We may here interrupt the narrative of events subsequent to the
restoration of peace in the territory, with the story of the most
horrible massacre of white people by religious fanatics of their own
race that has been recorded since that famous St. Bartholemew's night in
Paris--the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Committed on Friday,
September 11, 1857,--four days before the date of Young's proclamation
forbidding the United States troops to enter the territory--it was a
considerable time before more than vague rumors of the crime reached
the Eastern states. No inquest or other investigation was held by Mormon
authority, no person participating in the slaughter was arrested by
a Mormon officer; and, when officers of the federal government first
visited the scene, in the spring of 1859, all that remained to tell
the tale were human skulls and other bones lying where the wolves and
coyotes had left them, with scraps of clothing caught here and there
upon the vines and bushes. Dr. Charles Brewer, the assistant army
surgeon who was sent with a detail to bury the remains in May, 1859,
says in his gruesome report:--
"I reached a ravine fifty yards from the road, in which I found portions
of the skeletons of many bodies,--skulls, bones, and matted hair,--most
of which, on examination, I concluded to be those of men. Three hundred
and fifty yards further on another assembly of human remains was found,
which, by all appearance, had been left to decay upon the surface;
skulls and bones, most of which I believed to be those of women, some
also of children, probably ranging from six to twelve years of age.
Here, too, were found masses of women's hair, children's bonnets, such
as are generally used upon the plains, and pieces of lace, muslin,
calicoes, and other materials. Many of the skulls bore marks of
violence, being pierced with bullet holes, or shattered by heavy blows,
or cleft with some sharp-edged instrument."*
* Sen. Doc. No. 42, 1st Session, 36th Congress.
More than seventeen years passed before officers of the United States
succeeded in securing the needed evidence against any of the persons
responsible for these wholesale murders, and a jury which would bring in
a verdict of guilty. Then a single Mormon paid the penalty of his crime.
He died asserting that he was the one victim surrendered by the Mormon
church to appease the public demand for justice. The closest students
of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and of Brigham Young's rule will always
give the most credence to this statement of John D. Lee. Indeed, to
acquit Young of responsibility for this crime, it would be necessary to
prove that the sermons and addresses in the journal of Discourses are
forgeries.
In the summer of 1857 a party was made up in Arkansas to cross the
plains to Southern California by way of Utah, under direction of a
Captain Fancher.* This party differed from most emigrant parties of
the day both in character and equipment. It numbered some thirty
families,--about 140 individuals,--men, women, and children. They were
people of means, several of them travelling in private carriages, and
their equipment included thirty horses and mules, and about six hundred
head of cattle, when they arrived in Utah. Most of them seem to have
been Methodists, and they had a preacher of that denomination with
them. Prayers were held in camp every night and morning, and they never
travelled on Sundays. They did not hurry on, as the gold seekers were
wont to do in those days, but made their trip one of pleasure, sparing
themselves and their animals, and enjoying the beauties and novelties of
the route.**
* Stenhouse says that travelling the same route, and encamping
near the Arkansans, was a company from Missouri who called themselves
"Missouri Wildcats," and who were so boisterous that the Arkansans
were warned not to travel with them to Utah. Whitney says that the two
parties travelled several days apart after leaving Salt Lake City. No
mention of a separate company of Missourians appears in the official and
court reports of the massacre.
** Jacob Forney, in his official report, says that he made the
most careful inquiry regarding the conduct of the emigrants after they
entered the territory, and could testify that the company conducted
themselves "with propriety." In the years immediately following the
massacre, when the Mormons were trying to attribute the crime to
Indians, much was said about the party having poisoned a spring and
caused the death of Indians and their cattle. Forney found that one ox
did die near their camp, but that its death was caused by a poisonous
weed. Whitney, the church historian, who of course acquits the church of
any responsibility for the massacre, draws a very black picture of the
emigrants, saying, for instance, that at Cedar Creek "their customary
proceeding of burning fences, whipping the heads off chickens, or
shooting them in the streets or private dooryards, to the extreme danger
of the inhabitants, was continued. One of them, a blustering fellow
riding a gray horse, flourished his pistol in the face of the wife
of one of the citizens, all the time making insulting proposals and
uttering profane threats."--"History of Utah," Vol. I, p. 696.
Every emigrant train for California then expected to restock in
Utah. The Mormons had profited by this traffic, and such a thing as
non-intercourse with travellers in the way of trade was as yet unheard
of. But Young was now defying the government, and his proclamation of
September 15 had declared that "no person shall be allowed to pass or
repass into or through or from this territory without a permit from
the proper officer." To a constituency made up so largely of dishonest
members, high and low, as Young himself conceded the Mormon body politic
to be, the outfit of these travellers was very attractive. There was a
motive, too, in inflicting punishment on them, merely because they were
Arkansans, and the motive was this:--
Parley P. Pratt was sent to explore a southern route from Utah to
California in 1849. He reached San Francisco from Los Angeles in the
summer of 1851, remaining there until June, 1855. He was a fanatical
defender of polygamy after its open proclamation, challenging debate
on the subject in San Francisco, and issuing circulars calling on the
people to repent as "the Kingdom of God has come nigh unto you."
While in San Francisco, Pratt induced the wife of Hector H. McLean,
a custom-house official, the mother of three children, to accept the
Mormon faith and to elope with him to Utah as his ninth wife. The
children were sent to her parents in Louisiana by their father, and
there she sometime later obtained them, after pretending that she had
abandoned the Mormon belief. When McLean learned of this he went East,
and traced his wife and Pratt to Houston, Texas, and thence to Fort
Gibson, near Van Buren, Arkansas. There he had Pratt arrested, but there
seemed to be no law under which he could be held. As soon as Pratt was
released, he left the place on horseback. McLean, who had found letters
from Pratt to his wife at Fort Gibson which increased his feeling
against the man,* followed him on horseback for eight miles, and then,
overtaking him, shot him so that he died in two hours.** It was in
accordance with Mormon policy to hold every Arkansan accountable
for Pratt's death, just as every Missourian was hated because of the
expulsion of the church from that state.
* Van Buren Intelligencer, May 15, 1857.
** See the story in the New York Times of May 28, 1857, copied
from the St. Louis Democrat and St. Louis Republican.
When the company pitched camp on the river Jordan their food supplies
were nearly exhausted, and their draught animals needed rest and a
chance to recuperate. They knew nothing of the disturbed relations
between the Mormons and the government when they set out, and they
were astonished now to be told that they must break camp and move on
southward. But they obeyed. At American Fork, the next settlement, they
offered some of their worn-out animals in exchange for fresh ones, and
visited the town to buy provisions. There was but one answer--nothing to
sell. Southward they continued, through Provo, Springville, Payson,
Salt Creek, and Fillmore, at all settlements making the same effort to
purchase the food of which they stood in need, and at all receiving the
same reply.
So much were their supplies now reduced that they hastened on until Corn
Creek was reached; there they did obtain a little relief, some Indians
selling them about thirty bushels of corn. But at Beaver, a larger
place, nonintercourse was again proclaimed, and at Parowan, through
which led the road built by the general government, they were forbidden
to pass over this directly through the town, and the local mill would
not even grind their own corn. At Cedar Creek, one of the largest
southern settlements, they were allowed to buy fifty bushels of wheat,
and to have it and their corn ground at John D. Lee's mill. After a
day's delay they started on, but so worn out were their animals that it
took them three days to reach Iron Creek, twenty miles beyond, and two
more days to reach Mountain Meadows, fifteen miles farther south.
These "meadows" are a valley, 350 miles south of Salt Lake City, about
five miles long by one wide. They are surrounded by mountains, and
narrow at the lower end to a width of 400 yards, where a gap leads out
to the desert. A large spring near this gap made that spot a natural
resting-place, and there the emigrants pitched their camp. Had they been
in any way suspicious of Indian treachery they would not have stopped
there, because, from the elevations on either side, they were subject to
rifle fire. Their anxiety, however, was not about the Indians, whom they
had found friendly, but about the problem of making the trip of seventy
days to San Bernardino, across a desert country, with their wornout
animals and their scant supplies. Had Mormon cruelty taken only the form
of withholding provisions and forage from this company, its effect would
have satisfied their most evil wishers.
On the morning of Monday, September 7, still unsuspicious of any form of
danger, their camp was suddenly fired upon by Indians, (and probably by
some white men disguised as Indians). Seven of the emigrants were
killed in this attack and sixteen were wounded. Unexpected as was this
manifestation of hostility, the company was too well organized to be
thrown into a panic. The fire was returned, and one Indian was killed,
and two chiefs fatally wounded. The wagons were corralled at once as
a sort of fortification, and the wheels were chained together. In the
centre of this corral a rifle pit was dug, large enough to hold all
their people, and in this way they were protected from shots fired
at them from either side of the valley. In this little fort they
successfully defended themselves during that and the ensuing three
days. Not doubting that Indians were their only assailants, two of their
number succeeded in escaping from the camp on a mission to Cedar City to
ask for assistance. These messengers were met by three Mormons, who shot
one of them dead, and wounded the other; the latter seems to have made
his way back to the camp.
The Arkansans soon suffered for water, as the spring was a hundred yards
distant. Two of them during one day made a dash, carrying buckets, and
got back with them safely, under a heavy fire.
* Lee denies positively a story that the Mormons shot two little
girls who were dressed in white and sent out for water. He says that
when the Arkansans saw a white man in the valley (Lee himself) they
ran up a white flag and sent two little boys to talk with him; that he
refused to see them, as he was then awaiting orders, and that he kept
the Indians from shooting them. "Mormonism Unveiled," p. 231.
With some reenforcements from the south, the Indians now numbered about
four hundred. They shot down some seventy head of the emigrants' cattle,
and on Wednesday evening made another attack in force on the camp,
but were repulsed. Still another attack the next morning had the same
result. This determined resistance upset the plans of the Mormons who
had instigated the Indian attacks. They had expected that the travellers
would be overcome in the first surprise, and that their butchery would
easily be accounted for as the result of an Indian raid on their camp.
But they were not to be balked of their object. To save themselves from
the loss of life that would be entailed by a charge on the Arkansans'
defences, they resorted to a scheme of the most deliberate treachery.
On Friday, the 11th, a Mormon named William Bateman was sent forward
with a flag of truce. The other undisguised Mormons remained in
concealment, and the Indians had been instructed to keep entirely out of
sight. The beleaguered company were delighted to see a white man, and at
once sent one of their number to meet him. Their ammunition was almost
exhausted, their dead were unburied in their midst, and their situation
was desperate. Bateman, following out his instructions, told the
representative of the emigrants that the Mormons had come to their
assistance, and that, if they would place themselves in the white men's
hands and follow directions, they would be conducted in safety to
Cedar City, there to await a proper opportunity for proceeding on their
journey.* This plan was agreed to without any delay, and John D. Lee
was directed by John M. Higbee, major of the Iron Militia, and chief
in command of the Mormon party, to go to the camp to see that the plot
agreed upon was carried out, Samuel McMurdy and Samuel Knight following
him with two wagons which were a part of the necessary equipment.
* This account follows Lee's confession, "Mormonism Unveiled," p.
236.
Never had a man been called upon to perform a more dastardly part than
that which was assigned to Lee. Entering the camp of the beleaguered
people as their friend, he was to induce them to abandon their defences,
give up all their weapons, separate the adults from the children and
wounded, who were to be placed in the wagons, and then, at a given
signal, every one of the party was to be killed by the white men who
walked by their sides as their protectors. Lee draws a picture of
his feelings on entering the camp which ought to be correct, even if
circumstances lead one to attribute it to the pen of a man who naturally
wished to find some extenuation for himself: "I doubt the power of
man being equal to even imagine how wretched I felt. No language can
describe my feelings. My position was painful, trying, and awful;
my brain seemed to be on fire; my nerves were for a moment unstrung;
humanity was overpowering as I thought of the cruel, unmanly part that
I was acting. Tears of bitter anguish fell in streams from my eyes;
my tongue refused its office; my faculties were dormant, stupefied and
deadened by grief. I wished that the earth would open and swallow me
where I stood."
When Lee entered the camp all the people, men, women, and children,
gathered around him, some delighted over the hope of deliverance, while
others showed distrust of his intentions. Their position was so strong
that they felt some hesitation in abandoning it, and Lee says that, if
their ammunition had not been so nearly exhausted, they would never have
surrendered. But their hesitation was soon overcome, and the carrying
out of the plot proceeded.
All their arms, the wounded, and the smallest children were placed in
the two wagons. As soon as these were loaded, a messenger from Higbee,
named McFarland, rode up with a message that everything should be
hastened, as he feared he could not hold back the Indians. The wagons
were then started at once toward Cedar City, Lee and the two drivers
accompanying them, and the others of the party set out on foot for the
place where the Mormon troops were awaiting them, some two hundred yards
distant. First went McFarland on horseback, then the women and larger
children, and then the men. When, in this order, they came to the place
where the Mormons were stationed, the men of the party cheered the
latter as their deliverers.
As the wagons passed out of sight over an elevation, the march of the
rest of the party was resumed. The women and larger children walked
ahead, then came the men in single file, an armed Mormon walking by the
side of each Arkansan. This gave the appearance of the best possible
protection. When they had advanced far enough to bring the women and
children into the midst of a company of Indians concealed in a growth of
cedars, the agreed signal the words, "Do your duty"--was given. As these
words were spoken, each Mormon turned and shot the Arkansan who was
walking by his side, and Indians and other Mormons attacked the women
and children who were walking ahead, while Lee and his two companions
killed the wounded and the older of the children who were in the wagons.
The work of killing the men was performed so effectually that only
two or three of them escaped, and these were overtaken and killed soon
after.* Indeed, only the nervousness natural to men who were assigned
to perform so horrible a task could prevent the murderers from shooting
dead the unarmed men walking by their sides. With the women and children
it was different. Instead of being shot down without warning, they first
heard the shots that killed their only protectors, and then beheld the
Indians rushing on them with their usual whoops, brandishing tomahawks,
knives, and guns. There were cries for mercy, mothers' pleas for
children's lives, and maidens' appeals to manly honor; but all in vain.
It was not necessary to use firearms; indeed, they would have endangered
the assailants themselves. The tomahawk and the knife sufficed, and in
the space of a few moments every woman and older child was a corpse.
* This is Judge Cradlebaugh's and Lee's statement. Lee said he
could have given the details of their pursuit and capture if he had had
time. An affidavit by James Lynch, who accompanied Superintendent Forney
to the Meadows on his first trip there in March 1859 (printed in Sen.
Doc. No. 42), says that one of the three, who was not killed on the
spot, "was followed by five Mormons who through promises of safety,
etc., prevailed upon him to return to Mountain Meadows, where they
inhumanly butchered him, laughing at and disregarding his loud and
repeated cries for mercy, as witnessed and described by Ira Hatch, one
of the five. The object of killing this man was to leave no witness
competent to give testimony in a court of justice but God."
When Lee and the men in charge of the two wagons heard the firing, they
halted at once, as this was the signal agreed on for them to perform
their part. McMurdy's wagon, containing the sick and wounded and the
little children, was in advance, Knight's, with a few passengers and
the weapons, following. We have three accounts of what happened when the
signal was given, Lee's own, and the testimony of the other two at Lee's
trial. Lee says that McMurdy at once went up to Knight's wagon, and,
raising his rifle and saying, "O Lord my God, receive their spirits;
it is for Thy Kingdom I do this," fired, killing two men with the first
shot. Lee admits that he intended to do his part of the killing, but
says that in his excitement his pistol went off prematurely and narrowly
escaped wounding McMurdy; that Knight then shot one man, and with the
butt of his gun brained a little boy who had run up to him, and that
the Indians then came up and finished killing all the sick and wounded.
McMurdy testified that Lee killed the first person in his wagon--a
woman--and also shot two or three others. When asked if he himself
killed any one that day, McMurdy replied, "I believe I am not upon
trial. I don't wish to answer." Knight testified that he saw Lee strike
down a woman with his gun or a club, denying that he himself took any
part in the slaughter: Nephi Johnson, another witness at Lee's second
trial, testified that he saw Lee and an Indian pull a man out of one of
the wagons, and he thought Lee cut the man's throat. The only persons
spared in this whole company were seventeen children, varying in age
from two months to seven years. They were given to Mormon families in
southern Utah--"sold out," says Forney in his report, "to different
persons in Cedar City, Harmony, and Painter Creek. Bills are now in
my possession from different individuals asking payment from
the government. I cannot condescend to become the medium of even
transmitting such claims to the department." The government directed
Forney in 1858 to collect these children, and he did so. Congress in
1859 appropriated $10,000 to defray the expense of returning them to
their friends in Arkansas, and on June 27 of that year fifteen of them
(two boys being retained as government witnesses) set out for the East
from Salt Lake City in charge of a company of United States dragoons and
five women attendants. Judge Cradlebaugh quotes one of these children, a
boy less than nine years old, as saying in his presence, when they were
brought to Salt Lake City, "Oh, I wish I was a man. I know what I would
do. I would shoot John D. Lee. I saw him shoot my mother."
The total number in the Arkansas party is not exactly known. The victims
numbered more than 120. Jacob Hamblin testified at the Lee trial that,
the following spring, he and his man buried "120 odd" skulls, counting
them as they gathered them up.
A few young women, in the confusion of the Indian attack, concealed
themselves, but they were soon found. Hamblin testified at Lee's
second trial that Lee, in a long conversation with him, soon after the
massacre, told him that, when he rejoined the Mormon troops, an Indian
chief brought to him two girls from thirteen to fifteen years old, whom
he had found hiding in a thicket, and asked what should be done with
them, as they were pretty and he wanted to save them. Lee replied that
"according to the orders he had, they were too old and too big to let
go."
Then by Lee's direction the chief shot one of them, and Lee threw the
other down and cut her throat. Hamblin said that an Indian boy conducted
him to the place where the girls' bodies lay, a long way from the rest,
up a ravine, unburied and with their throats cut. One of the little
children saved from the massacre was taken home by Hamblin, and she said
the murdered girls were her sisters. Richard F. Burton, who visited Utah
in 1860, mentions, as one of the current stories in connection with the
massacre, that, when a girl of sixteen knelt before one of the Mormons
and prayed for mercy, he led her into the thicket, violated her, and
then cut her throat.*
* "City of the Saints," p. 412.
As soon as the slaughter was completed the plundering began. Beside
their wagons, horses, and cattle,* they had a great deal of other
valuable property, the whole being estimated by Judge Cradlebaugh
at from $60,000 to $70,000. When Lee got back to the main party, the
searching of the bodies of the men for valuables began. "I did hold the
hat awhile," he confesses, "but I got so sick that I had to give it to
some other person." He says there were more than five hundred head of
cattle, a large number of which the Indians killed or drove away, while
Klingensmith, Haight, and Higbee, leaders in the enterprise, drove
others to Salt Lake City and sold them. The horses and mules were
divided in the same way. The Indians (and probably their white comrades)
had made quick work with the effects of the women. Their bodies, young
and old, were stripped naked, and left, objects of the ribald jests of
their murderers. Lee says that in one place he counted the bodies of ten
children less than sixteen years old.
* Superintendent Forney, in his report of March, 1859, said:
"Facts in my possession warrant me in estimating that there was
distributed a few days after the massacre, among the leading church
dignitaries, $30,000 worth of property. It is presumable they also had
some money."
When the Mormons had finished rifling the dead, all were called together
and admonished by their chiefs to keep the massacre a secret from the
whole world, not even letting their wives know of it, and all took the
most solemn oath to stand by one another and declare that the killing
was the work of Indians. Most of the party camped that night on the
Meadows, but Lee and Higbee passed the night at Jacob Hamblin's ranch.
In the morning the Mormons went back to bury the dead. All these lay
naked, "making the scene," says Lee, "one of the most loathsome and
ghastly that can be imagined." The bodies were piled up in heaps in
little depressions, and a pretence was made of covering them with dirt;
but the ground was hard and their murderers had few tools, and as a
consequence the wild beasts soon unearthed them, and the next spring the
bones were scattered over the surface.
This work finished, the party, who had been joined during the night by
Colonel Dame, Judge Lewis, Isaac C. Haight, and others of influence,
held another council, at which God was thanked for delivering their
enemies into their hands; another oath of secrecy was taken, and all
voted that any person who divulged the story of the massacre should
suffer death, but that Brigham Young should be informed of it. It was
also voted, according to Lee, that Bishop Klingensmith should take
charge of the plunder for the benefit of the church.
The story of this slaughter, to this point, except in minor particulars
noted, is undisputed. No Mormon now denies that the emigrants were
killed, or that Mormons participated largely in the slaughter. What the
church authorities have sought to establish has been their own ignorance
of it in advance, and their condemnation of it later. In examining this
question we have, to assist us, the knowledge of the kind of government
that Young had established over his people--his practical power of life
and death; the fact that the Arkansans were passing south from Salt Lake
City, and that their movements had been known to Young from the start
and their treatment been subject to his direction; the failure of Young
to make any effort to have the murderers punished, when a "crook of
his finger" would have given them up to justice; the coincidence of the
massacre with Young's threat to Captain Van Vliet, uttered on September
9, "If the issue continues, you may tell the government to stop all
emigration across the continent, for the Indians will kill all who
attempt it"; Young's failure to mention this "Indian outrage" in his
report as superintendent of Indian affairs, and the silence of the
Mormon press on the subject.* If we accept Lee's plausible theory that,
at his second trial, the church gave him up as a sop to justice, and
loosened the tongues of witnesses against him, this makes that part of
the testimony in confirmation of Lee's statement, elicited from them,
all the stronger.
* H. H. Bancroft, in his "Utah," as usual, defends the Mormon
church against the charge of responsibility for the massacre, and calls
Judge Cradlebaugh's charge to the grand jury a slur that the evidence
did not excuse.
Let us recall that Lee himself had been an active member of the church
for nearly forty years, following it from Missouri to Utah, travelling
penniless as a missionary at the bidding of his superiors, becoming
a polygamist before he left Nauvoo, accepting in Utah the view that
"Brigham spoke by direction of the God of heaven," and saying, as he
stood by his coffin looking into the rifles of his executioners, "I
believe in the Gospel that was taught in its purity by Joseph Smith in
former days." How much Young trusted him is seen in the fact that, by
Young's direction, he located the southern towns of Provo, Fillmore,
Parowan, etc., was appointed captain of militia at Cedar City, was
president of civil affairs at Harmony, probate judge of the county
(before and after the massacre), a delegate to the convention which
framed the constitution of the State of Deseret, a member of the
territorial legislature (after the massacre), and "Indian farmer" of the
district including the Meadows when the massacre occurred.
Lee's account of the steps leading up to the massacre and of what
followed is, in brief, that, about ten days before it occurred, General
George A. Smith, one of the Twelve, called on him at Washington City,
and, in the course of their conversation, asked, "Suppose an emigrant
train should come along through this southern country, making threats
against our people and bragging of the part they took in helping kill
our prophet, what do you think the brethren would do with them?" Lee
replied: "You know the brethren are now under the influence of the
'Reformation,' and are still red-hot for the Gospel. The brethren
believe the government wishes to destroy them. I really believe that
any train of emigrants that may come through here will be attacked and
probably all destroyed. Unless emigrants have a pass from Brigham Young
or some one in authority, they will certainly never get safely through
this country." Smith said that Major Haight had given him the same
assurance. It was Lee's belief that Smith had been sent south in advance
of the emigrants to prepare for what followed.
Two days before the first attack on the camp, Lee was summoned to Cedar
City by Isaac Haight, president of that Stake, second only to Colonel
Dame in church authority in southern Utah, and a lieutenant colonel in
the militia under Dame. To make their conference perfectly secret, they
took some blankets and passed the night in an old iron works. There
Haight told Lee a long story about Captain Fancher's party, charging
them with abusing the Mormons, burning fences, poisoning water,
threatening to kill Brigham Young and all the apostles, etc. He said
that unless preventive measures were taken, the whole Mormon population
were likely to be butchered by troops which these people would bring
back from California. Lee says that he believed all this. He was also
told that, at a council held that day, it had been decided to arm the
Indians and "have them give the emigrants a brush, and, if they killed
part or all, so much the better." When asked who authorized this, Haight
replied, "It is the will of all in authority," and Lee was told that he
was to carry out the order. The intention then was to have the Indians
do the killing without any white assistance. On his way home Lee met a
large body of Indians who said they were ordered by Haight, Higbee, and
Bishop Klingensmith, to kill and rob the emigrants, and wanted Lee to
lead them. He told them to camp near the emigrants and wait for him;
but they made the attack, as described, early Monday morning, without
capturing the camp, and drove the whites into an intrenchment from which
they could not dislodge them. Hence the change of plan.
During the early part of the operations, Lee says, a messenger had been
sent to Brigham Young for orders. On Thursday evening two or three wagon
loads of Mormons, all armed, arrived at Lee's camp in the Meadows, the
party including Major Higbee of the Iron Militia, Bishop Klingensmith,
and many members of the High Council. When all were assembled, Major
Higbee reported that Haight's orders were that "all the emigrants must
be put out of the way"; that they had no pass (Young could have given
them one); that they were really a part of Johnston's army, and, if
allowed to proceed to California, they would bring destruction on all
the settlements in Utah. All knelt in prayer, after which Higbee gave
Lee a paper ordering the destruction of all who could talk. After
further prayers, Higbee said to Lee, "Brother Lee, I am ordered by
President Haight to inform you that you shall receive a crown of
celestial glory for your faithfulness, and your eternal joy shall be
complete." Lee says that he was "much shaken" by this offer, because
of his complete faith in the power of the priesthood to fulfil such
promises. The outcome of the conference was the adoption of the plan of
treachery that was so successfully carried out on Friday morning. The
council had lasted so long that the party merely had time for breakfast
before Bateman set out for the camp with his white flag.*
* Bishop Klingensmith, one of the indicted, in whose case the
district attorney entered a nolle prosequi in order that he might be a
witness at Lee's first trial, said in his testimony: "Coming home the
day following their [emigrants'] departure from Cedar City, met Ira
Allen four miles beyond the place where they had spoken to Lee. Allen
said, 'The die is cast, the doom of the emigrants is sealed.'" (This
was in reference to a meeting in Parowan, when the destruction of the
emigrants had been decided on.) He said John D. Lee had received orders
from headquarters at Parowan to take men and go, and Joel White would be
wanted to go to Pinto Creek and revoke the order to suffer the emigrants
to pass. The third day after, Haight came to McFarland's house and told
witness and others that orders had come in from camp last night. Things
hadn't gone along as had been expected, and reenforcements were wanted.
Haight then went to Parowan to get instructions, and received orders
from Dame to "decoy the emigrants out and spare nothing but the small
children who could not tell the tale." In an affidavit made by
this Bishop in April, 1871, he said: "I do not know whether said
'headquarters' meant the spiritual headquarters at Parowan, or the
headquarters of the commander-in-chief at Salt Lake City." (Affidavit in
full in "Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 439.)
Several days after the massacre, Haight told Lee that the messenger sent
to Young for instructions had returned with orders to let the emigrants
pass in safety, and that he (Haight) had countermanded the order for
the massacre, but his messenger "did not go to the Meadows at all." All
parties were evidently beginning to realize the seriousness of their
crime. Lee was then directed by the council to go to Young with a
verbal report, Haight again promising him a celestial reward if he would
implicate more of the brethren than necessary in his talk with Young.*
On reaching Salt Lake City, Lee gave Young the full particulars of the
massacre, step by step. Young remarked, "Isaac [Haight] has sent me
word that, if they had killed every man, woman, and child in the outfit,
there would not have been a drop of innocent blood shed by the brethren;
for they were a set of murderers, robbers, and thieves."
* "At that time I believed everything he said, and I fully
expected to receive the celestial reward that he promised me. But now
[after his conviction] I say, 'Damn all such celestial rewards as I am
to get for what I did on that fatal day'." "Mormonism Unveiled," p. 251.
When the tale was finished, Young said: "This is the most unfortunate
affair that ever befell the church. I am afraid of treachery among the
brethren who were there. If any one tells this thing so that it will
become public, it will work us great injury. I want you to understand
now that you are NEVER to tell this again, not even to Heber C. Kimball.
IT MUST be kept a secret among ourselves. When you get home, I want
you to sit down and write a long letter, and give me an account of the
affair, charging it to the Indians. You sign the letter as farmer to
the Indians, and direct it to me as Indian agent. I can then make use of
such a letter to keep off all damaging and troublesome inquirers." Lee
did so, and his letter was put in evidence at his trial.
Lee says that Young then dismissed him for the day, directing him to
call again the next morning, and that Young then said to him: "I have
made that matter a subject of prayer. I went right to God with it, and
asked him to take the horrid vision from my sight if it was a righteous
thing that my people had done in killing those people at the Mountain
Meadows. God answered me, and at once the vision was removed. I have
evidence from God that he has overruled it all for good, and the action
was a righteous one and well intended."*
* For Lee's account of his interview with Young, see "Mormonism
Unveiled," pp. 252-254.
When Lee was in Salt Lake City as a member of the constitutional
convention, the next winter, Young treated him, at his house and
elsewhere, with all the friendliness of old. No one conversant with
the extent of Young's authority will doubt the correctness of Lee's
statement that "if Brigham Young had wanted one man or fifty men or five
hundred men arrested, all he would have had to do would be to say so,
and they would have been arrested instantly. There was no escape for
them if he ordered their arrest. Every man who knows anything of affairs
in Utah at that time knows this is so."
At the second trial of Lee a deposition by Brigham Young was read, Young
pleading ill health as an excuse for not taking the stand. He admitted
that "counsel and advice were given to the citizens not to sell grain to
the emigrants for their stock," but asserted that this did not include
food for the parties themselves. He also admitted that Lee called on
him and began telling the story of the massacre, but asserted that he
directed him to stop, as he did not want his feelings harrowed up with
a recital of these details. He gave as an excuse for not bringing the
guilty to justice, or at least making an investigation, the fact that
a new governor was on his way, and he did not know how soon he would
arrive. As Young himself was keeping this governor out by armed force,
and declaring that he alone should fill that place, the value of his
excuse can be easily estimated. Hamblin, at Lee's trial, testified that
he told Brigham Young and George A. Smith "everything I could" about the
massacre, and that Young said to him, "As soon as we can get a court of
justice we will ferret this thing out, but till then don't say anything
about it."
Both Knight and McMurphy testified that they took their teams to
Mountain Meadows under compulsion. Nephi Johnson, another participant,
when asked whether he acted under compulsion, replied, "I didn't
consider it safe for me to object," and when compelled to answer the
question whether any person had ever been injured for not obeying such
orders, he replied, "Yes, sir, they had."
Some letters published in the Corinne (Utah) Reporter, in the early
seventies, signed "Argus," directly accused Young of responsibility for
this massacre. Stenhouse discovered that the author had been for thirty
years a Mormon, a high priest in the church, a holder of responsible
civil positions in the territory, and he assured Stenhouse that "before
a federal court of justice, where he could be protected, he was prepared
to give the evidence of all that he asserted." "Argus" declared that
when the Arkansans set out southward from the Jordan, a courier preceded
them carrying Young's orders for non-intercourse; that they were
directed to go around Parowan because it was feared that the military
preparations at that place, Colonel Dame's headquarters, might arouse
their suspicion; and he points out that the troops who killed the
emigrants were called out and prepared for field operations, just as the
territorial law directed, and were subject to the orders of Young, their
commander-in-chief.
Not until the so-called Poland Bill of 1874 became a law was any one
connected with the Mountain Meadows Massacre even indicted. Then the
grand jury, under direction of Judge Boreman, of the Second Judicial
District of Utah, found indictments against Lee, Dame, Haight, Higbee,
Klingensmith, and others. Lee, who had remained hidden for some years
in the canyon of the Colorado,* was reported to be in south Utah at the
time, and Deputy United States Marshal Stokes, to whom the warrant for
his arrest was given, set out to find him. Stokes was told that Lee had
gone back to his hiding-place, but one of his assistants located the
accused in the town of Panguitch, and there they found him concealed in
a log pen near a house. His trial began at Beaver, on July 12, 1875. The
first jury to try his case disagreed, after being out three days, eight
Mormons and the Gentile foreman voting for acquittal, and three Gentiles
for conviction. The second trial, which took place at Beaver, in
September, 1876, resulted in a verdict of "guilty of murder in the first
degree." Beadle says of the interest which the church then took in
his conviction: "Daniel H. Wells went to Beaver, furnished some new
evidence, coached the witnesses, attended to the spiritual wants of
the jury, and Lee was convicted. He could not raise the money ($1000)
necessary to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, although
he solicited it by subscription from wealthy leading Mormons for several
days under guard."**
* Inman's "Great Salt Lake Trail," p. 141
** "Polygamy," p. 507.
Criminals in Utah convicted of a capital crime were shot, and this was
Lee's fate. It was decided that the execution should take place at the
scene of the massacre, and there the sentence of the court was carried
out on March 23, 1877. The coffin was made of rough pine boards after
the arrival of the prisoner, and while he sat looking at the workmen
a short distance away. When all the arrangements were completed, the
marshal read the order of the court and gave Lee an opportunity to
speak. A photographer being ready to take a picture of the scene, Lee
asked that a copy of the photograph be given to each of three of his
wives, naming them. He then stood up, having been seated on his coffin,
and spoke quietly for some time. He said that he was sacrificed to
satisfy the feelings of others; that he died "a true believer in the
Gospel of Jesus Christ," but did not believe everything then taught by
Brigham Young. He asserted that he "did nothing designedly wrong in
this unfortunate affair," but did everything in his power to save the
emigrants. Five executioners then stepped forward, and, when their
rifles exploded, Lee fell dead on his coffin.
Major (afterward General) Carlton, returning from California in 1859,
where he had escorted a paymaster, passed through Mountain Meadows, and,
finding many bones of the victims still scattered around, gathered them,
and erected over them a cairn of stones, on one of which he had engraved
the words: "Here lie the bones of 120 men, women, and children from
Arkansas, murdered on the 10th day of September, 1857." In the centre of
the cairn was placed a beam, some fifteen feet high, with a cross-tree,
on which was painted: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will
repay it." It was said that this was removed by order of Brigham Young.*
* "Humiliating as it is to confess, in the 42d Congress there
were gentlemen to be found in the committees of the House and in
the Senate who were bold enough to declare their opposition to all
investigation. One who had a national reputation during the war, from
Bunker Hill to New Orleans, was not ashamed to say to those who sought
the legislation that was necessary to make investigation possible, that
it was 'too late.'" "Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 456.