John D. Lee Case File

To the Hon. Elias Smith Judge of the Probate Court of Salt Lake County Utah Territory.

Your petitioner Jacob Forney Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Utah Territory respectfully represents that on the 8th or 9th day of September 1857 a party of Emigrants numbering as is believed between one hundred and thrirty and one hundred and forty persons on their way from their Territory to California were massacred by a party com prsied of Whites and Indians at a place known as the "Mountain Meadows" in the Territory, that out of said party of Em -igrants seventeen children between the ages of two months and eight years were spared alive and your petitioner has by direction of the Department of the Interior collected said children for the purpose of sending them to Fort Smith Arkansas near which place the parents of most of them it is believed resided before starting on the trip which ended in their destrutc tion. Your petitioner further states that