Part 66 (1/2)
Then by Lee's direction the chief shot one of them, and Lee threw the other down and cut her throat. Hamblin said that an Indian boy conducted him to the place where the girls' bodies lay, a long way from the rest, up a ravine, unburied and with their throats cut. One of the little children saved from the ma.s.sacre was taken home by Hamblin, and she said the murdered girls were her sisters. Richard F. Burton, who visited Utah in 1860, mentions, as one of the current stories in connection with the ma.s.sacre, that, when a girl of sixteen knelt before one of the Mormons and prayed for mercy, he led her into the thicket, violated her, and then cut her throat.*
* ”City of the Saints,” p. 412.
As soon as the slaughter was completed the plundering began. Beside their wagons, horses, and cattle,* they had a great deal of other valuable property, the whole being estimated by Judge Cradlebaugh at from $60,000 to $70,000. When Lee got back to the main party, the searching of the bodies of the men for valuables began. ”I did hold the hat awhile,” he confesses, ”but I got so sick that I had to give it to some other person.” He says there were more than five hundred head of cattle, a large number of which the Indians killed or drove away, while Klingensmith, Haight, and Higbee, leaders in the enterprise, drove others to Salt Lake City and sold them. The horses and mules were divided in the same way. The Indians (and probably their white comrades) had made quick work with the effects of the women. Their bodies, young and old, were stripped naked, and left, objects of the ribald jests of their murderers. Lee says that in one place he counted the bodies of ten children less than sixteen years old.
* Superintendent Forney, in his report of March, 1859, said: ”Facts in my possession warrant me in estimating that there was distributed a few days after the ma.s.sacre, among the leading church dignitaries, $30,000 worth of property. It is presumable they also had some money.”
When the Mormons had finished rifling the dead, all were called together and admonished by their chiefs to keep the ma.s.sacre a secret from the whole world, not even letting their wives know of it, and all took the most solemn oath to stand by one another and declare that the killing was the work of Indians. Most of the party camped that night on the Meadows, but Lee and Higbee pa.s.sed the night at Jacob Hamblin's ranch.
In the morning the Mormons went back to bury the dead. All these lay naked, ”making the scene,” says Lee, ”one of the most loathsome and ghastly that can be imagined.” The bodies were piled up in heaps in little depressions, and a pretence was made of covering them with dirt; but the ground was hard and their murderers had few tools, and as a consequence the wild beasts soon unearthed them, and the next spring the bones were scattered over the surface.
This work finished, the party, who had been joined during the night by Colonel Dame, Judge Lewis, Isaac C. Haight, and others of influence, held another council, at which G.o.d was thanked for delivering their enemies into their hands; another oath of secrecy was taken, and all voted that any person who divulged the story of the ma.s.sacre should suffer death, but that Brigham Young should be informed of it. It was also voted, according to Lee, that Bishop Klingensmith should take charge of the plunder for the benefit of the church.
The story of this slaughter, to this point, except in minor particulars noted, is undisputed. No Mormon now denies that the emigrants were killed, or that Mormons partic.i.p.ated largely in the slaughter. What the church authorities have sought to establish has been their own ignorance of it in advance, and their condemnation of it later. In examining this question we have, to a.s.sist us, the knowledge of the kind of government that Young had established over his people--his practical power of life and death; the fact that the Arkansans were pa.s.sing south from Salt Lake City, and that their movements had been known to Young from the start and their treatment been subject to his direction; the failure of Young to make any effort to have the murderers punished, when a ”crook of his finger” would have given them up to justice; the coincidence of the ma.s.sacre with Young's threat to Captain Van Vliet, uttered on September 9, ”If the issue continues, you may tell the government to stop all emigration across the continent, for the Indians will kill all who attempt it”; Young's failure to mention this ”Indian outrage” in his report as superintendent of Indian affairs, and the silence of the Mormon press on the subject.* If we accept Lee's plausible theory that, at his second trial, the church gave him up as a sop to justice, and loosened the tongues of witnesses against him, this makes that part of the testimony in confirmation of Lee's statement, elicited from them, all the stronger.
* H. H. Bancroft, in his ”Utah,” as usual, defends the Mormon church against the charge of responsibility for the ma.s.sacre, and calls Judge Cradlebaugh's charge to the grand jury a slur that the evidence did not excuse.
Let us recall that Lee himself had been an active member of the church for nearly forty years, following it from Missouri to Utah, travelling penniless as a missionary at the bidding of his superiors, becoming a polygamist before he left Nauvoo, accepting in Utah the view that ”Brigham spoke by direction of the G.o.d of heaven,” and saying, as he stood by his coffin looking into the rifles of his executioners, ”I believe in the Gospel that was taught in its purity by Joseph Smith in former days.” How much Young trusted him is seen in the fact that, by Young's direction, he located the southern towns of Provo, Fillmore, Parowan, etc., was appointed captain of militia at Cedar City, was president of civil affairs at Harmony, probate judge of the county (before and after the ma.s.sacre), a delegate to the convention which framed the const.i.tution of the State of Deseret, a member of the territorial legislature (after the ma.s.sacre), and ”Indian farmer” of the district including the Meadows when the ma.s.sacre occurred.
Lee's account of the steps leading up to the ma.s.sacre and of what followed is, in brief, that, about ten days before it occurred, General George A. Smith, one of the Twelve, called on him at Was.h.i.+ngton City, and, in the course of their conversation, asked, ”Suppose an emigrant train should come along through this southern country, making threats against our people and bragging of the part they took in helping kill our prophet, what do you think the brethren would do with them?” Lee replied: ”You know the brethren are now under the influence of the 'Reformation,' and are still red-hot for the Gospel. The brethren believe the government wishes to destroy them. I really believe that any train of emigrants that may come through here will be attacked and probably all destroyed. Unless emigrants have a pa.s.s from Brigham Young or some one in authority, they will certainly never get safely through this country.” Smith said that Major Haight had given him the same a.s.surance. It was Lee's belief that Smith had been sent south in advance of the emigrants to prepare for what followed.
Two days before the first attack on the camp, Lee was summoned to Cedar City by Isaac Haight, president of that Stake, second only to Colonel Dame in church authority in southern Utah, and a lieutenant colonel in the militia under Dame. To make their conference perfectly secret, they took some blankets and pa.s.sed the night in an old iron works. There Haight told Lee a long story about Captain Fancher's party, charging them with abusing the Mormons, burning fences, poisoning water, threatening to kill Brigham Young and all the apostles, etc. He said that unless preventive measures were taken, the whole Mormon population were likely to be butchered by troops which these people would bring back from California. Lee says that he believed all this. He was also told that, at a council held that day, it had been decided to arm the Indians and ”have them give the emigrants a brush, and, if they killed part or all, so much the better.” When asked who authorized this, Haight replied, ”It is the will of all in authority,” and Lee was told that he was to carry out the order. The intention then was to have the Indians do the killing without any white a.s.sistance. On his way home Lee met a large body of Indians who said they were ordered by Haight, Higbee, and Bishop Klingensmith, to kill and rob the emigrants, and wanted Lee to lead them. He told them to camp near the emigrants and wait for him; but they made the attack, as described, early Monday morning, without capturing the camp, and drove the whites into an intrenchment from which they could not dislodge them. Hence the change of plan.
During the early part of the operations, Lee says, a messenger had been sent to Brigham Young for orders. On Thursday evening two or three wagon loads of Mormons, all armed, arrived at Lee's camp in the Meadows, the party including Major Higbee of the Iron Militia, Bishop Klingensmith, and many members of the High Council. When all were a.s.sembled, Major Higbee reported that Haight's orders were that ”all the emigrants must be put out of the way”; that they had no pa.s.s (Young could have given them one); that they were really a part of Johnston's army, and, if allowed to proceed to California, they would bring destruction on all the settlements in Utah. All knelt in prayer, after which Higbee gave Lee a paper ordering the destruction of all who could talk. After further prayers, Higbee said to Lee, ”Brother Lee, I am ordered by President Haight to inform you that you shall receive a crown of celestial glory for your faithfulness, and your eternal joy shall be complete.” Lee says that he was ”much shaken” by this offer, because of his complete faith in the power of the priesthood to fulfil such promises. The outcome of the conference was the adoption of the plan of treachery that was so successfully carried out on Friday morning. The council had lasted so long that the party merely had time for breakfast before Bateman set out for the camp with his white flag.*
* Bishop Klingensmith, one of the indicted, in whose case the district attorney entered a nolle prosequi in order that he might be a witness at Lee's first trial, said in his testimony: ”Coming home the day following their [emigrants'] departure from Cedar City, met Ira Allen four miles beyond the place where they had spoken to Lee. Allen said, 'The die is cast, the doom of the emigrants is sealed.'” (This was in reference to a meeting in Parowan, when the destruction of the emigrants had been decided on.) He said John D. Lee had received orders from headquarters at Parowan to take men and go, and Joel White would be wanted to go to Pinto Creek and revoke the order to suffer the emigrants to pa.s.s. The third day after, Haight came to McFarland's house and told witness and others that orders had come in from camp last night. Things hadn't gone along as had been expected, and reenforcements were wanted.
Haight then went to Parowan to get instructions, and received orders from Dame to ”decoy the emigrants out and spare nothing but the small children who could not tell the tale.” In an affidavit made by this Bishop in April, 1871, he said: ”I do not know whether said 'headquarters' meant the spiritual headquarters at Parowan, or the headquarters of the commander-in-chief at Salt Lake City.” (Affidavit in full in ”Rocky Mountain Saints,” p. 439.)
Several days after the ma.s.sacre, Haight told Lee that the messenger sent to Young for instructions had returned with orders to let the emigrants pa.s.s in safety, and that he (Haight) had countermanded the order for the ma.s.sacre, but his messenger ”did not go to the Meadows at all.” All parties were evidently beginning to realize the seriousness of their crime. Lee was then directed by the council to go to Young with a verbal report, Haight again promising him a celestial reward if he would implicate more of the brethren than necessary in his talk with Young.*
On reaching Salt Lake City, Lee gave Young the full particulars of the ma.s.sacre, step by step. Young remarked, ”Isaac [Haight] has sent me word that, if they had killed every man, woman, and child in the outfit, there would not have been a drop of innocent blood shed by the brethren; for they were a set of murderers, robbers, and thieves.”
* ”At that time I believed everything he said, and I fully expected to receive the celestial reward that he promised me. But now [after his conviction] I say, 'd.a.m.n all such celestial rewards as I am to get for what I did on that fatal day'.” ”Mormonism Unveiled,” p. 251.
When the tale was finished, Young said: ”This is the most unfortunate affair that ever befell the church. I am afraid of treachery among the brethren who were there. If any one tells this thing so that it will become public, it will work us great injury. I want you to understand now that you are NEVER to tell this again, not even to Heber C. Kimball.
IT MUST be kept a secret among ourselves. When you get home, I want you to sit down and write a long letter, and give me an account of the affair, charging it to the Indians. You sign the letter as farmer to the Indians, and direct it to me as Indian agent. I can then make use of such a letter to keep off all damaging and troublesome inquirers.” Lee did so, and his letter was put in evidence at his trial.
Lee says that Young then dismissed him for the day, directing him to call again the next morning, and that Young then said to him: ”I have made that matter a subject of prayer. I went right to G.o.d with it, and asked him to take the horrid vision from my sight if it was a righteous thing that my people had done in killing those people at the Mountain Meadows. G.o.d answered me, and at once the vision was removed. I have evidence from G.o.d that he has overruled it all for good, and the action was a righteous one and well intended.”*