From: ed_eck@milkwy.enet.dec.com (My name is...)
Newsgroups: alt.true-crime,soc.history
Subject: J.D. Lee and the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Date: 6 Oct 92 20:26:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: engage.1992Oct6.193241.23395
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation



Several weeks ago at my local Stop and Shop I happened upon a remaindered
paperback called, _Until You Are Dead...The Book of Executions in America_
by Fredrick Drimmer. The title was, of course, irresistable, (besides, 
there were lots of pictures, including one of my former neighbor Nicola 
Sacco) so I bought the book. _Until You Are Dead_ details the history of 
capital punishment in the United States, in part by recounting the crimes 
and the last moments of a number of executed criminals. The subtext of the 
book is, I suppose, to show that all methods of legal execution are
so inhumane and barbaric that no "civilized" society would permit them;
thus, the book's 400-odd pages are filled with accounts of various 
fumbled executions that resulted in deaths that were something less than 
speedy and humane. (My own reaction was probably somewhat different from what
the author intended.) Some of these stories are about well known outlaws--BJTK,
Joe Hill, Bruno Hauptman, Ted Bundy--and some are about more obscure episodes. 
(Could George Westinghouse have bribed the executioner at the first 
electrocution?)
Here's one of the lesser known personalities...


                 ****************************************

UTAH, 1857:

(The history of the Mormons is one of those episodes that get glossed 
over rather quickly in US History classes, as do the history of groups 
like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists. The "official" 
ideology of the US does not admit religious persecutions and murders 
[outside of several quaint colonial bigots], nor to several minor religious 
wars within the US...)

In 1857 Utah was, of course, not yet a state, but a territory. Settled
by Mormons some years before, the administrator of the territory was the 
Mormon leader, Brigham Young, who had assumed the leadership of the Church
of the Latter Day Saints following the murder of Joseph Smith (who's
father and grandfather, incidently, owned a farm in Hopkinton, Mass,
before they moved north). There was considerable friction between the
Mormons and non-Mormon settlers of the territory, and ultimately the non-
Mormons took advantage of the widespread anti-Mormon sentiment throughout 
the United States and persuaded Persident Buchanan to declare Utah to be
a state in rebellion, depose Gov. Young, and order an Army force to 
invade Utah and restore federal control. For his part, Young declared 
martial law, began raising a guerrilla army and called for his people
to store up supplies and prepare to make a stand.

In the middle of all this, a large wagon train arrived at Mountain Meadows
in Southwestern Utah. Throughout their route, the Mormons had refused to sell
them food; the emigrants, in turn, had threatened to return from California
with Federal troops and punish the settlers. Some of the emigrants boasted
that they personally had helped murder Smith. This further enraged the
Mormons.

Unlike the sterotypical western settlers (or perhaps seeing that they could 
be useful as allies), the Mormons had cultivated the friendship of the local 
Paiute Indians. Now the Mormons convinced the Paiutes that the gentiles
had poisoned the indians' waterholes, killing their cattle and several 
indians as well. The indians accordingly attacked the wagon train, killing
several of the emigrants. The Mormons meanwhile sent their own forces under 
the command of John Doyle Lee, a full Bishop and a leader in the
settlement of Utah. Lee was also a close friend of both Young and Smith,
a major in the militia and, most importantly, an indian agent, responsible 
for dealing with the Paiutes. After a conference with the Indians, Lee
approached the wagon train under a flag of truce. He would, he announced,
guarentee their protection, but only if the travellers would give up their
weapons, abandon their wagons and put themselves under his protection. When 
they left the safety of the circuled wagons, the Mormons shot down the
unarmed men and murdered the wounded and the elderly; the Paiutes butch-
ered the women and the older children. The younger children were taken 
away to live with the Mormons. According to Lee, shortly after the massacre
he went to Salt Lake City and told Young the entire story and gave him 
the names of the more than 50 Mormons who had taken part. Young told Lee
that God had "shown him the massacre was right," but it should be secret,
and Lee was to say it was the act of the Indians alone.

Before long the facts about the massacre leaked out. Lee was questioned in
1859, and later was excommunicated. All but one of his wives (he had nineteen
wives and sixty-four children) were automatically divorced from him. Lee
was arrested in November, 1874 and at his trial the prosecution tried to
implicate the leaders of the church in the tragedy. The trial ended in a 
hung jury--the eight Mormons were for acquital, the four non-Mormons for 
conviction. By the time of the second trial there were rumors that Lee
was to be the scapegoat--the former bishop would be convicted and executed
and the charges against other suspects would be dropped. The jury, made up
exclusively of Mormons, deliberated for just a few hours before finding 
Lee guilty.

In Utah at that time, the court could order the condemned to be shot or 
beheaded, in accordence with the Bibical doctrine of blood atonement.
Recognizing that some, especially non-Mormons, might object to dying 
by beheading, the court could also order hanging. The beheading option
was dropped in 1888, never having been used, and hanging was abandoned in 
1983, but shooting and, now, lethal injection remain in effect. Lee 
chose to be shot, as the majority of the executed have chosen. To wile
away his time in prison, he wrote a book, _Mormonism Unveiled_, in which
he laid the blame for his crime on the church and accused Brigham Young
of giving him a concubine in reward for Lee's part in the massacre.

Despite petitions to the governor pleading that Lee was just one of many
who were equally guilty, and that the dozens of men who had taken 
part in the bloodshed were acting under military orders, Lee was executed 
on March 23, 1877. At 64, he was the oldest man executed in Utah. 
Lee asked that pictures of him taken just before his death 
be given as keepsakes to three of his wives who had remained faithful;
by his own request he was buried in his Mormon ceremonial robes. More than 
eighty years later, in 1961, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day 
Saints authorized "the reinstatement to membership and former blessings to 
John D. Lee."

The site of the Mountain Meadows massacre is marked by a brass tablet:

			MOUNTAIN MEADOWS 

		A FAVORITE RECRUTING PLACE ON THE

			OLD SPANISH TRAIL

	IN THIS VICINITY SEPTEMBER 7TH, 1857, OCCURRED ONE OF THE
	MOST LAMENATABLE TRAGEDIES IN THE HISTORY ANNALS OF THE WEST.

	A COMPANY OF ABOUT 140 EMIGRANTS FROM ARKANSAS AND MISSOURI LED 
	BY CAPTAIN CHARLES FANCHER, ENROUTE TO CALFORNIA, WAS ATTACKED
	BY WHITE MEN AND INDIANS. ALL BUT 17 SMALL CHILDREN WERE KILLED.
	JOHN D. LEE, WHO CONFESSED PARTICIPATION AS LEADER, WAS LEGALLY
	EXECUTED HERE MARCH 23, 1877. MOST OF THE EMIGRANTS WERE BURIED IN
	THEIR OWN DEFENSE PIT.
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