The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1875-01-21

were intercepted and put to death with
the most cruel tortures. At last, upon
the verge of starvation, they were induced
! BY Lee to come out of their intrenchments
and hold paIley. The men came out in
a body without arms, and at given signal
every one was shot by Lees troops, those
who were wounded being given over to
the Indians to be killed by torture. The
women were first ravished and then
! slaughtered. All the children, except
those who were supposed to be too young
to remember the horrible scene, were
| butchered, and in this butchery the white
and red fiends We'd with each other in
diabolical methods of cruelty. Of the 146
members of the train, only thirteen little
children survived, and these were seat
tered far and wide among Mormon fami-
! lies. After the massacre the bodies of the
victims were left unburied, and, when the
butchers had retired, the wolves feasted
upon the dead. The train was rich in
money. livestock, and all the effects
which, in those early days, comprised the
outfit of emigrants making the long over
land journey. The spoils were collected,
sent to Salt Lake, and sold at auction
by Bishop Higbee, and purchased by
the Saints. For a whole year the
Mormons kept their secret. and only
rHmor that there had been trouble
of some sort found its way to the
States. The guilty Lee, however, could
not carry the secret long. Remorse prey
ed upon him. and he sought TO ease his
conscience by confessing the details of the
massacre, which he laid at the doors of the
Indians. There were others, however,
who were afflicted in similar manner
and told the truth, among them some of
the Indians, who were incensed because
the spoils had not been divided equally.
The Mormon butchers also made mistake
in supposing that children could not re-
member, and some of them corroborated
the confessionsin al their details. The ag-
gregate of the testimony brought out ev
cry fact of the massacre in its clearest
light, and established the guilt of Lee
and his fellew-butchers beyond the shad-
ow ola doubt. The miserable old man
now lies in Jail awaiting trial, and justice
Will be avenged. A rude heap of stones
erected upon the desolate Mountain Mead
ow, continually mutilated by Mormon ha-
tired even to the present day, is the only
monumental souvenir left TO tell the story
of the massacre; but the horrible story
has now been made public, and must has
ten the downfall of the system under
whose auspices it was planed and consum-
mated, and in this fact lies some slight
compensation for the bloody deeds of that
fatal september. The testimony points
with unerrlng certainty to the fact that
this massacre was planned by leading men
of the Mormon Church in Salt
Lake City, in order to avenge the death of
Joseph Smith, " the Prophet" and Elder
Perley p. Pratt: that Brigham Young,
although not a pGrticeps crinat1lis, must
have been aware of the facts, and has re-
tanned the leaders of the massacre in
places of friendship and trust ever since.
although he has gone through an empty
form Of cutting them off from the Church;
that a large part of the proceeds arising
from the sale of the emigrants' effects was
covered into the treasury of the Church;
and that the orders of the Church authori-
ties forbade any Mormon, under severe
penalties, either to give or sell them food
before the massacre was agreed upon, they
knowing full well that, under such cir
cumstances, the victims would meet death
by starvation. In cool deliberation. tiend-
ish malice, and cruel execution, there is
but one massacre in modern history TO
compare with it, and that is Nena Sahib's
massacre of the English troops at Gavin
pore. The two cases are almost parallel.
They happened in the same year, 1851.
Men, women, and children were butchered
alike, and the victims in each case fell into
the hands of the butchers by the same
species of trcachery. BY another singular
coincidence, both leaders, John d. Lee
and Nena Sahib, were arrested last No
yember. The world will be happily rid
Of both.