Stop the Press

by James W. Ure

  Finally, there was John D. Lee, Brigham's adopted son, sealed to him in temple rituals, the same man who sometimes signed himself as J. D. L. Young. An early convert to the Mormon Church, Lee was a friend of the founder, Joseph Smith Jr. He was committed to Brigham and to the church. He married nineteen wives during his lifetime and fathered more than sixty children. In 1856, as the Indian agent in southern Utah, he helped the Paiutes establish farms. He knew their language and their leaders. Lee had encouraged the Indians to join the Mormons in the attack against the wagon train. Brigham's sights came to rest on Lee.

  Brigham called Haight, Lee, and Dame to a meeting in St. George in 1870 “for a full hearing and investigation to find out who was the person that led and brought about the fearful tragedy.”22 Josiah Rogerson would vaguely claim that Lee “was heard in his own behalf to the fullest extent, and it was then and there found to be the one most guilty.”23 Lee, an active diarist, wrote nothing of this period, so the truth is diffused by the passage of time. Historian Bagley believes Brigham may have signaled to Lee that he was to take the fall for the massacre. He urged Lee to move south. There are indications that Brigham promised Lee safety and protection from the federal authorities.

  In his diary two months after the meeting, Lee expressed shock upon learning that he had been excommunicated by his adoptive father, Brigham Young. The Council of Twelve Apostles, on October 8, 1870, had excommunicated Lee and Isaac Haight, attempting, it would seem, to get at the root and branch of “the problem” and isolate those who took an active role. For committing “a Great Sin…they were not to have the Privilege of Returning to the Church again in this life.” It was reported that Brigham picked Lee to stand trial for the massacre “because he knew Lee would do whatever he told him to.”24

  Official church records at the time showed no mention of the excommunications, and Mormon historian Juanita Brooks concluded there was an agreement not to mention the massacre in any official church records.25

  As a sidebar to this story, in 1961 Lee would posthumously be reinstated to full church membership after concerted pressure from his descendants. The Lee family was instructed by church officials to give information only to the family to avoid “undue publicity.” When Juanita Brooks decided to write of his reinstatement in her Lee biography, church president David O. McKay threatened to rescind Lee's reinstatement if she wrote about it. Brooks herself feared she might be excommunicated. She wrote about it anyway in John Doyle Lee: Zealot, Pioneer Builder, Scapegoat. There were no repercussions from the LDS Church.26

  One of Lee's wives went to Brigham to see if the excommunication was true. Brigham said it was and told her to leave Lee, for the Lord had commenced to “work out righteousness.”27 To distance himself from the distasteful questions that were growing, Brigham was cutting off his adoptive son.

  Mormon James Andrus claimed he saw Brigham and Lee meeting at Shirt's Creek. The prophet's “arraignment and censure of John D. Lee was so direct and pertinent” that he could not forget it. Lee begged for forgiveness, but Brigham said as far as he knew there was none for him in this life.28

  Lee drove to St. George in December 1870 and sought out Brigham. Lee asked how thirteen years after the massacre, “all of a sudden [he] must be cut off from this church. If it was wrong now, it certainly was wrong then.”29

  Brigham told Lee there was an official new way of looking at the massacre. Yes, there were Indians, but they were led by a few Mormons, including Lee. Brigham claimed he had only recently learned the particulars.30

  Said Lee, “What we done was by the mutual consent & council of the high counsellors, Presidents, Bishops & Leading Men who Prayed over the Matter & diligently Sought the Mind & will of the Spirit of Truth to direct the affair.”31

  Brigham told him to be “a man, & not a Baby.”32

  A few days later Lee received an unsigned letter from Erastus Snow, the apostle in charge of the southern Utah colonies: “Make yourself scarce & keep out of the way.”33

  Lee had a subtle strategy for fighting back. He began a defense of Brigham Young regarding Mountain Meadows. Brigham had no prior knowledge of it, Lee told Daniel Page, the postmaster at Parowan. The postmaster would reply, “I always understood that that B. Young counselled that Matter to be done.”34

  Many of the Lee family were convinced that Brigham “selected John D. Lee as ‘the goat’ because he was well aware that Lee would never refuse to do anything he was called on to do by the authorities.”35

  Lee started south, moving his families from their homes to the beautiful but desolate country where the Pariah River meets the Colorado River, just above Grand Canyon. It would become known as Lee's Ferry. A tale was floated to help Lee disappear.

  “Argus” Wandell announced that John D. Lee was dead. He claimed he'd been killed under orders from Brigham and that his body had been found at Grapevine Springs. As Bagley pointed out, Charles Wandell was occasionally a conduit for misinformation from what he believed were well-placed Mormons.36

  On April 10, 1871, one of the participants in the massacre finally went public. Phillip Klingensmith appeared before the clerk of the Seventh Judicial District Court of Nevada and swore out an account of what happened to the Fancher party at Mountain Meadows in 1857. He'd been there, part of the Mormon regiment.37

  A blacksmith and a bishop in Cedar City, he was the only official involved in the massacre who voluntarily left the LDS Church. In 1858 he'd been kicked in the head by a horse and wandered the settlements of southern Utah and southern Nevada, hiding in the mountains with Lee, building a road with Jacob Hamblin. By 1870 he'd settled near Bullionville, Nevada.38 As the Salt Lake Tribune would later say, Klingensmith may have made his confession out of self-protection. It could also have been made out of guilt.

  Klingensmith, while a bishop in ecclesiastical matters, was a mere private in the militia. His confession described the massacre as a military operation. The local militia had been mustered “for the purpose of committing acts of hostility against” a party of emigrants.39 Haight, Higbee, Dame, and Lee ordered the regiment forward, with Haight initially hoping to let the company go in peace, “but afterward he told me that he had orders from headquarters to kill all of said company of emigrants except the little children.”40

  Klingensmith claimed he participated only as “a matter of life or death to me.” He avowed that Lee persuaded the men to carry out their orders and then negotiated the surrender of the emigrants. Klingensmith confessed to firing his gun in the first volley but said he did not fire again and set about saving the children. Lee told Klingensmith he had related the facts to the commander in chief, Brigham Young.41

  Klingensmith said he was making his statement to the court because “I would be assassinated should I attempt to make the same before any court in the Territory of Utah.”42

  Bagley wrote, “Wandell's charges had been explosive, but Klingensmith's confession cracked the case.”43

  The Tribune was delirious with Klingensmith's confession. It quoted John D. Lee as saying that news reports accusing Brigham Young of masterminding the murders had “the saddle on the right horse.”44 Lee, stolidly defending Brigham, told his diary he was furious at this report. He would defend Brigham, saying he knew nothing of Mountain Meadows. It is almost certain that Lee expected Brigham to defend him in return. When he picked his goat in Lee, Brigham had indeed picked the right billy.

  Writs of arrest went out for Lee, Haight, Higbee, and Daniel McFarlane, all of whom met with Lee to coordinate their stories. Then they scattered. Lee followed Brigham's directive that polygamous husbands should deed their property over to their wives, and then left for his Pariah River hideaway. He named his homestead there Lonely Dell and took two wives with him. He constructed a ferry to cross the broad and often rambunctious Colorado River and started calling himself Major Doyle.45

  It may have been Lonely Dell, but this gateway to the Arizona Territory was also a cross road for visitors. They included John Wesley Powe
ll's second expedition of 1872. Lee gave Powell his own version of the massacre, claiming he had tried to stop it “and when he could not do so he went to his house and cried.”46

  Francis Marion Bishop met Lee and said Lee claimed to have been opposed to the whole affair and “was not on the ground at the time.”47 Lee continued to hold Brigham blameless, as he was sure Brigham would save him in spite of the price that was now on his head. He believed Brigham confirmed it in a letter sent to Lee in June 1872, according to Juanita Brooks.48

  Mormon hater and journalist John H. Beadle was ferried across the river by Lee and felt sorry for him. “He is shunned and hated by his Mormon neighbors…. His mind is distracted by an unceasing dread of vengeance.”49 Lee wrote that he told Beadle that he “did not consent to it & was not present when it was done, although I am accused of it. Neither had Brigham Young any knowledge of it until it was all over.”50

  In public Brigham denounced the murderers; in private he protected them. He sent a number of letters to Lee via Jacob Hamblin. There is evidence that Brigham offered protection in return for silence.51

  The Tribune's “Border Ruffians” wanted a full explanation of the massacre of a wagon train at Mountain Meadows, located two hundred miles south of Salt Lake City. The paper was printing stories contrary to the church-approved tale.

  The passage of the Poland Act, which gave US district courts exclusive jurisdiction over criminal and civil cases in Utah, was a blow to the ecclesiastical system of probate courts that had protected the Mormons for so long. Thus, in 1874, a federal grand jury was able to indict Lee, Haight, Dame, Higbee, Klingensmith, and several others for murder.52

  Lawmen began searching for the men.

  Lee was found by a deputy US marshal hiding in an animal pen near his house in Panguitch, 135 miles north of Lee's Ferry. Brigham knew where Lee was hiding and could have warned him, but did not—clearly he had decided that Lee would take the fall.53

  Brigham Young happened to be visiting Parowan, fifty miles from where Lee had been captured. When they heard the news of Lee's arrest, Brigham called together his advisors. “Brethren, now what shall we do? Be free but quick. Have any of you any suggestions?” Silence ensued. “If you will not talk, I will,” Brigham said finally, “but it is all right. The time has come when they will try John D. Lee and not the Mormon Church, and that is all we have ever wanted. Go to bed and sleep, for it is all right.”54

  The Tribune would report in sensational detail the arrest of Lee and, subsequently, of Dame. While the young newspaper had been struggling, the vivid reporting by Frederick Lockley revived it and put it on the map. Reporters came from across the United States. Bagley has compared the sensationalism of that to the Lindbergh kidnapping and the O. J. Simpson trial.55 With the preliminary hearing before Judge Jacob Boreman, rumors flew that Lee would turn state's evidence on Brigham Young. Mormon leaders held their breath.

  Dame's attorneys wanted him tried first, fearful of what Lee might say. Apostle George A. Smith allegedly told a church meeting in February 1875 that if Lee were found guilty “it was only right that he should be punished.” Then he asked that everyone pray for Brother Dame.56 The Tribune's Lockley reported that Lee considered this “sanctimonious treachery.”57

  Lee now said he wanted to come clean and dictated a statement blaming Haight and Higbee but failed to acknowledge the complicity of Dame or any higher authorities.58 This was not what prosecutors wanted. They were after Brigham.

  Relieved that Lee seemed to be holding fast in protecting the church president and other leaders, Brigham bankrolled Lee's legal defense. Brigham believed he could control the proceedings of the trial.59 It was a miscalculation.

  Lee was arraigned and pled not guilty. The trial began the next day in the southern Utah town of Beaver, with a jury of three non-Mormons, one former Mormon, and eight active Mormons. The crowds grew so large that it had to be moved from the upper floor of the Beaver City Cooperative to a nearby saloon.60

  The trial was chaotic. Attorneys hired by Brigham to defend Lee had two loyalties, one to Brigham and one to Lee.61 Wrote Lockley for the Tribune, the prosecution was “less desirous to convict and punish the prisoner than to get at the long concealed facts of the case.”62

  Klingensmith turned out to be the star witness, saying that he had met with Brigham Young a month after the massacre. He said Brigham's orders were, “What you know about this affair do not tell to anybody; do not even talk about it among yourselves.”63 His detailed retelling of the massacre left America in horror. Klingensmith would later tell the Salt Lake Tribune that he fully expected to be killed for his testimony.64 (Reports came from Mexico in 1881 that he was killed there by a vengeful Mormon. His son believed he was killed and buried in a wash near his Caliente, Nevada, ranch. Others claimed he hid among the Indians on the Colorado River and died about 1902.)65

  While Lee was locked up, the Tribune reported that his wife, Emma, pelted Lee's jailer with stones, raised her fists, and challenged the deputy “to come on.”66 Meanwhile, attorneys for the defense produced a telegram from a doctor stating that two defense witnesses, Brigham Young and George A. Smith, were too feeble to come to Beaver.

  As the trial continued, Lee's defense was that the Indians had coerced the whites into taking part in the massacre. “The Indians made us do it,” was Lee's position.67

  And were the Paiutes ever called to testify? No. The prejudices of the time prevented that. However, one correspondent did track down Beaverite, nephew of Chief Kanosh, who told him that the story of the poisoned spring and of the poisoned ox was not true. No Corn Creeks, Pahvants, or Beaver Indians ever went to Mountain Meadows. He said Lee led the Paiutes under his old friend Moquetus in the fight. Lee became scared “and says the Indians did it.” Beaverite denounced the cowards who “tried to throw all the blame on the Indians.”68

  The case went to the jury on August 5, 1875, with all of Utah betting on Lee's acquittal. The prevailing theory was that the LDS Church would manipulate the outcome. In fact and in secret, the church had decided that Lee must be convicted. He was, after all, the goat. However, the signals for conviction were apparently misread. The jury became deadlocked. All the Mormons and the former Mormon voted to acquit; the three non-Mormons voted for conviction.69

  The press across America was rabid with anti-Mormonism after the testimony and the deadlock. One paper wanted Brigham arrested before he could flee the country; another wanted Salt Lake City's streets to be ornamented with the heads of Mormon leaders on pikes. The Sacramento Record called the crimes the acts of “priestly demons.”70

  “There can be little doubt that Brigham Young is the arch-fiend who planned and directed the atrocity,” wrote the Indianapolis Herald. Every Mormon involved, from highest to lowest, should be hanged, it opined.71

  Lee was held for a second trial at Fort Cameron (at Beaver), receiving Mormon officials, including George A. Smith, whose fiery preaching had inflamed the region against the emigrants in 1857. Besides Apostle Smith, he was visited by Apostles Orson Hyde, Erastus Snow, and other church leaders.72

  Federal investigators suspected George A. Smith of carrying out Brigham's orders to wipe out the wagon train at the military council in Parowan attended by Haight, Dame, and Lee. Smith would die a few days later, with his doctor attributing death to “fright.” So many had been involved; they feared Lee would break as had Klingensmith.73

  Lee wrote, “They each and all told me to stand to my integrity, and all would come out all right in the end.”74

  But the fix was now in. Lee was moved to the territorial penitentiary in Salt Lake City. Federal prosecutors offered to free him if he would implicate the other leaders, including Brigham Young. Lee wouldn't budge. Dame, still under arrest, was also moved to Salt Lake City. The two conspired in the cells, and Dame told Lee to keep quiet and be patient. Others who could testify against them would soon leave the territory, and they would be safe. Dame was transferred back to Beaver.75

 
; The federal agents doubled their efforts in an attempt to find Haight and Higbee. Lee, meanwhile, stood firm, confident that Brigham would save him. “I had his solemn word that I would not suffer,” Lee wrote.76

  A new US attorney for Utah, Sumner Howard, was named in April 1876. The national pressure to produce a conviction was up against the formidable local pressure of the foxy Brigham and his Mormons. No one felt a conviction could be obtained in Utah, where juries would consist largely of Mormons. But attorneys make deals, and Howard began working on Brigham, who needed a deal to distance the church and himself from the hounds of investigation. It was brokered behind the scenes, and the exact terms are not known. However, Robert N. Baskin, an aggressive non-Mormon attorney, former mayor of Salt Lake City, and an assistant US attorney had no doubt that Howard agreed to impanel a Mormon jury on the condition that Brigham would place in evidence affidavits that exonerated Mormon authorities of complicity in the massacre. Brigham would deliver witnesses and documents guaranteeing conviction of John D. Lee. Howard also negotiated an agreement to drop the prosecution of others in custody, including William Dame.77

  A deal was struck. Brigham withdrew whatever support he had promised Lee.

  The second trial began on September 11, 1876, in Beaver, again under Judge Boreman. Lee had been free on $15,000 bond and had roamed southern Utah visiting family and presciently saying his good-byes to his wives and children. He was stunned when the bond, posted by William Hooper, was withdrawn. By now Lee must have sensed that he'd been betrayed, especially when he saw that the indictment against Dame was quashed, allowing Dame to go free.78 However, he was not to be deterred from his defense of the church and Brigham. “I ain't going on the witness stand to save my scalp,” he said. “Cowards and traitors only do that.”79 Bagley reported that an uneasy Lee constantly talked about being true to his friends, even if he hanged for it.