Mountain Meadows Massacre survivors

The ADG today has an article about the 17 children who survived the Mountains Meadows Massacre of an Arkansas wagon train in 1857. (No free link is available.) Their memory was honored on Saturday at Carrollton, Arkansas, with an re-enactment of their return to their families — a sesquicentennial celebration. The wagon train was led by Alexander Fancher and George W. Baker whose descendants still survive in northwest Arkansas. All 120 members of the party — men, women, and older children — were massacred by Mormons and possibly Paiute Indians. John D. Lee was the Mormon leader who led and organized the attack against the wagon train.

The children who were spared were age 6 and under. Mormons assumed they were too young to remember what happened but they did.

Their story is heartbreaking, and their homecoming produced more emotions than people could handle. Sallie Baker Mitchell, one of the children, recalled in a 1940 newspaper article that the returning children rode in a buggy parade through the streets of Harrison, Arkansas. She looked for her mother in the crowd. "I remember I called all of the women I saw 'Mother.' I guess I was still hoping to find my own mother, and every time I called a woman 'Mother,' she would break out crying."

See these photos from my old blog. The people who died are listed here.