" A prominent Mormon named John D. Lee, approached the encircled wagon train with a white flag and a proposal. He offered the Fancher Party a safe escort towards California if they would leave their wagons and cattle to appease the Indians. After accepting the conditions, the emigrants followed the Mormons as they started their travel. It was at this point that things turned horrid. They were commanded to halt, and "every Mormon was to shoot the emigrant at his side." The massacre had begun and whoever the Mormons spared were finished off by the aiding Indians. Children were spared however (17 is the number suggested by Brooks), but in the end, some 120 men and women were slaughtered. The clothes and possessions of the fallen emigrants were taken by either Mormons or Indians. .
The media reports as a whole at the period of the Massacre were reasonable at times and dissident at others comparatively with Brooks, but blatantly discordant twixt Mormon and non-Mormon coverage. The Los Angeles Star was the first to break the story of the massacre. The Star published a small article less than a month after the terrible incident happened. The article was titled "Rumored Massacre on the Plains" and the report made is relatively accurate for being held as nothing more than a "rumor." The Star itself, a non-Mormon publication, gives a disclaimer of the "unwillingness to credit such a wholesale massacre." But it did report that 95 persons had been killed and that the victims" property was taken after the massacre. At this point the start admits that "no other particulars are known." In the very next edition of the Los Angeles Star, a complete break of the story is published. In the article titled "Horrible Massacre of Emigrants!! Over 100 Persons Killed!!" the Star relinquishes to have produced a comprehensive and accurate report of the story. It is even declared that "there is no longer reason to doubt the facts.
