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Show 190 HOW MORMONISM tive mood, no doubt thinking of the extermination of his family, saying, " Oh, I wish I was a man ! I know what I would do. I would shoot John D. Lee; I saw him shoot my mother, and I shall never forget how he looked." In addition to what has been stated already Major ( after ward Major- General) Fitz- John Porter, Assistant Adjutant- General of Gen. A Sidney Johnston, in his official report, directly charges this crime upon the Mormons ; and Mr. A. Forney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, after a most mi nute and careful investigation, arrived at the conclusion that the concoctors and principal perpetrators of the massacre were Mormons, the Indians acting only a secondary part. Brigham Young, who was at the time Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the territory, Mr. Forney not succeeding him until 1859, made no allusion to the massacre whch was so manifestly his duty to have done, if the Indians partici pated at all, in his annual report. Nor did he for a long time refer to it in the pulpit, and when he did so, of course it was to deny the guilt of the Mormons. Any amount of presumptive evidence might be cited that points to the guilt of the Mormons ; but their complicity as well as their responsibility for the Mountain Meadow massa cre, is a fact too well substantiated to admit of a doubt by an impartial mind, and will ever live in history a foul stig ma upon the characters of the Mormon leaders. Some years after the horrible murder, General Carlton marched a column of troops by the locality, when he found the bones of the slain still bleaching upon the meadow. Here and there lay a skull, with the long hair attached, in dicating the sex of the murdered, and interspersed with the others were the small bones of the children. Even then, an officer declares the sight to have been horrible and sick ening. The General had these bones collected and buried, and over the spot he made a mound from which was raised a wooden cross, and on it he placed the inscription: " Ven geance is mine, and I will repay, saith the Lord." Not long afterward Brigham Young visited the locality, and about the same time the rude monument was demolished. |