 In the afternoon of Sunday, September 6, Major Isaac C. Haight held his weekly Stake High Council meeting after church services, and brought up the issue of what to do with the emigrants.The Council believed that there were U.S.Armies approaching from the north and the south, and it was reported at the meeting that the Baker-Fancher party had threatened to "destroy every damned Mormon", and some of them had claimed to have killed Joseph Smith, and that some emigrants would wait at Mountain Meadows and then join with the approaching armies in a massacre of Mormons.