Arkansas occupies a charged place in the account of the Fancher party and the events preceding the Mountain Meadows Massacre: it was home to most of the emigrants, and it was where Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt was killed. The account links these histories through the Saints’ sense of persecution and their demand for vengeance, making the state more than a point of origin on a westward route.

The emigrants’ Arkansas origins

The Fancher party was largely made up of emigrants from Arkansas. By the time the wagon train reached the Mountain Meadow in southern Utah, it included about 130 emigrants, and apostate Mormons who had joined along the way brought the company to approximately 140. The account later notes that Pratt had been killed in the same part of Arkansas from which the Fancher train originated. This geographical overlap became consequential in a climate where collective blame could attach to people because of where they came from.

The killing of Parley P. Pratt

Pratt’s death followed his aid to Eleanor McLean, a convert who had left her abusive husband, Hector McLean, and traveled to Salt Lake City. Although Eleanor remained legally married to Hector, Brigham Young sealed her to Pratt as a plural wife. When Eleanor later returned to New Orleans with her children, Hector blamed Pratt for the rupture of his marriage and pursued him. In Arkansas, McLean and two accomplices tracked Pratt down outside Van Buren and killed him. McLean was not arrested or charged.

A place transformed into a grievance

After Pratt’s death, Eleanor Pratt made her way back toward Utah. Near Fort Laramie, Porter Rockwell gave her a ride to Great Salt Lake City; she then delivered church leaders a detailed account of the killing, blamed the state of Arkansas, and urged the Saints to avenge Pratt. The account presents that appeal alongside the wider anger already directed toward Arkansas: the Saints had been mourning Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith, and Pratt’s killing added a recent grievance tied to the emigrants’ home region. The Fancher party’s Arkansas origins thus became part of the charged background against which its passage through Utah was viewed.