Year: 1877

The San Francisco Call publishes an
interesting interview with Captain John
Morse concerning the Mountain Mead
ows massacre. The gentleman referred
to has figured during many years of an
eventful life as frontiersman, pros
pector, trapper and trader, and was in
Utah prior to the Mormon settlement
and for many years after. At the time
OF the massacre he was living with some
band of Indians not more than thirty
miles from Mountain Meadows, and two
days after the tragedy he visited the
scene and saw the mangled bodies of the
slaughtered emigrants lying on the
ground as they had been left by the de-
stroying horde of Mormon fanatics and
their allies, the Indians.


Captain Morse was an intimate ac-
quaintance of Lee,. and this departed
saint, in conversation occurring years
before the trial, admitted to Morse his
completely in the atrocities, but in his
confession, and go consistently in his Off
hand declarations, he threw the respon-
sibility of the butchery upon the leaders
of the Mormon Church and directly
implicated as accessory, before and after
the fact, Brigham Young. Morse dis.
puted Lees statement that there were
five hundred Indians present, claiming
there were not more than three hundred
in that whole secticn of country. The
butchery was planned by Mormons and
almost entirely done by them, the In
dians not killing over half dozen. He
says that the plunder was the chief
incentive to the massacre. At that time
the Mormons were excessively poor, hav-
ing no money, and scarcely anything else.
They would trade their produce with the
Indians, even for old clothes. The train
was very rich one, and excited their
cupidity. Morse was very much With
Lee during his residence in Southern
Utah, and the latter often unbosomed
himself freely. The subject of the
massacre seemed to 80 dwell on his
mind that he constantly reverted to it.


Concerning the implication of Brig
ham Young with the massacre, Morse
relates the following interview with Lee:
The last time / saw him was in MahOn
County. got to his ranch at night.
He received a letter--in fact l brought
it myself from place called Kanab--
which stated that troops were on Lees
tracks, hunting him up, and he bad bet
ter move on little further. He showed
one letter, and ! said: "Lee, this is all
an internal lie; there are no troops on
your tracks at all; this is all put up by
these Mormons in st. George (where
Brigham Young was), whom Brigham
has influenced to get you out of the way"
] told him to take my advice and 60 into
the Gentle camp and give yourself up,
and make clean breast of the whole
thing, and you will get along first-rate.
| asked him if Brigham Young was
interested in the massacre. He at first
said no. Says 1: az know better good
DEAL" He says: "Of course, there is no
use lying to you. AS matter of course,
l was under orders; Brigham Young
knew every thing with me from the time
we left Salt Lake, but the intention
was to let them pass on TO the Muddy,
and then catch them at the Muddy. Do
you suppose that any of those men-you
know more of them-do you suppoe they
would have entered into this arrange
ment, If they had not believed in the
Mormon Church, and that this thing
emanated from Brigham, their Mormon
Prophetw


Captain Morse says no attempt was
made to procure his testimony further
than that he was sent for to attend the
first trial, but did not appear, being
down on the Colorado River, near Fort
Yuma. Lee was confidential with him
on account Of their frequent solitary
companionship on prospecting and other
expeditions, and because he knew Morse
had other sources OF information from
the Indians. Captain Morse is now a
resident of San Francisco.