Mountain Meadows Massacre, The [Laws B19]

DESCRIPTION: A wagon train is attacked by (Mormons disguised as) Indians. They surrender, but are slaughtered the moment they lay down their weapons. The assault is blamed on Brigham Young
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (collected from Mr. Harter of Kahlotus, Washington, according to Fife/Fife-SaintsOfSageAndSaddle); Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest cites a broadside, "The Utah Horror," from c. 1875-1877
KEYWORDS: fight death Indians(Am.)
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Sept 11, 1857 - The assault at Mountain Meadows. All members of the caravan except 17 small children are said to have been killed. John D. Lee, reported to have led the assault, was executed Mar 23, 1877
FOUND IN: US(NW,Ro,SW)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Laws B19, "The Mountain Meadows Massacre"
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah, #240, "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" (1 text, 1 tune)
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, pp. 117-120, "Mountain Meadows Massacre" (1 composite text, 1 tune, plus a loose stanza about the punishment of Lee)
Cheney-MormonSongs, pp. 200-205, "Mountain Meadows Massacre" (1 composite text, from Burt)
Fife/Fife-SaintsOfSageAndSaddle, pp. 72-73, "Mountain Meadows Massacre" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, pp. 596-597, "Mountain Meadows Massacre" (1 text plus an early broadside)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 234-235, "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #2446, p. 164, "The Utah Horror! The Darkest Deed of the 19th Century, Mountain Meadow Massacre--" (1 reference)
DT 386, MTMDOW
Richard M. Dorson, _Buying the Wind: Regional Folklore in the United States_, University of Chicago Press, 1964, pp. 523-525, "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" (1 text)
Roud #3240
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Lee's Ferry" (character of John D. Lee)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Ballad of John D. Lee
NOTES [5635 words]: The Mountain Meadows Massacre is one of those Great Mysteries of History. I've done a lot of research on what follows, but very little of what follows is absolutely certain, and much will be inherently controversial, especially to Mormons. Too much knowledge died with the victims of the massacre, or has been hidden away in one form or another. To those who disagree with what follows, I can only say that a church which will not open its archives will almost always be suspected of having something to hide.
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah's notes on the song are fascinating -- they never really discuss the internal Mormon politics and the question of who is ultimately at fault, but his main informant, Salley A. Hubbard, mentioned a report that when someone visited the area and sang the song one night, he "was forced to leave before morning."
Almost from the moment Joseph Smith announced his first revelation, the Mormon Church suffered persecution. After all, they added new sacred scriptures to the Bible (something no significant sect had tried for roughly 1500 years), and they produced a doctrine of salvation completely unlike anything in orthodox Christianity.
And this was even before polygamy became an issue! But the pressures on the Mormons just kept getting greater. The sect was born in New York, but early on headed for the Midwest. In 1833, they became victim of a massacre organized by Missouri's then-Lieutenant Governor Lilburn Boggs (Brodie, pp. 136-137). In 1838, Boggs (by then governor) ordered the whole church destoryed (Brooks, p. 5), though his orders were not obeyed. Moving once again, this time to the east, they built a city in Nauvoo, Illinois, where leader Smith was lynched (Brodie, pp. 393-395). This, even more than the earlier massacre at Independence, Missouri, was psychologically very significant; as Stegner writes (p. 17), it "made zealots out of men and women who might otherwise have been only die-hards," while Walker, p. 209, observes that it "set in stone the Mormon hatred for the Gentile and gave the Saints a thirst for revenge that found a slaking thirteen years later."
Nor was the Mormon doctrine created by Smith entirely peaceful; Brooks, p. 59, notes a revelation in the Doctine and Covenants stating "if he has sought thy life, and thy life is endangered by him [as Mormon lives obviously had been threatened], thine enemy is in thine hands and thou art justified." Easy to whip up a mob with texts like that!
Smith had also established a dangerous precedent of authoritarianism; although Stegner, p. 24, cites Brodie to the effect that the problems the Mormons had in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois all arose from different causes, on pp. 25-27 he tells how Smith harassed and persecuted some of his own followers who disagreed with him (cf. Brooks, p. 6; Stegner, pp. 28-30). It was one of these internal quarrels that resulted in Smith's imprisonment and thus led to his lynching.
Smith was succeeded by Brigham Young (for whom see "Brigham Young"). The new Prophet's solution to the problem of living with the Gentiles was to head farther west, away from the rest of America, to the Great Salt Lake area, which would become the land of Deseret (Brooks, p. 7; Stegner, pp. 37-42). The reasoning was that no one would want to follow them there; not only was it a remote and inhospitable land, it was at that time Mexican rather than United States territory.
For the Mormons, this was their Exodus -- both the test and the salvation that forged a people. Forced out of their homes by the pressures of the locals, they suffered much on the trail (Brooks, pp. 8-10, plus this is the main topic of Stegner; Bagley, p. 22, says that some 600 of the 6000 who were in their "Winter Quarters" that first year died). But their exile wasn't far enough. The Mexican War gave the United States control of the land of Deseret. And whereas Mexican control had been lax (indeed, non-existent), the United States wanted to use the land. They sent the explorer John Williams Gunnison to survey the area. In the process, he met and observed the Mormons in Deseret. And he published a book: The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints, In the Valley of The Great Salt Lake: A History of Their Rise and Progress, Peculiar Doctrines, Present Condition, and Prospects, Derived from Personal Observation, During a Residence Among Them.
The book came out in 1852 (Denton, p. 65). Denton believes that Gunnison was relatively sympathetic to the Mormons: If left alone, he expected their church to decay due to its internal contradictions. (Obviously he hadn't met many fundamentalists.) But Gunnison's book changed the whole debate. The Federals had made Brigham Young governor of Utah Territory (Denton, p. 66), a region rather smaller than the area of Deseret they had hoped to control (Bagley, p. 24), but the authorities didn't know much about the Mormons. Gunnison's publication made it clear: Mormons were polygamous. It didn't sit well with the regular population.
Gradually the Mormons and the government started heating up their cold war. In 1853, the Federal Government sent Gunnison on another surveying expedition in Utah. He thought the Mormons would let him work as before. They didn't. They (or someone) shot him down, along with most of his party, at the Sevier River on October 26, 1853 (Denton, p. 87). It was, in a way, the first blood of what was to follow.
The Sevier River massacre by itself did not cause war between the Mormons and the United States, but it made it easier to blame Mormons for their behavior -- especially as they did little to investigate it (Bagley, p. 44). Add in the church's fierce desire to run its own affairs, and you had trouble. In 1857, Brigham Young declared that he would decide which Federal laws were enforced in his domain (Denton, p. 108). As the government became more insistent, Young would make what amounted to a declaration of independence (Denton, p. 113); he also assembled troops to resist (Brooks, pp. 18-19). As this was going on, discipline among the Mormons was becoming more vigorous, in part because of bad harvests and the unrest they brought; to backslide was to risk death (Denton, pp. 104-107).
To be fair, Young's authoritarianism "was strongly approved by the Mormons when they found President Pierce [who served 1853-1857] appointing political hacks of bad personal character, prejudiced and quarrelsome, to executive and judicial offices in the Territory" (Nevins, p. 317). But Young's declaration was still an obvious attempt to block enforcement of Federal law in Deseret (Nevins, p. 318).
In 1857, President Buchanan ordered the army to suppress Brigham Young's government (Brooks, p. 13; Denton, p. 108; Walker, p. 210).
Many think that Young's declaration was just a negotiating ploy. But Young was too smart to run a pure bluff. Young sent out orders to leaders in other communities to count up their arms and prepare to fight (Brooks, pp. 19-22, 31n; Denton, p. 116); all able-bodied men were drafted into a militia. Many, including John D. Lee, would take this very seriously indeed, calling the instructions "sacred commands" (Denton, p. 117). The Mormons also built up a stock of food, weapons, and ammunition, even trying (and failing) to start a lead mine for bullets (Brooks, pp. 25-27). Brooks, pp. 40-41, also tells of Brigham Young meeting with groups of Indian chiefs; he was probably trying to convince them to ally with him against the invaders -- a "hang together or hang separately" sort of situation. The stage was set for the Mormon War (or, as it is also known, the Utah War).
It was a war with an unusual number of bystanders, because the Great Salt Lake was along the route of most of the trails to the West Coast. There were several overland routes to California, all difficult due to the dry and deserted nature of the lands west of the Mississippi. Utah was one of the few places where water and help could be had. So it was quite normal for emigrants to come that way. Brooks, pp. 43-44, prints a journal that lists six emigrant parties reaching Salt Lake City over a period of 16 days in late July and early August 1857. Most probably took a northern route out of Utah, but at least one group -- the Fancher party, from Arkansas -- went south. Their route took them up the Arkansas River, then north to meet the Platte at Fort Kearney; from there they followed the North Platte to Fort Laramie, then through South Pass to Salt Lake City. From there, they evidently intended to head mostly south through the Great Basin; see the map in Denton, pp. 12-13.
What Denton's map doesn't tell you (and what her book clouds by describing the Massacre before the Utah War) is that the shooting between Mormons and "Gentiles" had already started on a small scale. At the time of the Massacre, the Mormons feared that any Gentiles among them might be spies, and any supplies they gave them would not be available during the coming fight. Indeed, even as the Massacre was starting, Brigham Young was negotiating with a federal officer, knowing full well that the U. S. Army was coming -- and that it had a very big supply problem (Denton, pp. 164-165; Brooks, p. 63, prints a letter from Young which seems to show that he was aware this. It also orders his followers not to "meddle" with emigrant trains. It is dated September 10, in response to a lost letter dated September 7. Yet Brooks, p. 64, notes that this letter might allow a massacre by Indians). On September 15, Young declared a scorched earth policy against the Federals. By the end of the month, Mormon guerillas were attacking army outposts (Denton, p. 168)
The Fancher party should perhaps have known better than to get mixed up in all this. The Fancher brothers, Alexander and John, had moved to California as early as 1850 and started a ranch (Denton, pp. 95-96). They made several trips to ferry cattle to California. Alexander's 1857 expedition was expected to be their last.
We don't have exact details on the Fancher party, but it included a number of families, and property estimated to be worth over $2500, plus cash on the order of $100,000 (Denton, p. 100; Walker, p. 213). There were at least 30, and perhaps more than 40, wagons in the train. There are estimated to have been about fifty men, forty women, and fifty chldren (Walker, p. 212), and perhaps close to a thousand cattle -- though Brooks would reduce those totals (see below).
The Fancher party hoped to simply pass through Mormon territory, purchasing supplies along the way -- but quickly found that the Mormons closed their doors (Denton, p. 119). It appears (though we cannot know for sure) that the members of the caravan were forced to resort to eating the cattle they had hoped to use to make their fortunes in California (Denton, p. 123). They circled their wagons at night to guard against attack, even as some Mormons, frightened of the Church's strict regimentation, tried to join them.
Meanwhile, groups of Mormons were gathering to make plans. Brooks, pp. 60-61, makes the interesting point that John D. Lee, who would later suffer for the Massacre, was not present at these early meetings.
Despite all that hostility, the caravan almost made it through. Mountain Meadows is in southern Utah; the area is now a national forest, near the town of Enterprise, just east of the Nevada border and almost due north of Saint George, which is on the Arizona border.
They picked a bad place to camp. Mountain Meadows is just what the name implies, a relatively open field surrounded by high rocks on all sides, with excellent grazing for cattle (Brooks, p. 69). But it can be a trap; there are only two exits, and the rocks provide excellent cover for an attack on a train in the meadow (Denton, p. 129). In 1857, it was a desolate area; Brooks, p. 69, says that there was only one house within 20 miles. There is water, but the Fancher train camped at some distance from it (Brooks, p. 70, thinks it was because the ground was swampy). The camp simply could not be defended for an extended period (Walker, p. 218). Given how far they were from any settlement, the Fanchers probably thought they didn't need to worry about that.
It is noteworthy that the date of the Massacre is somewhat uncertain; Brooks, p. 62, writes that "among the many writers on the subject, many different dates have been used"; she then assembles what evidence she can for the date (pp. 63-67). This is significant because it bears directly on the guilt of high officials of the church.
The best guess is that, on Monday, September 7, 1857, the Fancher Train was attacked by people who apparently were dressed as Indians. John D. Lee, however, dated the attack to Tuesday, and said that there were seven defenders killed and three badly wounded at this stage; Brooks, p. 70, notes that we simply cannot test this.
Soon after the attack started, the Fancher party circled their wagons (Brooks, p. 70; Denton, p. 128), but they had no water supply, little food, limited ammunition, and no way to escape. When they tried to send out young girls to get water, the attackers shot them (Denton, p. 130). They tried to send out messengers seeking help; the only result of that was that several ended up dead and one returned to the camp wounded (and, according to Denton, pp. 130, 132, with news that the attackers were Mormons, though it's not clear how she could possibly know this; Brooks, p. 72, does note that the death of one of these men has been claimed as the cause of the massacre, since the victims would now know that their attackers were white, but this doesn't make much sense that I can see. A few messengers continued on -- Brooks, pp. 95-100 -- but they could not bring help in any reasonable time). Those who were left prepared to die; even if one of the messengers made it through, it would be a week or more before rescue arrived.
The ugliest part of the story is also perhaps the best documented. With the Fancher party close to despair, the Mormon elder John D. Lee came into the camp under a flag of truce (Brooks, p. 73). Denton, p. 134, says that he claimed the train needed to appease the Indians, and could survive by surrendering their weapons and cattle. (This even though the local Indians, the Paiutes, were relatively peaceful and ill-armed. The Indians admit to having taken some of the artifacts, but deny participation in the actual assault. Their actual role remains disputed; Denton seems to think they were not involved, but Walker and others think they were.) After much discussion, seeing no alternative, the survivors gave in (Denton, pp. 135-136).
The Mormon leaders, including Lee, broke them up into smaller parties -- and slaughtered them (Brooks, p. 74; Walker, p. 221). It was pure and simple murder; the only survivors were children under the age of eight, most of whom saw their parents and older siblings killed before their eyes. Supposedly 121 people were killed (Walker, p. 222), though there is uncertainty about the numbers; Brooks, pp. xix-xxiv, considers this to be "greatly exaggerated." She never ventures an exact number; I suspect she would have accepted 80-100 as reasonable. Brooks, pp. 101-103, counts 17 children recovered after the massacre; she thinks (pp. 104-105) that one other infant was raised by the Mormons.
Who gave the order for the murders is not clear; after it was over, no one wanted to admit responsibility (Brooks, p. 75). Supposedly the order was phrased, "Halt! Do your duty!" (Brooks, p. 70). Whoever said it -- it may well have been Lee -- the Mormon soldiers instantly obeyed (Denton, p. 137-143, which gives brutal details of the treatment of the prisoners).
Who was this man who was responsible for what Denton, p. 241, calls "the largest civilian atrocity to occur on American soil" prior to 1995 and the Oklahoma City bombing? (A disputed claim, but it probably does qualify as the largest white-on-white civilian atrocity in that time.) John D. Lee (1812-1877) was an orphan whose father had died of alcoholism when he was six (Bagley, p. 20). Deprived of an inheritance, and raised strictly, he had joined the Mormon church in 1838 after fighting in the Black Hawk War (Walker, pp. 208-209). He was recruited into the Danites, the society of vigilantes who fought the Mormon's enemies (for other tales of the Danites, see "Old Port Rockwell").
Lee was one of Brigham Young's earliest lieutenants, who gave his allegiance to the prophet at the time when Young's power was still uncertain. Lee was in effect Young's adopted son (Brooks, p. 79; Walker, p. 214), for a time signing himself "J. D. L. Young" (Bagley, p. 19). Despite some minor quarrels (e.g. over a woman both wanted as a wife) he would surely obey the prophet almost without question (Walker, p. 215; Brooks, p. 40, stresses how all Mormons were urged to seek directions from higher authority whenever in doubt about anything) -- a significant point in assessing the conflicting blame for the Massacre.
When word of the Massacre came out, the government had to figure out how to respond. There were two basic questions: Who was responsible for the initial attack (Indians or Mormons)? And (since it was clear that the Mormons were responsible for the eventual slaughter) who was responsible for the Massacre (John D. Lee or someone higher in the church)?
There isn't much evidence. Federal officers took testimony from the surviving children, but all were very young, and many were traumatized; it is very likely that their testimony would today be considered tainted. The Mormon participants reportedly swore vows of secrecy.
Opinions have shifted over the years. The very first investigator was appointed by Brigham Young himself, who had promised the incoming governor that he would look into the Massacre (Denton, p. 182) -- but Young chose as his investigator George A. Smith, was one of those who had helped whip up the people behind the Massacre (Denton, p. 186). Smith's report is so far off the mark that it dates the massacre to September 21-25 rather than September 7-11, and it places almost the entire blame on the Indians (Denton, pp. 186-187).
A non-Mormon investigator, Jacob Forney, set out to investigate further. He recovered 17 children and much property in Mormon hands, and his 1859 report placed the blame squarely in the hands of the Mormons (Denton, pp. 192-194). And, indeed, forensic examination from that day to this show that firearms caused most if not all the deaths, confirming that the Indians were not responsible for the slaughter.
As for what historians have written, the earliest description of the massacre in my library is from Jameson, p. 433; he reports that the emigrants "were brutally murdered at Mountain Meadow, Utah, by a band of Indians, who were incited thereto by Lee, a Mormon fanatic." Note the complete absence of mention of any Mormon other than Lee! He goes on to say, "It was the period of the first troubles between the United States Government and the Mormons. Brigham Young had made threats of turning the Indians loose upon west-bound emigrants, but the Mormons, as a body, were innocent of a massacre."
Nevins, p. 322, reports that "In September, a party of one hundred and thirty-seven California-bound emigrants passing through southern Utah had been all but wiped out by a Mormon-Indian attack in the Mountain Meadows massacre." He as in a footnote, "Neither Young nor the Mormon church approved this murderous attack on the Missouri emigrant train."
Stegner, p. 277, comments, "The massacre of the Fancher party at Mountain Meadows in 1857 may have been, though it probably was not, planned with the knowledge of Brigham Young."
Bushman is a pro-Mormon history, and their one-paragraph account on p. 55, blames the Fancher party for oppressing Indians and for robbing locals who would not sell them supplies. Their final word is "Brigham Young heard of the attack too late to stop it. This tragic incident, the legacy of suffering in Missouri and of the grim paranoia of the time, is a dark blot on the history of the Mormons." Other than absolving Young, it makes no attempt to figure out who was responsible, and the tone, despite that last sentence, seems to imply that the Fancher caravan brought it on themselves.
Walker's is the strangest account of all: On p. 216, he tells of the killers sending to Brigham Young for instructions, but then going ahead with the killings -- even as Young sent orders to leave the settlers alone. This makes no sense, unless it was a way for Young to establish plausible deniability. Walker, p. 224, adds that Young certainly knew about the massacre before he officially acknowledged guilt.
Brooks, probably the most careful historian of the event, is certain that Indians were involved, and looted the wagons (p. 95). But she admits that we simply can't be certain about Young's role; there just isn't enough information. She does say, p. 77, that the original plan was for a few whites to induce the Indians to harrass the Fancher party; there was initially "no decision to exterminate them." John D. Lee claimed there were hundreds of Indians, angry at the repluse of their initial attack, thirsting for slaughter (Brooks, p. 80). Lee also claimed that a militia band had orders to destroy the Americans; Lee asserts that he prayed, then assented (Brooks, p. 82).
Yet Denton seems to possess no doubts whatsoever that Mormons did it -- and with the full knowledge of Brigham Young (presenting her arguments on pp. 153-159). This even though she confesses that the local leaders argued long and hard about what to tell him (Denton, pp. 147-148). And the planning seems to have been imperfect; while many of the attackers disguised themselves as Indians, there was no scheme to hide the corpses of the emigrants, except to leave them to the crows and wolves (Denton, pp. 149-150).
(I wonder a bit about Denton's motives. The dust jacket says she is "of Mormon descent" -- but she is not a practicing Mormon. She seems to have a strong prejudice against the church.)
Part of Denton's case seems pretty airtight: The massacre was the action of the Mormons, not the local Indians. Modern examination of the bodies -- though it was quickly halted by Mormon authorities -- seems sufficient to establish this.
The case against Young, though, rests on a very slender basis: The testimony of John D. Lee, published after his death and possibly fiddled with by its editor. There is also a "John D. Lee scroll," which if authentic would seem to confirm his guilt (Denton, pp. 242-243), but all that can be proved about it is that it seems to be from the appropriate era.
It is of course possible -- even likely -- that there is additional information in Mormon records, which are not accessible to the public; this would explain why the Mormons seem always to try to quash investigations into the matter. These may even include the journals of John D. Lee, which he reported giving to the church for safekeeping, and which they did not return when asked.
The only conclusion I can make is that it would be very hard to convict Young based on Denton's evidence; at best, he might be labelled an accomplice after the fact. And I would hate to be the prosecuting attorney on that one (even if you ignore the likelihood that Young's followers would have lynched any lawyer who brought the case).
In any case, President Buchanan had offered a near-blanket amnesty for all events of the Mormon War if the Mormons would just back down (Denton, p. 179). Which, for the most part, they did. Buchanan then took away the rights of the military investigators to seek information, stalling any investigation (Denton, p. 202). National dislike of polygamy, and other details, meant that Utah was kept a territory for decades after it had met the normal criteria for statehood, but once the Mormons eliminated polygamy and obtained guarantees of religious autonomy, statehood followed.
Which does not mean that the participants of the massacre were entirely safe. The Mormon church, after all, had every reason to want to clear its name. And once the trasncontinental railroad was completed, it was much easier for journalists and others to head west and see what they could learn. For many years, Brigham Young remained close to John D. Lee (Denton, pp. 209-211), but eventually started to distance himself from Lee and the other leaders of the massacre. Lee and another Massacre leader, Isaac Haight, were excommunicated in 1870 (Denton, p. 214; Walker, p. 224).
Eventually Lee was pushed out of Utah altogether, spending some time with John Wesley Powell as the latter explored the Colorado River. He went on to found and operate Lee's Ferry (yes, the Lee's Ferry of the song of that name; Denton, p. 218). He was forced to sell his property in Utah (Denton, p. 215).
When, in 1874, the federal government took over direct control of justice in Utah (Denton, p. 219), it was the beginning of the end for Lee. He was arrested in that year. According to Bagley, p. 290, it was the most sensational trial in American history prior to the twentieth century. Initially, Lee stated that the Church, and Brigham Young, had no role in the massacre (Denton, pp. 219, 221; Bagley, p. 291, notes that a document Lee submitted placed all the blame on lesser men such as Haight and Higbee).
What happened next is fascinating. Even though Lee had been excommunicated, the Mormon Church provided two lawyers for his 1875 trial. Lee himself had three (Denton, p. 221). Bagley, p. 291, argues that this was a mistake for the church, since it led to claims of a cover-up.
Denton thinks these two groups were at cross-purposes. The church lawyers had as their chief purpose to protect the church. Lee's lawyers wanted to keep him alive -- which would be very hard to do unless they could implicate the church. (After all, Lee had already given a partial confession.)
The 1875 trial was defective in many ways. No testimony was taken from Indians. All sorts of tricks were used to obtain what should have been invalid testimony, or to block what should have been valid (Bagley, p. 291). Many Mormons were subpoenaed; fewer than half appeared. One of those who avoided testifying was Brigham Young (Denton, p. 225). There was conflicting testimony about who did what. Supposedly the lawyers didn't even know when the massacre happened (Bagley, p. 292; he comments acidly, "In their eagerness to answer larger questions about the massacre, the prosecutors apparently forgot they needed witnesses and evidence to convict Lee of murder"). But the defence was not noticeably better, because (as Lee himself noted) the defence lawyers were defending "some person not in court" (Bagley, p. 295).
Eventually the trial went to the jury, which -- being part Mormon, part Gentile -- deadlocked (Denton, p. 226); the Mormon jurors apparently wanted Lee acquitted, the Gentiles wanted him convicted (Walker, p. 226). Bagley, p. 296, claims that the church by this time wanted Lee convicted, but failed to give proper instructions to the Mormon jury members.
If Denton is right (p. 228), the next step was simply despicable. A new U. S. attorney reached a deal with Brigham Young: Young would supply all needed witnesses to convict Lee -- as long as the attorney didn't do anything which would implicate the greater church. Since even Denton admits there are no records of this deal, we can hardly be sure of it. Bagley, p. 300, at least offers some slight justifications: The new prosecutor found, to his shock, that the Utah prosecutor's office had neither propoer facilities nor equipment, so an independent prosecution was almost impossible. And he was under intense pressure to convict *someone*, so that there could be an official scapegoat. Prosecutors often make pleabargains with defendends. Bagley suggests that Sumner Howard, who had no practice in dealing with the Mormons, instead made a deal with the LDS church.
According to Bagley, p. 301, prosecuter Howard told the judge, "I have eaten dust and I have gone down out of sight in dirt and expect to eat more dirt."
What is certain is that Lee's church-appointed lawyers withdrew from the case, and that the U. S. attorney would earn a reprimand over the matter (Denton, p. 232). We also know that none of the others we know to have taken part in the massacre was ever brought to trial (Walker, p. 226).
In 1876, Lee's second trial began -- this time with an all-Mormon jury. It was a much briefer trial: Seven prosecution witnesses, all Mormons, all of whom testified voluntarily. The defence called no witnesses at all (Denton, p. 229; Bagley, p. 305, says, "By the time the prosecution rested, Lee knew he had been betrayed [by the church]. He ordered his attorneys to present no defense").
According to Bagley, p. 306, "The jurors themselves knew that Brigham Young had furnished the witnesses and evidence to convict Lee." He strongly implies that only one juror proved even slightly reluctant, and the rest convinced him that it was better to sacrifice Lee than threaten the whole church.
Not surprisingly, Lee was found guilty of first degree murder, with the jury needing not quite four hours to convict (Bagley, p. 306). The judge sentenced him to execution (Denton, p. 230; Walker, p. 226); Lee chose a firing squad as a method of execution (Walker, p. 227).
Denton notes the interesting point that, at this time, the Mormons practiced beheading as a means of "blood atonement" -- a sort of release from sin. She thinks that Lee, by rejecting the option of beheading, was stating that he did not think his actions needed atonement. In support of this, we note that Lee would write while in prison, "I have been treacherously betrayed and sacrificed in a most cowardly manner by those who should have been my friends" (Walker, p. 227).
(I must admit to extreme disquiet about the whole affair. There can be no doubt that Lee was a mass murderer, and that he defiled the names "Christian," "American," and "human being." So Lee deserved everything the law could do to him, and more. Still, the Mormon practice of "blood atonement" -- ritual beheading -- surely made it easier to induce the attackers to massacre their victims; a church that's run like a Mafia shouldn't be surprised that its people turn into barbarians! Certainly Lee's trial should not have been conducted in Utah, there should have been no Mormons on the jury, and the parties involved should have taken real testimony. If there is a Hell, I can only hope Lee and the prosecuting attorney are confined together....)
Lee would write various statements about his actions as the appeals process worked itself out. Eventually, he delivered a large manuscript to his lawyer W. W. Bishop; in it, Lee would aim the blame directly at Brigham Young (Denton, p. 237). Lee was executed March 23, 1877 at the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
In an interesting coincidence, Lee predicted before his end that Brigham Young would die within six months of his own execution. On August 23, 1877, Young took sick with an illness that killed him six days later (Denton, p. 238).
Fred W. Allsopp, Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, Volume II (1931), pp. 323-324, does not offer a text of this song, but reports the Arkansas belief that the Massacre was "the sequel to the killing in Arkansas of the Mormon Elder, Parley P. Pratt." (An evenf which very likely inspired the song fragment indexed as "A Warning to Wife-Stealers.") This story is also reported in the literature on the Massacre: Pratt had become involved with an already-married women, Elenore McLean (Bagley, pp. 8-9). After a long and complicated pursuit across the country, McLean's husband succeeded in killing Pratt near Van Buren, Arkansas. It was extrajudicial -- but it was also popular; the locals had already hauled Pratt before the law on trumped-up charges (Denton, pp. 110-111). The basic reason for the hullabaloo was polygamy, but Denton, p. 112, and Brooks, p. 57, state that the Mormons viewed it as religious persecution. Hence, in Denton's view, their particular anger with the Arkansans of the Fancher party. Brooks, however, thinks (p. 61) that there is no evidence at all that the Mormons were after the Fancher party in particular; they just wanted blood in general.
(Denton does not say so, but this is, I think, an argument against the guilt of Brigham Young. He was too smart a politician to let things like that influence him.)
This song appears to be generally accurate in its details: The Fancher train of "thirty wagons" was attacked by "Lee's Mormon bullets" and by people "In Indian garb and colors." "While Lee... his word to them did give That if their arms they would give up He'd surely let them live." "When once they had given up their arms... They rushed on them." "Their property was divided Among this bloody crew." The one interesting element is found in what is the final stanza of Burt-AmericanMurderBallads's and Fife's texts: "By order of their president This awful deed was done... His name was Brigham Young." This, of course, is the point still in dispute -- but this verse has been sung by Mormons themselves!
Sundry references appear in the literature to a song, "The Ballad of John D. Lee." Denton, for instance, has a scrap of it on pp. 209-210. But almost all of her words are found in either the Burt-AmericanMurderBallads or the Fife text of "The Mountain Meadows Massacre." Until something clearer comes along, I am assuming these are the same song.
Historical markers eventually went up at the site of the Massacre. At first, these failed to acknowledge the part the Mormons played. A story broadcast on National Public Radio on about April 28, 2024, describes how more accurate markers were eventually put up.- RBW
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File: LB19

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