CASPER, Wyo. — The Mountain Meadows Massacre — one of the most troubling chapters of Church history — defies polar extremes that label perpetrators or victims as either totally good or totally evil, according to three Latter-day Saint scholars whose book on the subject is expected to be published next year, the 150th anniversary year of the massacre.

Photo by R. Scott Lloyd

Richard Turley, who delivered information about research into the Mountain Meadows Massacre during Mormon History Association Conference, speaks with prominent non-LDS historian of Mormonism Jan Shipps.

The three — Richard E. Turley Jr., Ronald W. Walker and Glen M. Leonard — have been researching and writing the history in earnest since November 2001, taking much longer to complete it than any of them expected at first.

"Speed and quality are seldom allies in the historical enterprise," said Brother Walker in Casper on May 26, where he and his colleagues addressed a session of the Mormon History Association Conference.

The episode at Mountain Meadows, near Cedar City, Utah, involved the wholesale slaughter of some 120 unarmed immigrants from Arkansas bound for California, most of them women and children, by Mormon settlers assisted by Piute Indians.

Brother Turley, managing director of the Family and Church History Department, said that in telling the story of the massacre, most chroniclers have adopted one of three major approaches, two of which are polar opposites.

One portrays the killers as good people and the victims as evil, he said, an unsatisfactory approach because it does not explain how supposed offenses by the travelers, even if true, come close to justifying the atrocities committed.

The second approach, "portrays the victims as good people and the perpetrators as evil or, at best, mindless followers of evil persons," Brother Turley explained, adding that this approach has proved popular among "some anti-Mormons who have used the massacre as part of their stock-in-trade to criticize the Church."

"Like the other polarized approach, however, this one proves unsatisfactory, because it fails to explain how most of these supposedly evil persons could lead largely exemplary lives both before and after the massacre," he said.

The third approach he described as "a frank recognition that the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes."

"In effect," he said, "this approach acknowledges that both the victims and the perpetrators were essentially good persons, even if neither group was flawless, but it also requires confronting the troubling question: How could basically good people massacre other basically good people?" He added that this leads to another troubling question: "What would I do in such a situation?"

One reason, he said, is that the one group defines the other group as evil, as the enemy, as something worthy of destruction. This process involves the tendency to develop stereotypes and unfair characterizations of people.

Brother Walker, a Church history professor at BYU, listed a dozen conclusions the scholars have reached from their research, a few of which are these:

• The ill-fated Baker and Fancher wagon trains were not the single unit that many historians have surmised, but rather, had different leaders and separate departure points.

• The Utah War of 1857-58, involving a federal government offensive of armed forces marching on the territory due to misunderstanding and rumors, had a great deal to do with the tension existing between the local settlers and the immigrants, as both sides came to see the other as the enemy. Rumored cattle poisoning by the immigrants probably was in actuality a case of cattle disease such as anthrax or Texas fever.

• No direct evidence links Brigham Young with a supposed plot to kill the immigrants. On the other hand, a great deal of evidence goes in the opposite direction.

• Isaac C. Haight, Cedar City's mayor, military leader, business head and stake president — for reasons the authors will explain more fully in their book — drove a relentless anti-immigrant campaign that in its first stages was a semi-secret, shared by other leaders in the community. Haight ignored the advice of William H. Dame, the militia commander for southern Utah, overruled the objections of several members of his high council, and finally insisted on destroying the immigrants before a messenger could return from Brigham Young with possible contrary word.

• Brigham Young's "post-massacre conduct walked the narrow line of offering to assist federal prosecution while, at the same time, seeking to preserve his church at a time of strong anti-Mormonism. His enemies saw the massacre as a tool to be used against him. As a result, by personality and policy, Brigham Young chose to know as little about the massacre as possible and to say still less publicly."

Brother Leonard, director of the Museum of Church History and Art and an author on Church history subjects, said that in fixing blame for the massacre, politicians and writers incorrectly viewed Mormonism as "a religious community gone amok, guilty of crimes and depredations wherever they gathered, an offensive, immoral people, lawbreakers, unfit to live."

This attitude drove the efforts of Robert Baskin, prosecutor in John D. Lee's first trial for culpability in the massacre. "Baskin's purpose," he said, "was not to convict Lee of murder. Instead, he hoped to destroy the political influence of the Church in Utah, in part to open offices to others, meaning Gentiles."

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