"September Dawn"

I watched a very moving film this evening called "September Dawn". Not many people have ever heard of the Mountain Meadow massacre. I first heard about the violent and tragic ambush on Thursday, June 21, 2007. I had been traveling The Oregon Trail with an Elderhostel group from Kansas City/Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon June 13-28, 2007.

We had a picnic lunch at Farson, Wyoming on June 21. The place made me extremely uncomfortable--not the present but the past. I found out later that day that the U.S. Army had marched against the Mormons so they destroyed a U.S. Army third supply train at Farson in 1857. The Mormons had already destroyed the other two supply trains.

It followed the horrific episode known as the Mountain Meadow massacre where an entire well-to-do wagon company of 120 emigrants--men, women and all children over the age of six--had been brutally murdered in southern Utah (near present day Cedar City) by the Mormons on September 11, 1857. Only 17 children were spared.