatened to join the incoming federal troops against the Saints. Alexander Fancher, captain of the emigrant train, rebuked these men on the spot. The men’s statements were most likely idle threats made in the heat of the moment, but in the charged environment of 1857, Cedar City’s leaders took the men at their word.”^[110]

After the Fanchers left Cedar City, and before they arrived at the Meadows, several meetings were held in Cedar City and nearby Parowan by local Mormon leaders pondering how to implement Young’s directives. At least nine southern Utah militiamen had already been sent out as scouts to the area’s emigrant trails’ mountain passes, looking for advance parties of the United States dragoons. After the massacre, these scouts would later return with welcome news that U.S. troops likely would not be arriving until spring.

Soon after the Fanchers left Cedar City, Major Isaac C. Haight, Mormon Stake President of Cedar City and second in command of the Iron County militia, sent a letter to William H. Dame, the militia’s commanding officer and Stake President of Parowan, asking that the militia be called out against the Fanchers.^[111] Dame reportedly denied the request, but told Haight to let him know if the Fanchers committed any acts of violence.^[112] Haight, however, who was of equal rank to Dame in ecclesiastical matters, settled on a secondary plan to use the Indians instead of the militia. Whether Dame was privy to this plan is a matter of disagreement between the witnesses. According to one report, Isaac Haight said the Indian attack plan was being put in place under the religious authority of the Cedar City Stake, without Dame’s authorization as military commander.^[113] Lee, however, said Haight told him that orders for the Indian attack came from Dame.^[114] Philip Klingensmith reported that the orders came from “headquarters” other than Cedar City, but he was unsure whether that meant Parowan or Salt Lake City.^[115]

Possibly on September 4, 1857,^[116] Haight had a meeting with John D. Lee ordering him to assemble Paiute fighters to head towards Mountain Meadows for the planned attack. Lee was a bishop, a territorial legislator, and a friend to Joseph Smith, Jr. and Brigham Young, in both of whose service Lee had performed duties as a constable and of personal protection and was rumored to have meted out secret punishments as a Danite as well. Lee’s meeting with Haight, according to Lee, took place late at night in Cedar City at the iron works, while they were wrapped in blankets against the cold.

In the afternoon of Sunday, September 6, Major Haight held his weekly Stake High Council meeting after church services, and brought up the issue of whether to what to do with the emigrants.^[117] The Council believed that there were U.S. armies approaching from the north and the south,^[118] and it was reported at the meeting that the Baker-Fancher party had threatened to “destroy every damned Mormon”, and some of them had claimed to have killed Joseph Smith^[119] that they would wait at Mountain Meadows and then join with the approaching armies in a massacre of Mormons.^[120]

The planned Indian massacre of the Fancher train was discussed, but not all the Council members agreed it was the right approach.^[121] The Council resolved to take no action until Haight sent a rider (James Haslam) out the next day to carry an express to Salt Lake City (a six-day round trip on horseback) for Brigham Young’s advice.^[122] The Council also resolved to send a messenger south to John D. Lee, instructing Lee to stay the planned Indian massacre at Mountain Meadows.^[123]

John M. Higbee was directed to command a special contingent of militia drawn from throughout the southern settlements whose initial orders were to coordinate the affair while maintaining a picket around the area’s perimeter.

A witness said that a Mormon Indian agent, John D. Lee, left his home in Harmony on September 6, 1857 in the company of 14 Native Americans and headed toward Mountain Meadows.^[124] In the early morning of Monday, September 7^[125] the Arkansan “Fancher” party began to be attacked by as many or more than 200 Paiutes^[126] and Mormon militiamen disguised as Native Americans. The Fancher party defended itself by encircling and lowering their wagons, wheels chained together, along with digging shallow trenches and throwing dirt both below and into the wagons, which made a strong barrier. Seven emigrants were killed during the opening attack and were buried somewhere within the wagon encirclement. Sixteen more were wounded. The attack continued for five days, during which the besieged families had little or no access to fresh water and their ammunition was depleted.^[70]

According to one report, they attempted to send a little girl to a nearby spring for water, dressed in white, and she was fired upon, but escaped unharmed back to the camp.^[127] When two emigrant horsemen attempted to retrieve water, one was shot while another escaped, but not before seeing that the shooter was a white man.

On September 9, local Mormon leader Isaac C. Haight and his counselor Elias Morris visited Dame in Parowan, where the council decided that the militia would allow the emigrants to pass safely.^[128] After the Parowan council meeting, however, Haight spoke with Dame confidentially, relating the information that the emigrants probably already knew that Mormons were involved in the siege. This information changed Dame’s mind, and he reportedly authorized a massacre.

Following orders from Haight in Cedar City, 35 miles away, on Friday September 11 John Higbee ordered a group of militiamen not in disguise to march and stand in a formal line a half-mile from the Fanchers,^[129] then Lee and William Batemen approached the Baker-Fancher party wagons with a white flag.^[130][131] Lee told the battle-weary emigrants he had negotiated a truce with the Paiutes, whereby they could be escorted safely to Cedar City under Mormon protection in exchange for leaving all their livestock and supplies to the Native Americans.^[70] Accepting this, they were split into three groups. Seventeen of the youngest children along with a few mothers and the wounded were put into wagons, which were followed by all the women and older children walking in a second group. Bringing up the rear were the adult males of the Fancher party, each walking with an armed Mormon militiaman at his right. Making their way back northeast towards Cedar City, the three groups gradually became strung out and visually separated by shrubs and a shallow hill. After about 2 kilometers Higbee gave the prearranged order, “Do Your Duty!”^[132] Each Mormon then turned and killed the man he was guarding. All of the men, women, older children and wounded were massacred by Mormon militia and Paiutes who had hidden nearby.

A few victims who escaped the initial slaughter were quickly chased down and killed. Two teenaged girls, Rachel and Ruth Dunlap, managed to climb down an embankment to hide among oak trees for a time, but were spotted by a Paiute chief from Parowan, who took them to Lee. Lee ordered the girls killed despite pleadings for mercy by the chief and the girls. Captain Carleton^[133] mentions that the sisters were later found naked with slit throats. This scene was vividly recounted in a turn-of-the-century exposé by Gibbs.^[134]

Approximately seventeen children were deliberately spared because of their young ages.^[135]

An important note not mentioned in Wikipedia about this horrific story from America’s past:

Mitt Romney did not participate in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

I just wanted to clarify that point. He did not participate in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I can understand his apprehension to this incident getting the spotlight because of the attention his faith has attracted, but he bears no responsibility for what occurred in Utah in 1857.