Abstract
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.