John D. Lee was the only person convicted in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Historian Will Bagley tells the awful details of the tragedy.
GT: Okay, so the first attack occurs on September 7. Basically, the Fancher party literally circle the wagons, and then they dig in because they’re trying to defend themselves.
Will: Yes, and they’re fighting back a lot harder than the clowns from Iron County who attacked them, including John D. Lee, who was put in charge of actually running the operation. It’s one blunder after another, and these people are tough. These are frontiers people from the south.
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Will: [Lee] cooks up the story saying that he needs to divide them into three parties, the wounded and the youngest children, the women and the older children, and the men and he will put an armed guard at the side of every man. So the Indians don’t spring out of the bushes and kill everybody. Now, this is all fairly suspect, but what does Lee also do? He gives these Arkansans Masonic handshakes which are…
GT: A sign of protection.
Will: A sign. Masons do not betray other Masons, but John D. Lee did without a thought, and the Arkansas agreed to this.
GT: Because by now they’re running out of ammunition. They’re out of water.
Will: There’s no water. They’ve been shooting at them anytime they try to get to water. It’s a complete total mess. But what follows is very arguably the most horrible incident in the history of the American West, where white people kill white people. That’s the basic story of what Mountain Meadows is, and why it horrifies the rest of the United States so much, and why it gets the Mormons in such deep trouble.
It took 18 years to start the first trial of John D. Lee for the atrocities at Mountain Meadows. Why did it take so long? Historian Will Bagley believes LDS Church leaders covered up the crime. How does he come to that conclusion?
Will: But, what I’m saying is that the event that Wilford Woodruff records is staged, and in Lee’s account, which is of course untrustworthy, Brigham Young tells him, “Don’t even tell Heber about this,” which is a tribute to Heber C. Kimball. But we’re now dealing with the cover up, which begins in 1857, and for my money is still going on.
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Will: But there’s so much of the cover up that I find despicable. For instance, the “investigations.” We have detailed accounts of the conspiracy that was mounted against Mormon leaders to deceive them. These are absurd notions. Who does Brigham Young send down to Southern Utah to investigate what caused the Mountain Meadow’s Massacre? George A. Smith! What better guy! It would be like send Dick Cheney to investigate what happened in Iraq.
But they actually visit the Meadows and they come up with a likely scapegoat, because at the end of one of Smith’s letters, he says, “And we don’t really know what John D. Lee was up to, but he seems to have been involved in this somehow.” So they already know who they’re going to eventually hang it on. And why did they pick John D. Lee? Because the other two guys are untouchable. The other two guys, senior officers are William Dame and Isaac Haight. Now in the church’s tale, they say, “Well, once Brigham Young realized what was happening in 1870, he excommunicated the main murderers.” No, he didn’t. He didn’t excommunicate Dame. He did excommunicate Haight.
Do you agree there was a cover up? What are your thoughts on Mountain Meadows?
Wheat & Tares 
I think it clear that there was a cover-up. The scope, timing, and relative contributions of participants in the cover-up might deserve more detail, however. Church excommunication and reinstatement practices, including posthumous reinstatements (Amasa Lyman, John D. Lee) have been so erratic that they don’t seem to indicate much beyond the error in one of the stories Bagley attributes to the church. Amasa’s, like other excommunications, seems to me to indicate that high church leaders (Haight & Dame) were not “untouchable.”
There were eventually 9 people indicted, including Haight and Dame. Most, if not all, went on the run. One report describes the dropping of charges against Dame in such a way as to make the federal prosecutor complicit in any continuing cover-up: “Years after the bloody massacre, Dame and Haight, and seven other men were served with indictments and warrants issued for their arrest in 1874. Though they went into hiding, Dame was found and apprehended. He was first jailed in Beaver, Utah before being transferred to the territorial penitentiary, where he remained until May 1876, when he was released pending trial. In September 1876, as Lee’s second trial was about to begin, Prosecutor Sumner Howard dropped the charges against Dame, apparently as part of the deal with church authorities allowing Howard to convict Lee.” Though I wonder just how and which “church authorities” were involved in “allowing Howard to convict Lee.” I suspect by encouraging false or incomplete testimony in Lee’s second trial. On the other hand I understand that Dame continued as stake president in Parowan until 1880. That strikes me as institutionally inexcusable. I wonder why the more senior church leaders were protecting Dame.
Some may be as over-eager to place most blame on BY and “the Church” as others are over-eager to exonerate him and the institution. There seems to me plenty of blame to go around among many who participated in the conditions leading to, the orders concerning, the carrying out, and the cover-up of the massacre. I’m glad I don’t have responsibility for sorting all that out.
It seems pretty clear that the highest levels of the church covered up MMM. Brigham Young had an excellent pulse of everything happening in Utah at the time, how could he not know who conducted MMM.
Even at BYU in the mid 90s, a well known religion professor taught that Brigham Young didn’t know beforehand the massacre would take place, but set up the contentious environment (Utahns were in the midst of the ‘Utah War’) that enabled it, and covered it up afterwards. The fact that John D Lee’s membership in the church was posthumously reinstated in the 1960s speaks volumes.
Toad. I have wondered just what it is that Lee’s posthumous reinstatement “speaks.” It seems Juanita Brooks took it to mean that the Church had agreed with her evaluation of responsibility for the massacre. On the other hand, when the first presidency agreed to Francis M. Lyman’s request to reinstate his father Amasa posthumously, the explanation was that Amasa had “suffered long enough” — whatever that means. What does Lee’s reinstatement speak to you?
The purpose of this reply is to generate further discussion rather than make a particular point using historical precedent.
The US military has a principle called command responsibility, such that a leader is responsible for the actions of subordinates up to and including war crimes. There are varying circumstances such as:
Did the leader knowingly fail to prevent or punish subordinates for their unlawful actions?
Should the leader have known of his subordinates unlawful actions, regardless?
In The Art of War, written during the sixth century BC, Sun Tzu argued that a commander’s duty was to ensure that his subordinates conducted themselves in a civilised manner during an armed conflict.
Similarly, in the Bible (Kings 1: Chapter 21) is the story of Ahab and the killing of Naboth. Naboth was a citizen of Jezreel who was executed by Queen Jezebel so that her husband Ahab could possess his vineyard. King Ahab was blamed for the killing of Naboth, because Ahab (as king) was responsible for everyone in his kingdom including Queen Jezebel. As punishment for this incident, the prophet Elijah visited Ahab and prophesised his death and the extermination of the Omride line. Elijah also foretold the death of Jezebel.
Charles VII of France issued the Ordinance of Orleans in 1439 which imposed blanket responsibility on commanders for all unlawful acts of their subordinates, without requiring any standard of knowledge.
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued “General Orders No. 100: Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field,” on April 24, 1863. This is commonly known as the “Lieber Code” after its main author Francis (Franz) Lieber. The Lieber Code set out rules of conduct during hostilities for Union soldiers throughout the U.S. Civil War. The main sections concerned martial law, military jurisdiction, and the treatment of spies, deserters, and prisoners of war. The document insisted upon the humane, ethical treatment of populations in occupied areas. This code eventually led to conventions that leaders could be held accountable for subordinates’ war crimes.
General Tomoyuki Yamashita was the commanding general of the Fourteenth Army Group of the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippine Islands during World War II. He was charged with violating the laws of war. The charge stated that Yamashita, “While commander of armed forces of Japan at war with the United States of America and its allies, unlawfully disregarded and failed to discharge his duty as commander to control the operations of the members of his command, permitting them to commit brutal atrocities and other high crimes against people of the Philippines.” These atrocities included the Manila massacre where 100,000 civilians were killed. The Japanese forced Filipino women and children to be used as human shields into the front lines to protect Japanese positions. Those who survived were then murdered by the Japanese. As a result, Yamashita was sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1946.
Mic drop, Tom Irvine. I know you intended to generate more discussion and I certainly hope your comment does. But your implied point is so strong there is nothing I can add or dispute.
MMM happened on Young’s watch. It was his job to prevent, investigate, and ensure justice for the slain and he failed on all points.
Yes, excellent point Tom.
So much gratitude to you, Will Bagley and Rick B, for the enormous work (over years, really) that went into this interview. You have each done extensive work over the years toward unraveling and bringing to light the truth of events buried deep in the past. Moving forward requires acknowledging both the truth and the wrongs that have been committed. There is no other way if we wish to be people of integrity. Deep gratitude to each of you for your parts in this exhausting, consuming, and too often thankless process. We are better people for your efforts.
Tom Irvine, excellent comment. You really know your stuff. On the OP, a cover-up most certainly happened. A massacre of that magnitude most certainly couldn’t have been a simple mistake. However, I’m skeptical that a cover-up is still going on.