Mormonism’s Mountain Meadows Massacre

Radio Free Mormon

Mormon Discussion Inc

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2026

⏱️ 185 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tonight, one of the darkest chapters in Mormon history—the Mountain Meadows Massacre. This isn’t a surface-level retelling. We walk through what led up to it, how it unfolded, and what happened afterward… and we let the historical record speak for itself. We examine the environment in southern Utah at the time—heightened fear, isolation, and rhetoric… Read More »

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everybody to another episode of Mormonism live. I'm your host, Bill Real with my co-host Radio
0:07.4	Free Mormon. Here we are tonight. It's Wednesday night, 6 p.m. April 22nd. And what we wanted to talk
0:13.7	about tonight is the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I've been preparing this for a while. I actually
0:17.4	went out to Mountain Meadows today, RFM, and walked around. I'd been out there
0:22.2	once before. I know you've been there before too, and we've got a video from you on your time out there.
0:27.1	I went out there today, and I actually saw a few more of the sites than I saw the first time. I saw
0:31.7	the overlook, but I didn't go down to see the main memorial, the men and women's, the men and boys and the women and children's memorial. And, but I didn't go down to see the main memorial, the men and women's, the men and boys and the women and children's memorial. And I went and saw those and the execution site of John D. Lee and took pictures of things. And if we had time, we'll get to some of those later.
0:50.6	But I just want to note here on my screen, you're not seeing it yet. But one of the darkest events in early Mormon history is the Mountain Meadows Massacre,
0:58.5	September 11th, the first 9-11, September 11th of 1857, it happens from September 7th through
1:05.1	the 11th in southern Utah, a group of immigrants known as the Baker-Fancher party, were traveling through
1:11.5	the Utah territory on their way to California. And they never made it. And this is a big moment
1:19.0	in Mormon history. There's a lot of things that go into this conversation. And I think we'll
1:24.9	just jump into it. And I think they'll naturally come out along the way.
1:27.9	So I'm just going to change the screen.
1:29.8	But I do want to check in as I'm doing that.
1:31.1	How are you doing this evening?
1:32.3	And any thoughts from you before we embark on taking a deep dive into the Mountain Meadows
1:38.0	Massacre?
1:39.3	I will have a story to tell you about the first time I read about the Mountain Meadows
1:44.0	massacre itself
1:45.2	toward the end of the famous book by Juanita Brooks. So, and that was about 25 years ago or so.
1:53.6	I was around 40, but that made a huge impression on me. I'll tell you that story here in a bit.
	...

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