Part 14

on the Indians, even though he knew differently.  Young was the
federally-appointed territorial governor, and his knowing part in the cover-up
made him at least an accessory after the fact (See Brooks, p. 219).  Young was
still blaming the massacre on the Indians in a sermon on March 8, 1863:  "a
company of emigrants were traveling on the route to California.  Nearly all of
that company were destroyed by the Indians.  That unfortunate affair has been
laid to the charge of the whites."  (JoD, vol. 10, pp. 109-110.)

 ordered a coverup. Lee's statement was many years after the incident.

I have already documented Woodruff's journal entry of September 29, 1857, and
Hamblin's testimony, that puts the lie to that assertion.  And I've quoted
Young's later assertion that he did not learn of the massacre until years after
it occurred.  Young's statements show that he was attempting to put as much
distance between himself and the massacre as possible, but the evidence refutes
his chain of lies.

is only Lee's word that Brigham told him to write the letter.

Lee was in fact "Farmer to the Indians," and he wrote his report as part of his
official duties.  The main purpose of the letter was to list "expenses" which
Lee had incurred in "services to the Indians."   Young used Lee's letter to
formulate his own official report of the incident, which he sent on January 6,
1858.  As Brooks writes:
"Brigham Young discussed with Lee the report of November 20, in which so many
wagons, oxen, and cows were listed as having been given to the Indians of the
south by Dame, Klingensmith, Hamblin, and Barney.  For six weeks, Young had
known of the massacre; from the message which Haslam had carried, he might have
been sure that some of his people were implicated." (p. 153.)

IOW, if Haslam had indeed ridden to SLC, just before the massacre, to ask
Young's counsel on how to handle the Fanchers, then that means that Young was
aware that the Mormons were about to engage the Fancher party.  Therefore, when
Lee gave his report to Young after the massacre, the first thing Young would
have wanted to learn was whether or not any Mormons were involved, against his
alleged orders.  Therefore, it's logical that Lee would have informed Young of
that.  

And, to repeat, Woodruff''s journal entry of September 29, casting the Fancher
party as 'sinners' worthy of death, reveals an effort to 'justify' the
massacre.  Mormon leaders would have had no need to invent such a 'defense' if
they did not know that Mormons had taken part.  Seeing as how Young lied when
he denied hearing of the massacre only days after it occurred, there's no
reason to believe his assertion that he didn't know Mormons were involved,
either.

after it occurred.

Good idea.  Let's just use Brigham's:  "a company of emigrants were traveling
on the route to California.  Nearly all of that company were destroyed by the
Indians.  That unfortunate affair has been laid to the charge of the whites."
(March 8, 1863, JoD, vol. 10, pp. 109-110.)

"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I have taken a little."  (Wilford
Woodruff's journal, May 25, 1861.)

testify against each other for years.  It was only mounting public outcry that
forced Young to "sacrifice" Lee.

 the affair.

Exactly.  Eighteen years after it occurred, during which time the murderers
refused to testify against each other.  And the fact that Lee was the only one
tried, when he didn't even plan nor lead the massacre, indicates that he was
"sacrificed" to bear the guilt for all involved.

when they could see that it would be impossible to acquit him without assuming
a part of the responsibility themselves.....To air the whole story would have
done injury to the church,
 both among its own membership and in the eyes of the world, and this token
sacrifice had to be made.  Hence the farce which was the second trial of Lee.
The leaders evidently felt that by placing all the responsibility squarely upon
him, already doomed, they could lift the stigma from the church as a whole."
(Mountain Meadows Massacre, p. 219-220.)

The first indictment against Lee resulted in a mistrial, because the
prosecutors tried to prove just those very things that you have been not so
subtly intimating.

The reason the prosecutors couldn't prove anything is because the Mormons had
taken a vow of secrecy to not testify against each other.   Lee's first trial
ended in a mistrial because "When finally the case was closed and given to the
jury, they could not agree upon a verdict, the eight Mormons all being for
acquittal and the other four, all for conviction.  The court was obliged to
begin all over again and try the case before another jury."   (Brooks, p. 193.)
  IOW, the eight Mormon jurors, like the murderers themselves, fulfilled their
"Oath of Loyalty" by bloc-voting to acquit Lee.  The Mormon jurors ignored
Bishop Philip Klingonsmith's 1872 affidavit which named Dame and Haight as
Lee's superiors, and stated that "the militia was called out for the purpose of
committing acts of hostility against them' (the Fancher party); Klingonsmith
swore his affidavit in Lincoln Count, Nevada, because "I believe that I would
be assassinated should I attempt to make the same before any court in the
Territory of Utah." (Brooks, p. 241.)  Klingonsmith was later "found dead in a
prospector's hole in the state of Sonora, Mexico, apparently murdered, the
inference being that he had been pursued by avenging members of the Mormon
group and had been killed for being a traitor to them."  (Brooks, p. 213.)

The eight Mormon jurors would not have ignored the evidence, and bloc-voted to
acquit Lee, had they not been instructed to do so by superiors.

were
 able to get a conviction.

The people who "went after Lee" in the second trial was not the prosecutors,
but rather Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders, who hoped that getting Lee
convicted would end further prosecutions, including their own.  

"Even the most cursory examination of the court records will show that between
the first and second trials of Lee, something happened.  When court opened
again on September 14, 1876, the whole tone was changed, the whole approach of
the prosecution different.  R. N. Baskin and other non-Mormons insisted that
the leaders of the Mormon church had entered into an agreement with District
Attorney Howard whereby Lee might be convicted and pay the death penalty if the
charges against all other suspected persons would be withdrawn.  This was to be
done by a jury composed only of Mormons, who would bring in a verdict of
'guilty' if names of other participants were left out of the discussions.  Now,
there was no lack of Mormon witnesses; memories, in general, were much
sharpened since the first trial, at which no member in good standing had been
willing to testify at all.  Attorney Howard now proposed to prove that John D.
Lee, without any authority from any officer or council, but in direct
opposition to the feelings and wishes of the authorities of the Mormon church,
had gone to the Meadows, accompanied only by one little Indian boy, and had
assumed command of the Indians, whom he had induced, by promises of great
booty, to attack this company of emigrants.....As to how all these people had
been killed, or by whom, Attorney Howard did not pretend to know; his only
object in this trial was to show that Lee had murdered some of them.  From the
beginning it was clear that no other names would be mentioned, in so far as it
was possible to omit them; the attorneys throughout insisted that Lee alone was
on trial.  Furthermore, Howard said, he would present evidence that Brigham
Young had known nothing of the matter until after it was over, and that Lee
then had misrepresented the facts, so that the Mormon leaders had not learned
the truth until 1870, at which time he took immediate action to cut Lee off the
church.....Depositions from Brigham Young and George A. Smith, refused at the
first trial, were now read and placed in evidence.  Men who had participated,
and for almost twenty years had sealed their lips, now came forward to testify.
 If one is to trust verbal reports, these men were ordered to appear by Brigham
Young.....Jacob Hamblin gave the evidence which seemed almost unquestiongly
accepted.....Like the others, he could not remember what he did not want to
tell; like the others, his whole purpose was to convict Lee without involving
anyone else.  Because of such evident co-operation in the types of questions
asked and patience displayed with short memories of the witnesses, the trial
was soon over.  On September 20, the case was given to the all-Mormon jury, who
deliberated three and one-half hours and brought in a verdict of 'guilty.'
(Brooks, pp. 194-198.)

It is obvious that Lee was acquitted in his first trial by orders of church
leaders, and that he was railroaded and convicted in his second trial by the
machinations of those same leaders.  One only wonders how much money Mormon
leaders paid Attorney Howard to collude with them to get Lee convicted and end
any further investigations.

Randy J.