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Called the darkest deed of the nineteenth century, the brutal 1857 murder of 120 men, women, and children at a place in southern Utah called Mountain Meadows remains one of the most controversial events in the history of the American West.

Although only one man, John D. Lee, ever faced prosecution, many other Mormons participated in the massacre of wagon loads of Arkansas emigrants, as they headed through southwestern Utah, on their way to California.

Brigham Young, the fiery prophet of the Church of Latter day Saints who led his embattled people to the "promised land," in the valley of the Great Salt Lake ...what exactly he knew, and when he knew it, are questions that historians still debate.




It is not surprising that practitioners of such a religion might grow suspicious of persons outside of their religious community, nor should it be surprising that non-Mormons living in, or traveling through, the very Mormon territory of Utah might feel like "strangers in a strange land."


Tensions between federal officials and Mormons in the new territory escalated over time, the struggle often resembled comic opera more than a political battle.

As both sides talked past each other, hostile rhetoric fanned the Mormons resentment of government, from their standpoint, they had patiently endured two decades of bitter persecution with great forbearance, but their patience with their long list of enemies had worn thin, as early as 1851, Governor Young said in a speech said ...any President of the United States who lifts his finger against these people, shall die an untimely death and go to Hell!!


In 1857, conflict between the Mormon leadership and Utah and the federal government reached the boiling point, worried that a federal army might be sent to the territory, the Mormon dominated Utah legislature, enacted legislation in January reactivating the territorial militia, called the Nauvoo Legion.

Federal officials in Utah complained of harassment and destruction of records by Mormon citizens. On April 15, 1857, a federal judge, the territorial surveyor and the US Marshal, all the federal officials in Utah except one Indian agent, fled the state convinced that they were about to be killed. When the army got an order from President James Buchanan to quell the Utah "rebellion," the Mormons became alarmed, seeing it as nothing less than a threat to the existence of their religion, past persecution they had experienced in the Midwest, made the danger seem especially real.

Church officials referred to Federal officials and the US Army as enemies, and Utahans readied for what many saw as a life or death struggle for their faith, Young embarked on an effort to rally Indian support for the Mormon cause, support that he saw as potentially critical in the battle to come.


News of the Pratt murder, committed by a non Mormon angered over Pratt's taking of his wife, soon reached Utah, and greatly inflamed local hostility toward non Mormons, when further word reached Salt Lake in July 1857, that the army was headed its way, Utah became a place hungry for retribution.

On September 1 1857, Brigham Young met in Salt Lake City with southern Indian chiefs, according to an entry in the diary of Dimick Huntington, Young's brother in law who was present at the meeting, Young encouraged the Indians to seize all the cattle of emigrants that traveled on the south route, through southern Utah to California ...the journal entry actually says Young gave the Paiute chiefs the emigrant's cattle.


There is virtually no evidence to support any of these charges, undoubtedly, the Fancher party understood it was not welcome in the territory, and simply wanted to get out as fast as possible.


Sunday September 6, was a day for dramatic speech making at Mormon services around Utah ...in Salt Lake City, Brigham Young took the occasion to declare that the Almighty recognized Utah as a free and independent people, no longer bound by the laws of the United States.

In Cedar City, meanwhile, Isaac Haight told those gathered at the morning service that ...I am prepared to fee to the Gentiles the same bread they fed to us, God being my helper, I will give the last ounce of strength, and if need be my last drop of blood in defense of Zion.

That Sunday evening, the Fancher party crossed over the rim of the Great Basin and encamped at a place called Mountain Meadows.


By September 11, Legion officers had devised a plan for ending the stand off, most of the Paiutes had left after growing weary of the siege, and would play no role in the bloody conclusion, the plan was devious but effective, Major John Higbee in command of the forces at Mountain Meadows, persuaded John Lee and William Bateman to act as decoys, to draw the emigrants out from the protection of their wagons, Lee and Bateman carrying a white flag, marched across the field to the emigrants camp.

The desperate emigrants agreed to the terms promised by Lee, they would give up their arms, wagons, and cattle, in return for promise that they would not be harmed, as they embarked on a 35 mile hike back to Cedar City.

Samuel McMurdy, a member of the Nauvoo Legion, took the reigns of one of the wagons into which were loaded some of the youngest children, a woman and a few seriously injured emigrant men were loaded into a second wagon. John Lee positioned himself between the two wagons as they pulled out, following the two wagons, the women and the older children of the Fancher party walked behind, after the wagons had moved on Higbee ordered the emigrant men to begin walking in single file, an armed Mormon "guard" escorted each emigrant man.


The next day, Colonel Dame and Lt. Colonel Haight visited the site of the massacre, with John Lee and Philip Klingensmith , Lee in his confession, described the field on that day.

The bodies of men, women and children had been stripped entirely naked, making the scene one of the most loathsome and ghastly that can be imagined, Dame appeared shocked by what he found said, ...I did not think there were so many women and children, or I would not have had anything to do with it.

Haight, angered by Dame's remark, expressed concern that Dame might try to blame him for an action that Dame had ordered, the men agreed on one thing, however. Mormon participation in the massacre had to be kept secret, within twenty fours hours, Haight had another reason for concern, Brigham Young's reply to his inquiry arrived in Cedar City ...too late, too late, Haight said as he read Young's letter, and began to cry.

Brigham Young declared martial law on September 15, in his proclamation of dubious legality, Young prohibited all armed forces from entering this territory, and ordered the Nauvoo Legion to prepare for an expected invasion by federal forces, the proclamation also prohibited any person from passing through the territory, without a permit from the proper officer!!


The first published reports of the massacre begin appearing in California newspapers in October, one came from John Aiken, who with mail carrier John Hunt, passed by Mountain Meadows in late September, with a pass signed by William Dame.

I saw about twenty wolves feasting upon the carcasses of the murdered, Aiken wrote ...Mr Hunt shot at a wolf, and they ran a few yards and halted.

I noticed that the women and children were more generally eaten by the wild beasts than were the men, The Los Angeles Star called it the foulest massacre ever perpetrated, and added that responsibility for the attack, will not be known until the Government makes a full investigation of the affair, the San Francisco Bulletin was far less restrained, calling for a crusade against Utah ...which will crush out this beast of heresy forever.

Public outrage grew, Americans from California to Washington DC, begin calling for military action against those responsible for the crime.

Aware of the sensitivity of the events at Mountain Meadows, Mormon officials from Young on down worked to shift the blame for the massacre either to Indians, or the emigrants themselves. By November, John Lee completed a fictionalized account of the massacre, attributing all the killing to Indians, and sent the report on to Young.

Young, as Superintendent of Indians in addition to his other titles, prepared a report blaming the massacre on the mistreatment of Indians by non Mormons, and sent it on to the Indian Commissioner, Capt. Fancher & Co. fell victim to the Indians wrath near Mountain Meadows, Young wrote ...lamentable as the case truly is, it is only the natural consequences of that fatal policy which treats Indians like wolves, or other ferocious beasts.

None of the Mormon drafted reports, however, prevented Congress from debating the massacre, on March 18 1858, Congress ordered an official inquiry into the cause of the tragedy of September 11, the next month one fourth of the United States army reached Fort Bridger, in present day Wyoming, rather than fight the Nauvoo Legion forces guarding the canyons leading to Salt Lake.

General Albert Alston decided to overwinter at the Fort, President Buchanan expressed his determination to put down the "rebellion" in Utah, with force if necessary ...humanity itself requires that we should put it down in a manner, that it shall be the last, he said!!


In November, U. S. District Judge John Cradlebaugh arrived in Utah and, unlike the Governor, saw no reason not to aggressively pursue justice, for the victims of the Mountain Meadows massacre, after several months of investigation, Judge Cradlebaugh issued arrest warrants for John Lee, Isaac Haight, and John Higbee for the murders.

Angered by his discovery that the massacre was committed, by order of council, the judge wrote a letter to President Buchanan, seeking his commitment to secure convictions for the guilty, Cradlebaugh's efforts however, were frustrated when the federal case is essentially dropped, after the US Marshal declared his unwillingness to execute arrest warrants, without federal troops to protect him from local citizens, and that help was not provided.

By 1860 with the Union ready to split apart, interest in prosecuting the Mountain Meadows case waned, Governor Cumming saw little reason to press for prosecution, especially in a territory where the law put jury selection entirely in the hands of Mormon officials ...God Almighty couldn't convict the butchers unless Brigham Young was willing, Cumming said.


The trial of John D. Lee opened on July 23, 1875 before US District Judge Jacob Boreman in Beaver Utah, US Attorneys William C. Carey and Robert Baskin, managed the prosecution, while four attorneys bankrolled by Brigham Young, comprised Lee's defense team.

Talk of possible mob action against witnesses filled the crowded streets of Beaver, Marshal Maxwell sought to preserve order by threatening potential instigators, ...we will hang any god damned Bishop to a telegraph pole, and turn their houses over their heads, the crowd so reported the Bailiff to Judge Boreman, got the message that the government meant business!!

Throughout the trial, conflicts arose among Lee's lawyers, with two members of the defense team, including Wells Spicer who, six years later as a magistrate in Tombstone, ruled, after a several week hearing, that the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday should face a criminal trial, for the famous shoot out at the OK Corral .

Determined to provide Lee with his strongest possible defense, even if it meant implicating higher Mormon officials, while two other members of the team seemed equally focused on protecting those same higher officials, the jury, gathered in the improvised courtroom on the second floor of the Beaver City Cooperative, consisted of eight Mormons, one former Mormon, and three non Mormons.


For the defense, Wells Spicer presented Lee as a reluctant participant, he said the bad behavior of the emigrants was largely responsible for the massacre, and that Lee had cried, and tried to protect the emigrants, when their killing had first been proposed by Haight and Higbee.

Lee only did what he did, Spicer said, after having John Higbee aim a loaded rifle at his head, according to the defense attorney's version of events, hundreds of Indians at Mountain Meadows forced the few dozen white men into helping in the killing ...if they didn't, he said, the Indians would kill them and sweep off their homes, and families and settlements.

In the trial's oddest turn of events, Spicer came back after a courtroom recess to withdraw all his remarks concerning Lee's having acted under orders, Spicer's about face, according to a report of the trial, left the gentlemen of the jury in a hapless state of mystification, clearly, some people were not at all happy, that Spicer had adopted a strategy of pointing fingers at higher officials.

The defense never presented a cohesive story of the massacre itself, instead, it presented witnesses that testified, members of the Fancher party had done things to earn the enmity of local Indians, one witness claimed to have seen members of the wagon train leave bags of poison, by a spring at Corn Creek.

The defense witness testified that Indians told him, that members of their tribe had died after drinking poisoned water from the spring, on cross examination however, the defense's poison story fell apart, in his summation Defense Attorney Jabez Sutherland, said the massacre was all the doing of the righteously angered Paiutes, the Indians were implacable in their wrath, and even threatened the Mormons for their efforts to pacify them.

The prosecution, in Brigham's Young's Utah with a jury that included eight Mormons, never expected a guilty verdict, and they didn't get one, the jury hung, with the eight Mormons and the one former Mormon voting to acquit Lee, and the three non Mormons voting to convict.

A newspaper in Idaho presented a typically cynical view of the trial's outcome, it would be as unreasonable to expect a jury of highwaymen to convict a stage robber, as it would be to get Mormons to find one of their own peculiar faith guilty of a crime.


A deal, or at least an understanding was reached in April 1876, Sumner Howard replaced William Carey as the US Attorney for Utah, under pressure from Washington and the public, to convict someone for the massacre, Howard pondered how a unanimous jury verdict could ever be achieved in the case, without Brigham Young giving the prosecution his blessing.



The second trial began on September 14 1876, soon after the prosecution dropped all charges against William Dame, jury selection went quickly, as a report sent to Brigham Young noted, Howard made no effort to get Gentiles on the Jury, in fact the word Mormon was scarcely mentioned in court all day.

The surprising turn of events, the Church aiding the prosecution, left Lee's defense attorney, William Bishop angry and confused, before the trial began, Bishop assumed that the Mormon leadership would protect his client, writing a few months after trial, Bishop's anger poured out.


From its opening statement on, the prosecution made clear that its goal was to convict John Lee, not try the entire Mormon hierarchy.

The prosecution case made Lee to appear even more guilty than he was, Lee incited the Indians to attack the wagon train, through deception, Lee lured other Mormons into the battle, he hatched the plan that led to the massacre and Lee himself killed a number of emigrants, then helped divide the plunder.

Out of the Utah woodwork, came a whole host of loyal Mormons ready to testify as to Lee's bad deeds ...Samuel Knight testified that he watched Lee club a woman to death ...Samuel McMurdy said he saw Lee shoot a woman, as well as two or three of the wounded emigrants ...Jacob Hamblin told the court, he witnessed Lee throw down a girl, and cut her throat ...Nelphi Johnson testified that Lee and Klingensmith, seemed to be engineering the whole thing.

Lee could do little against the onslaught but complain, pacing his cell floor during a break in the trial, bitterly complaining that witnesses were charging him with the same awful deeds, that they did with their own hands.

Everyone could see the game plan, the buck stops with Lee, the memories of witnesses suddenly faded, when asked to name other Mormons present at the battle scene, and no one could remember who else might have participated in the killing.[/quote]
Resigned to his fate, Lee asked his attorneys to present no defense after the prosecution closed its case, with little evidence from which to draw, William Bishop in his summation could only note the obvious.

The Mormon Church had resolved to sacrifice Lee, discarding him as of no further use, on September 20 1876, at 3:30 in the afternoon in Beaver, the all Mormon jury returned its verdict, John Lee was guilty of murder in the first degree.


Appeals delayed Lee's scheduled execution over five months, he used much of the time to write his autobiography, on a March afternoon in 1877 in Beaver, Utah, US Marshal William Nelson led John Lee to a closed carriage, that would take him south over the emigrant trail to Mountain Meadows.

On March 23 Lee, dressed in a red flannel shirt, enjoyed breakfast and a cup of coffee near the site of the 1857 massacre, a minister walked the condemned man to his own coffin, Lee sat down on the coffin while the Marshal read his death warrant, when the reading ended, he rose to address the federal officers, the firing squad, and seventy or so spectators.


Lee shook hands with those around them and resumed his seat on his coffin, he shouted to the firing squad, hidden in three wagons forming a semi circle around him ...Center my heart, boys, don't mangle my body!" ...when the shots came he fell back without a cry.



William Bishop, Lee's attorney in his second trial, sent the manuscript Lee had completed in prison to a publishing company in St. Louis, Mormonism Unveiled or the Life and Confession of John D. Lee, became an immediate bestseller, it provided an important history of early Mormonism, as well as offering Lee's somewhat self serving account of the events leading to the Mountain Meadows massacre.

Lee reconstructed his chronology to distance himself from the initial attack, and provided blistering attacks on the men who testified against him, his list of murderers, aside from those who admitted killing emigrants, included only his enemies.[/quote]
In 1998, Gordon B. Hinckley, President of the Church of Latter Day Saints, visited Mountain Meadows, he found himself embarrassed at the dilapidated condition of monument at the site and committed the Church to building a proper memorial ...we owe the dead respect, Hinckley declared ...that land is sacred ground.

On September 11, 1999, a new monument was dedicated at Mountain Meadows, President Hinckley, in the afternoon sunshine, told the assembled crowd ...the past cannot be recalled, it cannot be changed, it is time to leave the entire matter in the hands of God.


Phil Bolinger another member of the Mountain Meadows group said ...it has a little plaque embedded in it, that says the site is owned and maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that's all the interpretation we get for the victims, for our families.

The foundation won some initial support from Elder Marlin Jensen, the church's liaison with massacre descendant organizations, but lost that after church leadership declared it was not in the best interest of the church, to pursue federal stewardship, as a compromise, the foundation has asked the church to consider national historic landmark designation, as a way to protect and preserve the site.

The LDS church as an institution promotes many of its historic sites to be designated including Nauvoo and Temple Square, Scott Fanchon said ...they say we don't want the federal government involved, we say it's a bit hypocritical," Church spokespeople in Salt Lake City did not return a call, in a June story by the Associated Press, spokeswoman Kim Farah said Mormon leaders are committed to appropriately preserving the site.

The church has owned the monument site at Mountain Meadows for many years, the property is open to the public, and considerable time and resources are allocated to ensure that the property is well maintained,
open to the public, and that those who perished there are appropriately remembered ," she said.

The threat and the deed came so near together as to lead many to believe that one was the result of the other, a moment's reflection will show that they were too nearly simultaneous for this to be the case, and that in the absence of telegraph and railroad, it would be impossible to execute such a deed three hundred miles away, in two days. Brigham Young between 1855 and 1865.


I will now proceed to give the incidents as they occurred, in the spring of 1857 a party of one hundred and thirty six Arkansas emigrants, among whom were a few Missourians, set forth for southern California.



Wagon train in Utah.

On May of 1857 Parley P. Pratt was arraigned before the supreme court at Van Buren, Arkansas, on a charge of abducting the children of one Hector McLean, a native of New Orleans, but then living in California. He was acquitted; but it is alleged by anti Mormon writers, and tacitly admitted by the saints, that he was sealed to Hector McLean's wife, who had been baptized into the faith years before, while living in San Francisco, and in 1855 was living in Salt Lake City. McLean swore vengeance against the apostle, who was advised to make his escape, and set forth on horseback, unarmed, through a sparsely settled country, where, under the circumstances, escape was almost impossible.

His path was barred by two of McLean's friends until McLean himself with three others overtook the fugitive, when he fired six shots at him, the balls lodging in his saddle or passing through his clothes. McLean then stabbed him twice with a bowie knife under the left arm, whereupon Parley dropped from his horse, and the assassin, after thrusting his knife deeper into the wounds, seized a derringer belonging to one of his accomplices, and shot him through the breast ...the party then rode off, and McLean escaped unpunished.

Salt Lake City Philip Ritz, 1867


Cattle at water hole.

It has been claimed that this charge was disproved; and what motive the Arkansas party could have had for thus surrounding themselves with treacherous and blood-thirsty foes has never been explained.

In the valleys throughout the southern portion of the territory grows a poisonous weed, and it is possible that the cattle died from eating of this weed. It has been intimated that those who accused the emigrants of poisoning the Pah Vants were not honest in their belief, and that the story of the poisoning was invented, or at least grossly exaggerated, for the purpose of making them solely responsible for the massacre.

The fact has never been so established, notwithstanding the report of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who states that none of this tribe were present at the massacre.


It is alleged by the Mormons, and on good authority, that during their journey from Salt Lake City to Cedar the emigrants were guilty of further gross outrage.

If we can believe a statement made in the confession of Lee, a few days before his death, Isaac C. Haight, president of the stake at Cedar City, accused them of abusing women, of poisoning wells and streams at many points on their route, of destroying fences and growing crops, of violating the city ordinances at Cedar City, and resisting the officers who attempted to arrest them.

These and other charges, even more improbable, have been urged in extenuation of the massacre; but little reliance can be placed on Lee's confession, and most of them appear to be unfounded. It must be admitted, however, that rather than see their women and children starve, they perhaps took by force such necessary provisions as they were not allowed to purchase.


Mountain Meadows Massacre drawing by T.B.H. Stenhouse, 1873.


On the morning of the fifth day, a wagon was seen approaching from the northern end of the meadow, and with it a company of the Nauvoo legion, when within a few hundred yards of the entrenchment, the company halted, and one of them William Bateman by name, was sent forward with a flag of truce.

In answer to this signal a little girl, dressed in white, appeared in an open space between the wagons, half way between the Mormons and the corral, Bateman was met by one of the emigrants named Hamilton, to whom he promised protection for his party, on condition that their arms were surrendered, assuring him that they would be conducted safely to Cedar City, after a brief parley, each one returned to his comrades.


It was then arranged that Lee should conclude terms with the emigrants, and as soon as they had delivered themselves into the power of the Mormons, should start for Hamblin's Rancho on the eastern side of the meadows, with the wagons and arms, the young children and the sick and wounded.



John Doyle Lee

As soon as the women were close to the ambuscade, Higbee, who was in charge of the detachment, was to give the signal by saying to his command ...do your duty!"

Whereupon the militia were to shoot down the men, the Indians were to slaughter the women and children, sparing only those of tender age, and Lee with some of the wagoners was to butcher the sick and wounded. Mounted troopers were to be in readiness to pursue and slay those who attempted to escape, so that with the exception of infants, no living soul should be left to tell the tale of the massacre.


Most of the men were shot down at the first fire. Three only escaped from the valley; of these two were quickly run down and slaughtered, and the third was slain at Muddy Creek, some fifty miles distant.


To two of Lee's wagoners, McMurdy and Knight, was assigned the duty, as it was termed, of slaughtering the sick and wounded, carrying out their instructions, they stopped the teams as soon as firing was heard, and with loaded rifles approached the wagons where lay their victims, McMurdy being in front ...O Lord, my God, he exclaimed ...receive their spirits, it is for thy kingdom that I do this," then, raising his rifle to his shoulder, he shot through the brain a wounded man, who was lying with his head on a sick comrade's breast.


The massacre was now completed, and after stripping the bodies of all articles of value, Brother Lee and his associates went to breakfast, returning after a hearty meal to bury the dead!!


The dead were now dragged to a ravine near by and piled in heaps, a little earth was scattered over them, but so little that it was washed away by the first rains, leaving the remains to be devoured by wolves and coyotes, the imprint of whose teeth was afterward found on their bones.


The last resting place of the victims in 1877... a stone cairn was built it had a rough slab of granite, with the following inscription, Here 120 men, women, and children from Arkansas were massacred in cold blood, early in Septenber 1857., the cairn was originally some twelve feet in height, and surmounted by a cross of cedar, on which were inscribed the words Vengeance is Mine I will Repay, Saith the Lord.

It has been periodically vandalized and partly destroyed, then rebuilt many times over since then!!


The survivors of the slaughter were seventeen children, from two months to seven years of age, who were carried, on the evening of the massacre, by John D. Lee, Daniel Tullis, and others to the house of Jacob Hamblin, and afterward placed in charge of Mormon families at Cedar, Harmony, and elsewhere.

Judge John Cradlebaugh


Accompanied by a military guard, as there was no jail within his district and no other means of securing the prisoners, the judge opened court on the 8th. In his address to the grand jury he specified a number of crimes that had been committed in southern Utah, including the massacre. "To allow these things to pass over," he observed, "gives a color as if they were done by authority.


Judge Cradlebaugh's address was ill advised. The higher authority of which he spoke could mean only the authority of the church, or in other words, of the first presidency; and to contemn and threaten to impeach that authority before a Mormon grand jury was a gross judicial blunder. Though there may have been cause for suspicion, there was no fair color of testimony, and there is none yet, that Brigham or his colleagues were implicated in the massacre.
Deseret News and Tithing Office Building .


"I fear, and I regret to say it," remarks the superintendent of Indian affairs, in August 1859, "that with certain parties here there is a greater anxiety to connect Brigham Young and other church dignitaries with every criminal offence than diligent endeavor to punish the actual perpetrators of crime."

The judge's remarks served no purpose, except to draw forth from the mayor of Provo a protest against the presence of the troops, as an infringement of the rights of American citizens. The judge replied that good American citizens need have no fear of American troops, whereupon the citizens of Provo petitioned Governor Cumming to order their removal. Cumming, who was then at Provo, was officially informed by the mayor that the civil authorities were prepared and ready to keep in safe custody all prisoners arrested for trial, and others whose presence might be necessary.

He therefore requested General Johnston to withdraw the force which was then encamped at the court-house, stating that its presence was unnecessary. The general refused to comply, being sustained in his action by the judges; and on the 27th of March Cumming issued a proclamation protesting against all movements of troops except such as accorded with his own instructions as chief executive magistrate. A few days later the detachment was withdrawn.


While encamped on the Sevier River they were attacked by night, two of them being killed and two wounded, the latter escaping to Nephi, whence they started for Salt Lake City, but were murdered on their way at Willow Springs. Although the guilty parties were well known, it was not until many years later that one of them, named Collett, was arrested, and in October 1878 was tried and acquitted at Provo.


Mountain Meadows Massacre site, H. Steinegger, Pacific Art Co., 1877.



After some delay, caused by the difficulty in procuring evidence, the 12th of July, 1875, was appointed for the trial at Beaver City in southern Utah. At eleven o'clock on this day the court was opened, Judge Boreman presiding, but further delay was caused by the absence of witnesses, and the fact that Lee had promised to make a full confession, and thus turn state's evidence.

In his statement the prisoner detailed minutely the plan and circumstances of the tragedy, from the day when the emigrants left Cedar City until the butchery at Mountain Meadows. He avowed that Higbee and Haight played a prominent part in the massacre, which, he declared, was committed in obedience to military orders, but said nothing as to the complicity of the higher dignitaries of the church, by whom it was believed that these orders were issued. The last was the very point that the prosecution desired to establish, its object, compared with which the conviction of the accused was but a minor consideration, being to get at the inner facts of the case.


He proposed to prove that Lee had acted in direct opposition to the feelings and wishes of the officers of the Mormon church; that by means of a flag of truce Lee had induced the emigrants to give up their arms; that with his own hands the prisoner had shot two women, and brained a third with the but-end of his rifle; that he had cut the throat of a wounded man, whom he dragged forth from one of the wagons; and that he had gathered up the property of the emigrants and used it or sold it for his own benefit.

These charges, and others relating to incidents that have already been mentioned, were in the main substantiated. The first evidence introduced was documentary, and included the depositions of Brigham Young and George A. Smith, and a letter written by Lee to the former, wherein he attempted to throw the entire responsibility of the deed upon the Indians.



The first witness examined was Daniel H. Wells, who merely stated that Lee was a man of influence among the Indians, and understood their language sufficiently to converse with them. James Haslem testified that between five and six o'clock on Monday, September 7, 1857, he was ordered by Isaac C. Haight to start for Salt Lake City and with all speed deliver a letter or message to Brigham Young. He arrived at 11 A. M. on the following Thursday, and four hours later was on his way back with the answer. As he set forth, Brigham said to him: "Go with all speed, spare no horse-flesh. The emigrants must not be meddled with, if it takes all Iron county to prevent it. They must go free and unmolested."

Samuel McMurdy testified that he saw Lee shoot one of the women, and two or three of the sick and wounded who were in the wagons. Jacob Hamblin alleged that soon after the massacre he met Lee within a few miles of Fillmore, when the latter stated that two young girls, who had been hiding in the underbrush at Mountain Meadows, were brought into his presence by a Utah chief. The Indian asked what should be done with them. "They must be shot," answered Lee; "they are too old to be spared."


On the testimony which we have now before us I will make but one comment. If Haslem's statement was true, Brigham was clearly no accomplice; if it was false, and his errand to Salt Lake City was a mere trick of the first presidency, it is extremely improbable that Brigham would have betrayed his intention to Van Vliet by using the remarks that he made only two days before the event. Moreover, apart from other considerations, it is impossible to reconcile the latter theory with the shrewd and far-sighted policy of this able leader, who well knew that his militia were no match for the army of Utah, and who would have been the last one to rouse the vengeance of a great nation against his handful of followers.



A few days before his execution, Lee made a confession, in which he attempts to palliate his guilt, to throw the burden of the crime on his accomplices, especially on Dame, Haight, and Higbee, and to show that the massacre was committed by order of Brigham and the high-council. He also makes mention of other murders, or attempts to murder, which, as he alleges, were committed by order of some higher authority.

I feel composed, and as calm as a summer morning," he writes on the 13th of March. "I hope to meet my fate with manly courage. I declare my innocence. I have done nothing designedly wrong in that unfortunate and lamentable affair with which I have been implicated. I used my utmost endeavors to save them from their sad fate. I freely would have given worlds, were they at my command, to have averted that evil.

Death to me has no terror. It is but a struggle, and all is over. I know that I have a reward in heaven, and my conscience does not accuse me."

Ten days later he was led to execution at the Mountain Meadows. Over that spot the curse of the almighty seemed to have fallen. The luxuriant herbage that had clothed it twenty years before had disappeared; the springs were dry and wasted, and now there was neither grass nor any green thing, save here and there a copse of sage-brush or of scrub-oak, that served but to make its desolation still more desolate. Around the cairn that marks their grave still flit, as some have related, the phantoms of the murdered emigrants, and nightly reënact in ghastly pantomime the scene of this hideous tragedy.


After shaking hands with those around him, he removed a part of his clothing, handing his hat to the marshal, who bound a handkerchief over his eyes, his hands being free at his own request. Seating himself with his face to the firing party, and with hands clasped over his head, he exclaimed: "Let them shoot the balls through my heart. Don't let them mangle my body." The word of command was given; the report of rifles rang forth on the still morning air, and without a groan or quiver the body of the criminal fell back lifeless on his coffin. God was more merciful to him than he had been to his victims.

John D. Lee would be the only person punished for the massacre of some 120 men, women and children, this 1875 photo shows men preparing for the execution, Lee is seated next to the coffin.

Sketch of the site of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, from the cover of the August 13, 1859 Harper's Weekly ...the scene was one too horrible and sickening for language to describe, human skeletons, disjointed bones, ghastly skulls and the hair of women were scattered in frightful profusion over a distance of two miles. 1859 report.

It would appear John D. Lee, a Mormon General authority and Brigham Young’s head clerk, was unaware how far Young would go to preserve himself.

Though Lee was sealed to Brigham Young as a spiritual son, in a now abandoned temple ordinance known as the law of adoption, Lee would be the only one found guilty of the murders committed at Mountain Meadows, and would be the only one to die at the hands of a firing squad.

While sitting on his coffin just before being executed, he lamented his devotion to Young, I studied to make this man’s will my pleasure for thirty years, see now, what I have come to this day ...I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner.


The killers swore an oath of secrecy, and immediately begin a campaign of misinformation that persists to this day, since many accounts come primarily from those who did the killing, sorting out what happened and why, means sifting through contradictory stories, justifications and deliberate obfuscation.

Brigham Young both set in motion events that led directly to the attack of this wagon train, and was an accessory after the fact, covering up the incident that was planned, ordered and carried out by Mormon Church leaders.


Young signed a voucher for $3527.43 worth of goods, to go to Paiute chiefs and their bands, less than three weeks after the massacre.



This army report was corroborated in September of 1999 when University of Utah anthropologist Shannon Novak, carried out thirty hours of forensic analysis, on bones unearthed by a backhoe digging at the Mountain Meadows site.


The rush of events had convinced the Mormon Prophet that the end of time was near … The cornerstone of his plan was to rally Utah’s Indians to the Mormon cause. … ‘they must learn that they have either got to help us or the United States will kill us both’.

Where emigrant trains that passed through Utah, were once a means of trade and income, they were now seen as a way to intimidate the U.S. army to leave them alone.


For three hundred miles emigrants had to run ‘the gauntlet of Indian attacks and Mormon treachery, Richeson Abbot complained, his party was ambushed at City of Rocks, and he was satisfied the attack was led by Mormons, as they heard them cursing in regular Mormon slang, and calling out to them to get out of the country, as they had no business there, the Saints boasted they would kill them all.

As the Fancher train made camp some seventy miles north of Mountain Meadows on the evening of September 1, 1857, Young met for about an hour with the southern Indian chiefs to implement his plan to stop overland emigration on the southern road, describing his meeting with the Paiutes in his journal, Young claimed he could ‘hardly restrain them from exterminating the ‘Americans.’’



Describing the September 1 parlay, Huntington wrote: "...I gave them all the cattle that had gone to Cal the south route... it made them open their eyes they said that you have told us not to steal, so I have, but now they have come to fight us & you, for when they kill us they will kill you, they said they were afraid to fight the Americans, & so would raise allies, and we might fight."

The language of Huntington’s critical journal entry is archaic, but its meaning is clear. Even a devout Mormon historian has identified the “I” in this entry as Brigham Young. The Paiute leaders had camped with the Fancher party only a week earlier at Corn Creek, so Young did not have to paint a picture for the chiefs to know whose cattle he was giving them.

The donation of cattle to the Paiutes was not a direct order to massacre every Mericat, non-Mormon American, in southern Utah, but Indian Superintendent Young had told the apostles, ‘The Gentile emigrants [will] shoot the indians wharever they meet with them & the Indians now retaliate & will kill innocent People.’ He understood it was likely that innocent women and children would die in the Indian attacks he tacitly authorized.


Davis camped at Corn Creek just ten days after the Fancher party, and over four days he never heard anything of the poisoning, we used the same water, he reported, and between five and six hundred head of our cattle and horses used the water, yet we discovered no poison, nor heard anything of it, till we got to Parowan.

Yet the poison story actually preceded the Fancher party on their trip south, even with the lack of solid evidence available today, that the Fancher party ever did anything to incite the Indians to violence, some LDS historians continue to assert the Fancher party provoked and abused the Paiutes.


Caroline Frasier, in her article for The New York Review of Books, concluded Mormons armed with guns, not just Indians wielding clubs or tomahawks, as the Mormons will have it, killed women and children at Mountain Meadows.

One woman's skull, revealed evidence that she had been shot in the head or face at close range, and one child aged ten to twelve, was killed by a gunshot through the top of the head.

On Sept. 11, 1857, Mormons aided by native American allies massacred about 120 unarmed men, women, and children bound for California by wagon train. The slaughter took place amid war hysteria: The US Army was marching toward Utah to confront Mormon leaders.


Kent Bylund, a Mormon who owned land at the site in southwestern Utah, has seen a shift in attitude. Tapped by Mormon President Gordon Hinckley to head up construction of a memorial in 1999, Mr. Bylund turned to the local Mormon community for donations of time and money. People wanted to be a part of this healing process, for Mormons, it's a part of their heritage, and it's hard for them to come to terms with it," says Bylund.


She says her group also wants the church to help round up property that was stolen from the train, agree to turn over the site to some other steward, and – very simply – apologize.


The new movie "September Dawn," puts the blame on top Mormon leaders and religious fanaticism, at times using heavy-handed contrasts with the protestant piety of the immigrants.


But the religion played a role: "There were statements made both in Salt Lake City and by local leaders down in southern Utah that tended to inflame emotions," says coauthor Ron Walker. "To that extent, ... there is a measure of culpability."

After reading their manuscript, Jan Shipps, a preeminent non-Mormon scholar, urged the writers to flesh out the religious backdrop. But she praises the book's research, and says it's a big deal that the church is publishing a synopsis in next month's church magazine.

"Can you imagine what that means in the official magazine of the church that's going all over the world to people who have just joined the church?" says Dr. Shipps, being a fifth generation Mormon like Bylund doesn't make the massacre any less jarring to faith.

"The children who died – you can't be out here without thinking about them," he says, looking across the sage-strewn meadow. He could see the bullet holes in the bones dug up by the backhoe. Yet he also thinks of his ancestors who were chased out of Missouri and Illinois by violent mobs. They feared the Army's arrival, and having to start over again.


Facing the truth of Mountain Meadows... by Robert Kirby Tribune columnist 9 July 2007


Young offered a kind of confession in May 1861. Stopping at the Meadows with 125 friends, he spied the rock pile the army had raised on the victims' graves, with its inscription, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord... Young reportedly repeated the phrase, then added, and I have taken a little.

Mormon historian Ronald W. Walker, says Young's statement about vengeance, most likely was based on reports to him that emphasized emigrant misconduct, reportedly bragging about killing Mormon founder Joseph Smith.

The US Army reported the figure of 60 to 70 Mormons at the first attack, other sources say it was mostly John D. Lee and some Indians, additional militia members slowly arrived during the five day siege.


MOUNTAIN MEADOWS - A recently discovered part of Parley Pearce's family history is laid out before him in the broad expanse of a valley floor that is Mountain Meadows... here amid the sage and scrub, 150 years ago today, that one of his ancestors, a member of a local Mormon militia, participated in the killing of 120 Arkansas emigrants who were traveling by wagon train to California.

Descendants of the victims, the 17 survivors, all children 7 and younger, and the perpetrators, as well as others, will stand together this morning to remember the Mountain Meadows Massacre, perhaps Utah's, and the LDS Church's, darkest chapter and one that has fueled historical debate, descendant infighting, conspiracy theories about cover-ups and, at times, fragile detentes.

The only thing as complicated and contested as nailing down exactly what happened before, during and after the bloodbath in this valley, then a common stop along the Old Spanish Trail, is determining the future of the grave site monument.


The bodies of the dead were left where they fell. Captains Reuben T. Campbell and Charles Brewer, along with their men from Camp Floyd, Utah, reportedly arrived a year or so later, they gathered and buried, in three separate sites, some of the remains in the northern valley, where the massacre took place, of those sites, at least two are unmarked and all three are believed to be on privately owned land.


That plaque appeared in conjunction with the placement of another monument about a mile up, atop Dan Sill Hill overlooking the valley, etched in granite imported from Arkansas are the names of the 120 victims and 17 survivors.

There are signs offering a historical overview, placing blame on Mormon settlers and Indians, which has been refuted by some historians and members of the Paiute Nation, a map depicting the path of the emigrants, and a metal viewfinder to help visitors pinpoint where the massacre occurred.

All of this is neither owned by the LDS Church nor on the land the emigrants traveled. Instead, this monument is on federal land, is managed by Dixie National Forest and was built under the direction of the Mountain Meadows Association, the oldest descendant's organization, Jacklin says.


On Aug. 3, 1999, under the supervision of several MMA members and archaeologists from Brigham Young University, who had reportedly accessed the land so as to avoid disturbing burial grounds, workers digging a trench unearthed, with a backhoe, the remains of about 29 individuals. The bones, as is common practice when human remains are found, were sent to BYU and the University of Utah for analysis.

Initial studies by then-U. anthropologist Shannon Novak showed that wounds were not consistent with LDS Church historical accounts that had placed blame on Paiute Indians.

But before she and others could complete their work, then-Gov. Mike. Leavitt, a descendant of some massacre perpetrators, intervened, issuing an order to stop the evaluation and return the bones to the grave site so that they could be reinterred in time for the Sept. 11, 1999 dedication, the whole ordeal not only stirred up conspiracy theories, it created a schism among descendants.

MOUNTAIN MEADOWS - A Mormon apostle, speaking Tuesday at the 150th anniversary memorial service for victims of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, apologized for the church's role, expressing "profound regret for the massacre."


The words, "we're sorry," were not part of the statement, but Richard Turley Jr., the LDS Church's managing director of family and church history and co-author of the forthcoming book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, insisted after the ceremony that the statement was meant to be an apology.

The church is deeply, deeply sorry,'' he said. ''What happened here was horrific.''
The apology went out to descendants of victims, but also to those of survivors and perpetrators.

"Many of those who carried out the massacre were haunted all their lives by what they did and saw on that unforgettable day. They and their relatives have also suffered under a heavy burden of guilt," Eyring said. ''No doubt divine justice will impose appropriate punishment.

The service, attended by about 400 people, began as an antique wagon, driven by Arkansas descendants and pulled by two Belgian work horses, wound its way down to the memorial grave site. Behind the wagon were descendants carrying flags bearing the names of the 29 families who were massacred in this valley that was a popular stop along the Old Spanish Trail.


The scars of that time have been long-lasting for the Paiutes, said Lora Tom, a representative of the Paiute Nation. For 150 years no one asked for our account," she said.

Tom, whose remarks elicited a standing ovation, said long-perpetuated lies faulting her ancestors have hurt Paiute youth who've grown up reading about this in history books. She said her ancestors had remained silent because they were trying to survive. They feared speaking up because they relied on local Mormons.

''

Wild West Magazine - September 2007 By Will Bagley


On Friday, September 11, hope appeared in the form of a white flag. The emigrants let the emissary, a Mormon from a nearby settlement, into their fort, and then John D. Lee, the local Indian agent, followed. Lee told the Arkansans he and his men had come to rescue them from the Indians. If the emigrants would lay down their arms, the local militia would escort them to safety. The travelers had few options: they surrendered and agreed to Lee’s strange terms.

The Mormons separated the survivors into three groups: the wounded and youngest children led the way in two wagons; the women and older children walked behind; and the men, each escorted by an armed guard, brought up the rear. Lee led this forlorn parade more than a mile to the California Trail and the rim of the Great Basin. There, the senior Mormon officer escorting the men gave an order: perhaps “Halt!” but by most accounts, “Do your duty!” A single shot rang out, and each escort turned and shot his man. Painted savages—a few of whom may have been actual Indians—jumped out of the oak brush lining the trail and cut down the women and children, while Lee directed the murder of the wounded. Within five minutes, the atrocity was over.


Those most guilty of the crime explained it with denials, lies and alibis that twisted and turned as the evidence inevitably came out. Some of the killers went mad, some apparently killed themselves and several fled to Mexico, but only one man faced the music and was executed for the crime: John D. Lee, regarded as a scapegoat by his descendants and historians alike. For the children who survived and the families of the victims, the massacre became a deep and enduring wound.

The murderers appropriated the Fancher train’s considerable property and cash. Much of it apparently made its way into Mormon leader Brigham Young’s pockets, and not a penny of compensation was ever offered to the survivors. For many living descendants and relatives of the victims, who have long been slandered as frontier hard cases who got what they deserved, the massacre remains a bitter injustice.


Two monuments, one near the highway on Dan’s Hill overlooking the killing ground, where a 1990 granite monument financed by descendants and the state of Utah honors the victims, and a second that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints raised in 1999 over the grave of the victims, whose remains were inadvertently unearthed by a backhoe during the monument’s hurried construction.

Ironically, the cairn standing at the center of the second memorial is modeled after the “rude monument, conical in form and 50 feet in circumference at the base and 12 feet in height,” that Brevet Major James Henry Carlton’s 1st Dragoons raised in 1859 and Brigham Young directed his minions to destroy two years later.


Attempts to vindicate the Mormon prophet have been underway since news of the murders reached California in early October 1857... in May 1861, after destroying the monument the U.S. Army raised over the graves of the victims in 1859, Young told Lee that those, used up at the Mountain Meadowes were the Fathers, Mothers, Bros Sisters & connections of those that Murders the Prophets; they Merited their fate, & the only thing that ever troubled him was the lives of the Women & children, but that under the circumstances ... could not be avoided.”

Lee’s story is difficult to challenge, since a Mormon apostle confirmed the quote that he ascribed to the prophet: “When he came to the Monument that contained their Bones, he made this remark, Vengence is Mine Saith the Lord, & I have taken a litle of it.”

None of the Mountain Meadows orphans had bleaker prospects than Sarah Dunlap, who was only 1 year old when a gunshot wound almost severed her arm during the massacre. An eye disease acquired in southern Utah left her virtually sightless. After returning to Arkansas, she was educated at the school for the blind in Little Rock and settled with her sister Rebecca in Calhoun County.

James Lynch wandered the world as a mining expert, but he never lost touch with the orphans, after retiring, Lynch visited his old charges in Arkansas, who greeted him as a returned father, the old frontiersman found Sarah Dunlap, now a cultured lady of thirty four years, and he soon wooed and won Miss Sarah, the couple were married on December 30, 1893, when the groom was 74.

Lynch ran a store in Woodberry, and Sarah taught Sunday school, they eventually moved to Hampton, where Sarah died in 1901. Her ornate gravestone and vault were “proof of the tenderness that James felt for Sarah.” For decades the community recalled how Captain Lynch “never tired of telling how he rescued her from the Mormons.”

Lynch died about 1910 and was buried next to his wife in an unmarked grave. His fellow Masons conducted his funeral, the Arkansas Gazette recalled, “the likes of which have never again been seen in these parts.” The survivors of Mountain Meadows never forgot “the brave, daring and noble Capt. James Lynch,” but he rested in the unmarked grave until March 21, 1998, when the Arkansas State Society Children of the American Revolution dedicated a monument to his memory.


The massacre is the real story behind the movie September Dawn.


Peavler suspects LDS church President Brigham Young was involved in the bloodbath.


When the monument at the site was rebuilt, he Hinckley, was making a speech at the dedication, she said, at the very end, he said, but we didn’t do it, Staton’s surviving ancestor was her great-grandmother, Nancy Saphrona Huff, age 4. Staton criticized both those who killed the pioneers and the lack of remorse by current LDS church leaders.


By August 1859, Jacob Forney, superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah, had retrieved the children from Mormon families housing them. They were then returned to their relatives in Arkansas, another of Staton’s ancestors was part of the Forney’s response to the incident.

“My great-grandfather went in with the army to get the kids back,” she said. “Even though they had killed all those people, taken their possessions and taken the children, they charged the government for the time they had them. I believe it was $286 per child... Staton said the LDS church has not done enough to take responsibility for the tragedy, after 150 years, they have never apologized,” she said. “The site of the massacre is controlled by the Mormon church. It should become a national monument.


I had the opportunity to view it on two occasions before its official release on August 24th. After speaking to the star and the director, I got a very good picture of the thinking that went into the decision to make the movie, and it was clear to me, no matter how prudent that decision may have been, anti-Mormon bias was never a consideration. Indeed, the makers of the film and I have great respect for the Mormon religion, the Mormon community, and the positive contribution that both have made to America.

It was realized at the outset that the subject matter was sensitive and would be made more sensitive by virtue of the fact that a Mormon might be a candidate for the presidency although this fact was not known at the time the initial decision to make the film was made.

Nonetheless, it was anticipated that the film might be judged based on its artistic features, its historical accuracy, and, hopefully, on its contemporary relevance, i.e., that all religions have, over the course of their existence, trafficked in intolerance from time to time.

And, in this vein, we are now dealing with a strain of religious fanaticism that threatens our very existence. It was hoped that the film might drive this message home and highlight the need to maintain a constant vigil against such fanaticism. I repeat, there was never even the slightest measure of animus towards Mormons felt or expressed. And, I have always personally felt a sort of allegiance to the Mormon Community.

While I did not expect the Mormon Community to be enthusiastic about the film, as noted, I hoped that, in view of their having now become part of America’s mainstream, they would allow the film to be judged on its merits as an artistic undertaking and not a political statement of any kind. However, the commonality of certain language contained in a number of reviews have caused me some concerns in this regard.

In its day, the whole United States rang with its horrors, a few items will refresh the reader's memory...


Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book, "The Mormon Prophet," it transpired that, A 'revelation' from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee or God, was dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and J. D. Lee, adopted son of Brigham, commanding them to raise all the forces they could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles... so read the revelation,

Attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of the Almighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale; and if they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians as their allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to be neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the mandate of Almighty God."


At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They retired to the upper end of the "Meadows," resumed civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrants saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with cheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag of truce!

The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President Haight and Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served a term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next proceeded: They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and represented them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the matter with the Indians.

After several hours parley they, having apparently, visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages;which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leaving everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon Bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to the settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of saving the lives of their families.


The men were almost all shot down at the first fire from the guard, two only escaped, who fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all the emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and bloody murders known in our history."


And what a spectacle it must have been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride and his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory,deriding them by turns, and by turns "breathing threatenings and slaughter!" An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of the occasion:

"He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson... but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, while threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the U.S. troops intimated, if he persisted in his course.

"Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were discharged with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a committing magistrate, he commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, made arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom was born.

At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping to save their necks; and developments of the most starling character were being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eight years."


Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with the following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony--and the summary is concise, accurate and reliable... For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt of Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collated and circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to fasten conviction upon them by 'confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ:




Finally he instituted his "church" in Ohio and Brigham Young joined it. The neighbors began to persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the faith and worked hard. He arrested desertion. He did more--he added converts in the midst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with the brethren. He was made one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. He shortly fought his way to a higher post and a more powerful--President of the Twelve.


Finally Nauvoo was invaded by the Missouri and Illinois Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed a Mormon named Rigdon assumed the Presidency of the Mormon church and government, in Smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But a greater than he was at hand. Brigham seized the advantage of the hour and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will, hurled Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more. He launched an elaborate curse at Rigdon and his disciples; and he pronounced Rigdon's "prophecies" emanations from the devil, and ended by "handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand years"--probably the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The people recognized their master.

They straightway elected Brigham Young President, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast--a quality which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed, he recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved.


Then for years the enormous migration across the plains to California poured through the land of the Mormons and yet the church remained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger, thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the Mormons from their faith or their allegiance; and even the thirst for gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nations was not able to entice them! That was the final test. An experiment that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it somewhere.

Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet Smith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities, emoluments and authorities, upon "President Brigham Young!"


He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he will be its God, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes and princesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted, with their families, and will take rank and consequence according to the number of their wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time to accumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable in the next world any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few children for him after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account and his heavenly status advanced accordingly.

Let it be borne in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always been ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted with the world and its ways; and let it be borne in mind that the wives of these Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their children likely to be fit representatives of such a conjunction; and then let it be remembered that for forty years these creatures have been driven, driven, driven, relentlessly! and mobbed, beaten, and shot down; cursed, despised, expatriated; banished to a remote desert, whither they journeyed gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudes with their lamentations and marking the long way with graves of their dead, and all because they were simply trying to live and worship God in the way which they believed with all their hearts and souls to be the true one.


That hatred has "fed fat its ancient grudge" ever since Mormon Utah developed into a self supporting realm and the church waxed rich and strong. Brigham as Territorial Governor made it plain that Mormondom was for the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that by appointing territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormon localities, but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into his dominions difficult. Three thousand United States troops had to go across the plains and put these gentlemen in office. And after they were in office they were as helpless as so many stone images.

They made laws which nobody minded and which could not be executed. The federal judges opened court in a land filled with crime and violence and sat as holiday spectacles for insolent crowds to gape at--for there was nothing to try, nothing to do nothing on the dockets!


If a brave officer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant Buchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place. In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah. And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge!-- two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky comprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from the dictionary. Simply, if for nothing else for the variety they would have made in a rather monotonous history of Federal servility and helplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to hold office together in Utah.