Scott Woodward: The unjustified slaughter of around 120 men, women, and children immigrants in Mountain Meadows, Utah on September 11, 1857 was an unspeakable tragedy. For Latter-day Saints then and now, one of the many painful details about this event is that it was instigated under the direction of local LDS leaders in Iron County who served simultaneously as ecclesiastical, civil, and military leaders. Today on Church History Matters, we continue our discussion about the Mountain Meadows Massacre with a focus on the aftermath of the atrocity. Specifically, we probe what we know of Brigham Young’s reaction to the massacre and where the erroneous idea came from that he ordered the attack, and we walk through what we know about who was brought to justice for the massacre, why it took so long to do so, and what the eventual fate was of those who instigated and participated in this heinous tragedy. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our seventh episode in this series on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint history. Now let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hello, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Here we are once again.

Scott Woodward: We’re back at it.

Casey Griffiths: Back at it, talking about peace and violence among 19th-century Latter-day Saints. Probably our last series for the year, would you say?

Scott Woodward: This is our last series. We’re going to wrap it up on Christmas Eve, and then we have a big surprise for 2025, Casey. We’re not doing our typical series-es, are we?

Casey Griffiths: We’re going to do something a little different.

Scott Woodward: Spice things up a little bit, just for 2025, and we’ll tell you more about that in future episodes, so stay tuned.

Casey Griffiths: And a couple surprises. I think we’ve got a couple things to lay out. So what we’re doing today is we’re exploring the aftermath of Mountain Meadows, which in some ways is a lot twistier. I mean, the whole story is pretty convoluted, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Figure out how they got there and how everything happened, but I’ve known about Mountain Meadows for years and years because I come from Southern Utah. It feels like the more concerning thing of Mountain Meadows is what happened afterwards. Like, was there a coverup? Did they try to stop people from finding out what happened? And are there any leaders of the church implicated? That’s what we’re going to deal with today.

Scott Woodward: We talked at the end of last episode about that phrase from section 121 about covering your sins, and it seems like in some ways that’s what led originally to the full massacre was an attempt to cover up a mistake, a premature attack, etc., etc., but, yeah, that’s a good question you raised today. So was there additional coverup for the coverup? Is there covering of sins piling on top of one another here? We want to investigate that today in this episode on the aftermath.

Casey Griffiths: So let me recap really fast in case you weren’t able to listen to the last episode, just to contextualize things. So Mountain Meadows Massacre is a terrible, terrible tragedy, and by the way, content warning: We’re going to be talking about unpleasant stuff today. We won’t go into any explicit detail about the killings, but we are talking about killings, so just be forewarned.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, listener discretion advised. In fact, there is one quotation today that maybe is a little bit grisly that we should forewarn you about, so.

Casey Griffiths: There could be, yeah. So the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the plain facts of it are that around 120—and the number is still subject to dispute: I went to the massacre site a couple weeks ago. It says 140 on the signage there. The truth is we’re not really sure how many people, but estimates range between 120 and 140—men, women, and children killed by the Iron County Militia, assisted by a group of Paiute Indians. The massacre was instigated at the direction of local leaders of the church in Iron County who were both ecclesiastical, civil, and military leaders. The Paiutes who participated in the attack were at first reluctant to take part but then eventually agreed. There’s some stuff about Mountain Meadows that we just can’t say 100 percent for sure, and we probably never will be able to. One of them is, what was the original intent? Like, why did they do this? Some sources indicate that the purpose of the attack was to chasten the immigrants or to steal their cattle. Other sources indicate that the behavior of the immigrants and an altercation that took place when they visited Cedar City had led Isaac Haight, the stake president there, to decide the immigrants needed to be wiped out. Again, there’s a controversy there as well. Like, what did the immigrants do?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There’s accounts that the saints believed they had been poisoning cattle and water sources during the trip south. Whatever happened in Cedar City, a common story was that one of the immigrants claimed that they had the gun that killed Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward: That they would return later and join Johnston’s army to help finish the job on the Mormons and—yeah, just mean, derogatory, bad stuff.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Whether those things actually were said or not is super hard to piece together from the history because often it comes after the fact and has come from people who—like, John D. Lee and others that we know we’re not always telling the full truth and trying to justify their actions, and so it just makes it difficult to piece together exactly what was said and what provoked the Latter-day Saints so intensely. But that seems to be the cluster of things that are said, right? That they were claiming to have participated in the murders of Joseph—or at least had the weapons or might come back with Johnston’s army or whatever, whatever, whatever. But it’s hard to piece it together for sure.

Casey Griffiths: And we should mention all these justifications don’t add up to anything that justifies what they did, what the massacre caused to happen.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: But those are the stories that are told, and they’re told after the fact. We have indications some of them did happen. Like, there’s a lot of sources that say they did surround Isaac Haight’s house and threaten him after they charged an exorbitant price to have their grain milled and everything like that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There’s things about the attack that we know also didn’t go according to plan. The initial attack on the immigrants was planned for the Santa Clara Narrows, but John D. Lee instead led an attack on the immigrants at the Mountain Meadows, which was a popular place for travelers to rest and recuperate before they had to pass over the deserts of present-day Nevada and California. So was Lee impatient? Impetuous? We don’t really know. It’s hard to say for sure.

Scott Woodward: So, yeah, whatever it was, he jumped the gun.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And that led to a cascading series of events, of problems.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, what’s up with Lee? Nobody knows exactly why he attacked as early as he did. That was not according to instructions.

Casey Griffiths: But we know he’s the on-site commander, and he leads the attack, and some point during the attack, it became clear that the immigrants would know that this wasn’t an Indian raid: that it was Paiutes being assisted by Iron County militia. In fact, during the initial attack, the Paiutes and the Iron County militia assisting them were repulsed, and the immigrants became aware that Latter-day Saints were involved. Over the course of five days the immigrants were forced to endure a siege, where additional attacks made it even more clear that Latter-day Saints were among the adversaries. After several days Isaac Haight, who hasn’t gone to the massacre site, hasn’t seen the attack, approaches William Dame, who’s the commander of the entire Iron County militia. In that council Dame and other members of the council were told the massacre was an Indian attack. The council does, makes the decision, to send men to assist the immigrants and help them on their way to California, but after the council meeting was over, Haight met with Dame privately and told him that the militia had participated in the attacks, and the immigrants knew about it. Apparently Haight also assured William Dame, probably exaggerating, that most of the immigrants were already dead or dying, and they just needed to finish the job.

Scott Woodward: Well, yeah, and it seems like they were—they needed to say that because the feeling was if they didn’t finish the job, then the surviving immigrants would go to California, they would stir up opposition against the Saints, or they would join with Johnston’s army and try to bring the full strength of that army against the Saints, so either way, they needed to finish the job. Otherwise their fear was that mistake number one of attacking so early was going to lead to a big, retributive onslaught back from California or Johnston’s army, and so we better just finish the job. We better just kill them all.

Casey Griffiths: All this is taking place against the backdrop of the Utah War, where the army is still on its way to Utah, and they’re not quite sure of its intentions and if they’re going to be engaged in a war with the United States, but they know that this isn’t going to be helpful, and so they’re trying to cover it up.

Scott Woodward: And how important would you say that is, Casey, that we remember that the context here is that Johnston’s army is approaching Utah, this is in the midst of the Utah War, and that, you know, that nerves are set on edge already? Like, how important is it to remember that context?

Casey Griffiths: Oh, absolutely critical. The sad thing is, and we’re going to talk about this, but the way the massacre is portrayed in popular media, it’s almost never contextualized this way.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Right.

Casey Griffiths: For whatever reason, they never take the time to kind of explain, well, here was the situation here, why these people acted. Generally the massacre, because of its sensationalized nature when it’s depicted, is grossly oversimplified and in some ways just wrongly depicted. We’re going to talk a little bit about that, so.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Back to Isaac Haight and William Dame. Dame reluctantly agrees to Haight’s plan. The Iron County militia’s called out, and it’s sent to the site of the siege, and then on Friday, September 11th, John D. Lee approaches the immigrants’ defenses under flag of truce. He convinces the immigrants, who are in pretty bad shape by this point, you know, five days under siege, little food, little water—he convinces them to lay down their arms and come out of the stockade. They separate the women and children from the men and the older boys. Each of the men was escorted by an Iron County militiaman, and they’re marched out of their stockade and separated from each other. When a pre-arranged signal is given, each member of the militia killed the man they were escorting. A combination of militia and Paiutes also killed all of the women and children, except for seventeen children who were deemed too young to tell the tale.

Scott Woodward: Oy.

Casey Griffiths: So those are the facts of the massacre.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And we’ve been discussing this as part of our series on Latter-day Saints and 19th century peace and violence. I want to note that next week, Richard Turley and Barbara Jones Brown are going to join us, and they’re going to explain a lot of things. We’re going to quote liberally from their book, Vengeance is Mine. We’re just going to be clear when we’re quoting because we don’t want to be accused of plagiarism, but they did such a good job. There were just whole passages I was like, oh, this makes it totally clear. We also want to point out that they have done another great thing, which is there’s a free website called mountainmeadowsmassacre.com that has a number of resources, including original primary source documents.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And not just the source documents, but we’re talking, like, the trial transcripts for the people that were put on trial, and they even got LaJean Carruth Purcell to re-translate these from the original Pittman Shorthand, and you can see her transcriptions next to the court recorder’s transcriptions, and there’s some interesting and illuminating things in there. But borrowing from their site, and on their site they’ve got a good, brief summary of the history of the massacre, Rick Turley wrote this, and I want to use this to kind of set up our discussion today. He wrote this: “Two facts make the case even more difficult to fathom. First, nothing that any of the immigrants purportedly did or said, even if all of it were true, came close to justifying their deaths. Second, the large majority of perpetrators led decent, nonviolent lives before and after the massacre.” Those are the conundrums we’re dealing with here. This wasn’t justified, but second, the people that carried it out didn’t lead overtly violent lives. It was this one event that caused them to do this, and what we’re going to be talking about is how it sort of shattered the rest of their lives. In fact, that leads us to our burning questions, all dealing with the aftermath of the massacre, and these questions would include the following: 1. For Latter-day Saints, it’s really important to know and understand, okay, what was Brigham Young’s role in the massacre? What did he know, and how did he feel about the events that took place? And I’ll add, did he cooperate with the investigations?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Another question that’s commonly asked about the massacre is who was brought to justice for the massacre, and why did it take so long? John D. Lee is executed twenty years after the massacre in 1877.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Why was it twenty years after the massacre before that happened? And that leads us into our third question, which is what was the eventual fate of those who instigated and participated in the events of the massacre? So we’re going to try and answer those questions today over the next few minutes.

Scott Woodward: Well, let’s start with that first one, then. What was Brigham’s role in the massacre and its aftermath? And we began to discuss this last week. We mentioned that there is not any evidence that Brigham Young ordered the massacre, though he did actually help create the kind of hysteria and atmosphere that set up the conditions for the massacre to occur, right? Because as we just mentioned, the massacre takes place against the backdrop of the Utah War, with a large force of United States soldiers approaching the territory, their intentions not fully known. Brigham Young and other church leaders were settling down for a siege and planning delaying tactics to slow the army down, which we mentioned in previous episodes. He also planned to enlist the American Indians in the territory as allies if they had to fight. Early on in the war, Brigham and other church leaders sought to stockpile resources for the siege. They backed off on their own efforts to curtail Indian harassment of immigrant trains through the territory, which had previously been their policy, and Brigham engages in some violent rhetoric. So that’s just generally speaking, he contributed to the milieu, the—

Casey Griffiths: The setting.

Scott Woodward: —the atmosphere. Yeah, exactly.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: At the same time, though, the documentary record does not suggest, even remotely, that Brigham Young ordered the massacre of the Fancher-Baker train we’ve been talking about. The earliest documented conflict between the Saints, the Indians, and the train was recorded at Corn Creek near present-day Fillmore and Kanosh, and this is well after the immigrants have left Salt Lake City where church leadership resided. And when Isaac Haight proposed the attack on the wagon train, the council in Cedar City first asked him to send a rider to Salt Lake to obtain Brigham Young’s counsel. We know that happened for sure. Unfortunately the rider, who we mentioned last week is named James Haslam, he left the same day that John D. Lee started the attack on the settlers prematurely, impetuously. And Brigham’s reply doesn’t make it back to Haight in time, right? A couple days later. But in the letter—we quoted the whole letter in its entirety last episode—we saw that Brigham expressly ordered the saints in the area to leave the wagon train alone. Further evidence of Brigham Young’s non-involvement here is that after the massacre there were exchanges recorded by participants in the massacre that signaled that the leaders who ordered the attack and the massacre did not have Brigham Young’s approval. One of the militiamen, Bishop Philip Klingensmith, recalled Haight telling, “Colonel Dame that if he was going to report of the killing of the immigrants, he should not have ordered it done. Overhearing the dispute, Samuel Knight ascertained that no leader in Salt Lake had sanctioned that dastardly deed. Though cattle raiding by Indians and secretly their Mormon interpreters was part of Brigham Young’s strategy for convincing Washington to pull back its troops, the murder of immigrants was not part of that plan,” still quoting from Vengeance is Mine. “Had Young wanted his men to commit a massacre, Dame and Haight would not have argued over which of them would take responsibility for the atrocity, or whether to even report white perpetrators’ involvement. Noticing the eavesdroppers, Dame and Haight lowered their voices to a whisper before falling silent. They finished their breakfast and climbed back on their animals, ready to inspect what lay south. Lee and other militiamen who had slept at Hamblin’s ranch went with them to bury the dead. As the group rode a few miles deeper into the Mountain Meadows, the sun dawned, slowly drawing off the blanket of darkness from the forms on the ground. Strewn among the sagebrush were dozens of blood-spattered corpses,” and here’s where it gets a little bit graphic, “most of them children between the ages of 7 and 17. Here and there among them lay the twisted forms of their mothers and a few infants. The women and children’s bodies were in almost every condition, Klingensmith said. Some throats cut, some heads smashed, some shot. They were scattered along the ground for quite a distance, as if they had been running for their lives when hewn down. Dame seemed terror stricken, said Lee, who followed the two armchair leaders closely to watch their reaction. Haight also grew distraught, making quite a lamentation, according to one witness, yet ultimately the two leaders seemed more concerned with assigning blame than with mourning the dead at their feet. Dame again told Haight he would have to report the massacre. ‘You know that you counseled it,’ Haight snapped back, ‘and ordered me to have them used up.’ Dame reminded Haight of the intelligence now so obviously false that Haight gave him privately a few days before, that Indians had already slain most of the immigrants at their wagon corral. ‘I did not think there were so many women and children,’ Dame pleaded. ‘I thought they were nearly all killed by the Indians.’ ‘Well, it’s too late in the day for you to backwater,’ Haight said. ‘You know you ordered and counseled it, and now you want to back out.’ ‘Have you the papers for that?’ Dame demanded, hardening. ‘Show the papers for that.’ ‘You throw the blame of this thing on me, and I’ll be revenged on you if I have to meet you in hell to get it,’ Haight shouted as Dame turned his back on him and walked off. Enraged, the leaders pulled themselves back onto their saddles and continued south.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Oof.

Scott Woodward: What a passage, and what a picture that it’s painting. There they are, Haight and Dame, standing amidst the bodies of these women and children and men that have been just brutally murdered, and now they’re trying to decide who gets to take the blame for this.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and they use an interesting phrase here, which is these “armchair leaders,” because up to this point, Isaac Haight and William Dame have not visited the site of the attack. They ordered the attack, but they show up the day after, and they see kind of the carnage that’s laid out there, and just like Turley and Brown point out, it would have been really odd for them to have this argument if it had been planned from the beginning by Brigham Young.

Scott Woodward: Totally. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They’re going back and forth, they’re trying to assign blame. They’re basically saying, like, you can’t blame me. You’re the one that pulled me into this, and that doesn’t work if this was an order that came from someone higher up.

Scott Woodward: 100%. But, unfortunately, in the years following the massacre, I mean, this becomes a national scandal, and antagonists of the church are desperate to attach blame to Brigham Young for this atrocity. Several participants were indicted and given the opportunity to turn against Brigham Young, but none did, and as we mentioned a little bit last time, William Bishop, who served as John D. Lee’s lawyer, wrote a sensational memoir entitled Mormonism Unveiled where he actually charges that Brigham Young ordered the massacre, but the assertions that are made in Mormonism Unveiled don’t actually match the court transcripts of the testimony that John D. Lee himself gave during his own trial. The original transcripts have been translated from Pittman Shorthand by LaJean Purcell Carruth, as you mentioned earlier, Casey, and you can actually go, right now, to mountainmeadowsmassacre.com and compare those side by side. One last point I think is important, too, is that when John D. Lee was executed, he was actually given one last chance to implicate Brigham Young in the massacre, and according to witnesses at his execution—let me quote a little bit more from this. This is also in Vengeance is Mine. It says, “Lee spoke deliberately at times, with few gestures, then rushed off into a humid style. Twice he said he had done nothing ‘designedly wrong,’ repeating the phrase that had been his salve for nearly twenty years. ‘My conscience is clear before God and man. I am ready to meet my Redeemer,’ he said. When he spoke of his family, his eyes moistened. Toward the end of his five-minute speech, his voice became stronger. ‘I do not believe everything that is now taught and practiced by Brigham Young. I do not care who hears it. It is so. I believe he is leading the people astray, downward to destruction. But I believe in the gospel that was taught in its purity and introduced by Joseph Smith in former days,’ he said. In the final moments of his life, unable to undo the atrocity that played out on the same site two decades before, or to face fully what he and his co-conspirators had done, Lee clung to what in his mind was a last vestige of integrity. Even as he faced the firing squad, he resisted the pressure to charge Brigham Young with the massacre,” which is interesting, because, I mean, by this point, Lee had been excommunicated from the church. He’s about to be executed. He had no reason to not implicate Brigham Young if he was guilty, but he never did. Even in his dying moments, he’s saying, I disagree with what Brigham Young’s doing in the church. That was the perfect chance to pull Brigham Young into this, but he does not, because, again, from every angle that you investigate the evidence, Brigham Young was not involved.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But unfortunately, in recent years, even in light of all this scholarship, Casey, what’s crazy is, like, popular media has continued to disregard the facts about the massacre. Like, we mentioned Jon Krakauer’s book, Under the Banner of Heaven, just openly states that Brigham Young ordered the massacre. So irresponsible. Just ignores all the facts at hand. The miniseries based on the book also features the scene where Brigham Young orders the massacre. I mean, it’s just—wow. A 2007 film called September Dawn also depicts Brigham Young ordering the massacre. Fortunately that film was not very well received at the time. Roger Ebert actually gave the film zero stars, and the film critic from Variety said the film was, “not torture porn: it was massacre porn.” I don’t even know what that means, Casey, but there it is.

Casey Griffiths: Just as an aside, September Dawn is fascinating: The guy that plays Brigham Young is Terence Stamp, who plays General Zod in Superman II, you might recall.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And, again, plays Brigham Young, like, all foreboding and weird, Jon Gries, who many of our listeners will know as Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, plays John D. Lee.

Scott Woodward: Oh my word.

Casey Griffiths: And Jon Voight plays a completely fictional character and won the Golden Raspberry for worst actor of the year for his work in the film.

Scott Woodward: The Golden Raspberry?

Casey Griffiths: There’s a group called the raspberries that basically give out awards to the worst movies of the year. September Dawn was not well received. I haven’t seen September Dawn: It’s rated R—

Scott Woodward: Yeah, me neither.

Casey Griffiths: —and it’s super violent. I read the IMDb page on it, but it’s sort of known as a terrible, terrible movie.

Scott Woodward: That’s fortunate for us, because, you know, if our history is portrayed inaccurately, we want it portrayed inaccurately in a horrible film.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I’m just worried that people would watch September Dawn and think that it’s accurate history, which anytime you watch anything that’s historical, you should be really, really cautious with it.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Casey Griffiths: But we bring this up because at the time we’re recording this podcast, there is another production, it’s a Netflix miniseries called American Primeval.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And it hasn’t come out yet, so we don’t know exactly what the content is going to be, but we noted while we were putting together this podcast that Vanity Fair wrote an article about American Primeval, and the article—here’s, like, a sentence from the article, and again, I guess this is an indictment of the article, not the show, which hasn’t come out yet. The article said, “The first episode recreates the murder of hundreds of pioneers traveling from Missouri at the hands of Mormon soldiers under orders from church president Brigham Young.”

Scott Woodward: Oh my word. Everything in that sentence is so bad.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah, that’s, like, three errors in one sentence, which is sort of an impressive feat.

Scott Woodward: Pretty impressive.

Casey Griffiths: Hundreds of pioneers? No. Traveling from Missouri? No.

Scott Woodward: No.

Casey Griffiths: Under orders from Brigham Young? No.

Scott Woodward: No.

Casey Griffiths: But the sad thing is that all of these popular media pieces just basically say that Brigham Young ordered the massacre, a horrific thing and a horrific charge to make against a historical figure without introducing any nuance, unless American Primeval does, which I seriously doubt based on what I’ve already seen.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, that’s a damnable accusation to make at Brigham Young—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —and, like I said, completely irresponsible post-2007. After Rick Turley published that, like, anything after this, like, has to go to that book in order to, like, get the facts right. That there’s so much good information now online that is laying all the facts bare that to continue in the vein of Mormonism Unveiled to say that Brigham Young did this, to lay this charge at his feet, is completely irresponsible. I mean, it makes for good, sensational media, but it is atrocious history.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And let’s be honest: there is kind of, like, a Latter-day Saint sensation happening right now. There’s just a lot of shows coming out on plural marriage and—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and all that kind of stuff, but when it comes to something like the death of this many people, men, women, and children, it’s pretty serious to charge a major religious figure this without doing the homework or introducing any nuance into the conversation. Like I said, I don’t want to pre-judge something I haven’t seen yet, but it seems like from the Vanity Fair article, they just really didn’t care about the facts when they made their show. Brigham Young didn’t order the massacre, but a complicated set of questions is how did he feel about the massacre? When did he know what he knew? While the evidence points towards Brigham Young not being responsible for the massacre, his legacy with Mountain Meadows is complicated, and we want to fully understand and contextualize this, so here’s what we know: Okay, Brigham Young finds out about the attacks while they’re happening. James Haslam makes it to Salt Lake City. Brigham Young sends the order we read last episode, telling them to leave the wagon train alone, and then sends James Haslam back. Unfortunately James Haslam makes it back on Sunday. The massacre takes place on Friday. However, just eighteen days after the massacre happened, so before the month of September was over, John D. Lee comes to Salt Lake to personally report on what happened, and I want to point out that John D. Lee and Brigham Young have a pretty close relationship. In fact, he was sealed to Brigham Young in an adoptive sealing. He was sealed as a child to Brigham Young, which was something the church did back then. We talked about it in our series on temples.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And I also want to stress all this takes place while the U. S. army is still on its way to Utah and the fate of the Saints is very much uncertain. Like, none of that gets resolved until spring of 1858, so this is when the Utah War crisis is at its height. And this is the way that Jones and Turley describe the encounter between Brigham Young and what John D. Lee had to say about it as he came, and I’m going to lightly paraphrase what they’re saying. I just want to be clear that it’s coming from research in their book. So Lee walks into Brigham Young’s office. He’s travel worn. Wilford Woodruff was with him when this happens, and Wilford Woodruff captures a lot of this. He’s assistant church historian. He’d been placed in in 1856. He’s there, and he writes an account of this. Now, it’d been about three weeks since the massacre, and he’s there to report. The report that they were initially given was from a Ute Indian named Arapeen that told Dimick Huntington, who’s an interpreter that works with the Indians, that the Paiutes had killed the whole of the immigrant company, took all their stock, and it was right, which likely by this point had been reported to Brigham Young, and the Indian massacre, news of it had reached Salt Lake. That means that federal agents in Salt Lake are aware of what had happened. Lee is a federal agent to the Paiutes at the time Brigham Young is the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Lee basically feigns ignorance, like, oh, I didn’t know that this had happened, and he gives the wrong date for the crime. In fact, this particular incident causes the date of the massacre to be misreported for decades and decades.

Scott Woodward: What would be the “benefit” of Lee lying about the date? Like, how would that help?

Casey Griffiths: Lee’s basically trying to imply that he came right away, like, from the massacre. He’s trying to depict himself as, like, an express rider that immediately went to Salt Lake to tell Brigham Young what had happened, even though it had happened three weeks earlier. And this, like I said, causes a lot of confusion over the date that it takes a while to clear up.

Scott Woodward: If he had told the right date, then that would have cast suspicion on the Southern Utah leaders. Why did you take so long to report it?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And also, I mean, the other thing they’re working with here is they went ahead with their attack without consulting Brigham Young.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: If Lee claims that the massacre took place later than it actually did, then he can say, oh, you know, we got your word, and we decided not to do anything, but, you know, the Indians went ahead. What are you going to do? So then Lee starts to tell the story. Wilford Woodruff calls this an “awful tale of blood,” but Lee immediately starts to offer justifications. Like, in the conversation he tells Brigham Young that the immigrants belonged to the mob in Missouri and Illinois. The immigrants were actually from Arkansas. He said that as they traveled south, “they went damning Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball and the heads of the church, saying that Joseph Smith ought to have been shot a long time before he was,” and he knows that this is going to strike a nerve with Brigham Young.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: That they’re claiming, you know, some culpability in Joseph Smith’s death.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Then he starts to recite the basic set of charges that have been associated with the immigrants, and sometimes they’re still brought up: One, that the immigrants, according to Lee, “wanted to do all the evil they could, so they poisoned beef and gave it to the Indians, and some of them died.” Now, we talked about this last time. There was some kind of incident that happens near Fillmore and Kanosh where the carcass of an animal that had been with the immigrants caused a woman and a young boy, Proctor Robinson, to get sick. Proctor Robinson was apparently trying to cut the hide off the animal, and he cut his face, and the wound turned black, and he died the next day. In their book, in Massacre at Mountain Meadows, the theory is that the cattle may have brought anthrax with them, and that’s what caused the little boy to die and another woman who handled the body of the animal to get sick.

Scott Woodward: So anthrax was not a deliberate poisoning by the immigrant train.

Casey Griffiths: And I want to stress we don’t know if it was anthrax.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: It just—the signs point towards that being something that happened accidentally, but that the saints took as deliberate. Now, Lee also claims that several of the Saints die, that several Latter-day Saints had died because the immigrants had poisoned springs along the way, and this is the West. Water, fresh water, is rare. Saying the immigrants are poisoning water sources is another really, really serious charge. Again, it’s very unlikely that this was true, mostly just because it probably isn’t possible for them to have brought enough poison to have poisoned an entire water source. Like these are springs, they’re flowing creeks and things like that. It’s—it kind of boggles the mind, but this is what Lee’s claiming. Lee also claims that what the immigrants had done had enraged the Indians, and that’s what caused the attack. Again, Lee’s assertion is that this was completely the Paiutes, that they weren’t involved at all, but when he tells the story, he says the Indians fought them for five days. They killed all their men, about sixty in number. He doesn’t mention that he or any of the Iron County militia were involved. He tells Brigham Young that the Indians rushed into the corral and cut the throats of their women and their children, except some eight or ten children, which they brought and sold to the whites. Again—

Scott Woodward: Lies.

Casey Griffiths: —doesn’t mention that anybody from Iron County is involved.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Finally, he said the Indians stripped the men and women naked and left them stinking in the boiling sun. So he’s giving this story and depicting the immigrants in the worst possible light.

Scott Woodward: And just putting it all on the Native Americans.

Casey Griffiths: These guys got what was coming to them, and they were more than justified—the Indians, he’s saying, were more than justified in what they did.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Brigham Young stops him at a certain point and tells him that the story’s heartrending and that emigration must stop, as he had before said. So maybe we shouldn’t have allowed anybody to go through the territory because of what’s happening. So here’s the thing, is it seems like John D. Lee was expecting Brigham Young to be like, well, what are you going to do? But rather, in the conversation, Brigham Young expresses sorrow over what had happened, and that makes an impression on John D. Lee. So years later John D. Lee writes in his journal, “Brigham Young knew nothing of the Mountain Meadows Massacre until it was all over and very much regretted it when he had heard of it,” and after he sees how Brigham reacts, he starts to express sympathy, Lee does, for the victims, but he also, like—he keeps pushing to try and make it sound like it’s justified. Like, he says that he took some men and went to bury their bodies, that it was a horrid, awful job, but he continues to cast aspersion on the immigrants. Like, according to the sources we have, John D. Lee said many of the men and women was rotten from the pox, implying venereal diseases before they were hurt by the Indians. He also says openly that he didn’t think there was a drop of innocent blood in their camp: that he had spoken with two of the surviving children and could not get but one to kneel down in prayer, and the other would laugh at her for doing it, and then he said that the children swore like pirates.

Scott Woodward: Oh, come on, John.

Casey Griffiths: I mean, this is all really bad stuff, but then Lee claims that he took actions to protect other immigrants. He said, there was another large company of immigrants, this is what Wilford Woodruff records Lee saying, who were also damning both Indians and Mormons. They were afraid of sharing the same fate. Brother Lee had to send interpreters with them to the Indians to try and save the lives while at the same time they are trying to kill us. So he smears the immigrant train after the Fancher-Baker party and says, yeah, they’re just as bad, but I did everything I could to try and help them. And then finally, he says that the Indians took all the cattle, horses, property, guns, etc., from the party that had been killed, which just wasn’t true.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: The Indians actually later complained that they didn’t get their share of the leftovers from the massacre, basically. So the story that’s told, and again, this is right in the middle of all the pressure surrounding the Utah War, was that these were horrible people, that they had threatened the Saints, that they had actually acted in ways that had killed several of the Indians and the Saints, and that they basically deserved to—deserved what they got, essentially.

Scott Woodward: Not that any white men were involved in this, I mean, but you know what happened happened, and in some ways they deserved it. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: That’s the story that Brigham Young is told, and that leads to this famous incident that people that want to indict Brigham Young in the massacre bring up again and again and again. The way the story’s told, and it first shows up in Juanita Brooks’s book, is that in May 1861, this is about four years after the massacre, Brigham Young is on a tour of the southern settlements, and he comes to Mountain Meadows, where by this point, soldiers from Johnston’s army had gone down, they had reburied the bodies—a lot of the bodies were buried quickly and had been pulled up by wild animals. Men from Johnston’s army had placed a large stone cairn over top of the bodies and a big cross, and on the cross, they had written, “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith the Lord.” This quote from the Bible.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: According to Juanita Brooks, Brigham Young, seeing the makeshift monument, said that it should read, “Vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little,” and then Juanita Brooks wrote, “He didn’t say another word. He didn’t give an order. He just lifted his right arm to the square, and in five minutes, there wasn’t one stone left upon another. He didn’t have to tell us what he wanted done. We understood.” So the story is that Brigham Young said vengeance is mine and I’ve taken a little, and then he directed the people in his company to disassemble, to take down the monument, basically.

Scott Woodward: So unpack that for us. Why is this used by those who want to make it seem like Brigham was involved, and how should we interpret this?

Casey Griffiths: I mean, first of all, parts of the story are true, and parts of the story aren’t true.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So for one part, Wilford Woodruff was traveling in the party with Brigham Young, and Wilford Woodruff is one of the best journal keepers in the history of the church, and Wilford Woodruff does report that Brigham Young saw the cross and said, “Vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little.”

Scott Woodward: Okay, so that part’s accurate.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, that part’s accurate. Several people in the settlements that they visited said that the story was repeated to them as well. So that part’s probably accurate. However, the desecration of the monument appears to have come from Leavitt family lore. Juanita Brooks’s maiden name is Leavitt. Some of her ancestors were involved in the massacre, and this apparently is a story that had circulated among her family. When we look closely, it doesn’t seem like there was any movement to desecrate the monument by Brigham Young’s party. People that were there—nobody that was there, from Wilford Woodruff to Calvin Pendleton to George D. Watt, who’s later excommunicated from the church, mentioned that the cairn, that the monument was desecrated at any time or that Brigham Young gave a signal for its destruction, and, in fact, a few weeks later, a man named Edwin R. Purple, great name, by the way—

Scott Woodward: Purple.

Casey Griffiths: —who’s a non–Latter-day Saint, he’s a mail agent, passed through the area, and he noted the appearance of the stones and the cross without giving any indications that it had been disturbed in any way. So part of the story’s true. Part of the story probably isn’t true.

Scott Woodward: Is that cairn still there today?

Casey Griffiths: The monument at Mountain Meadows that exists today resembles the cairn.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: But unfortunately there are other accounts that say that the cairn and the cross were vandalized sometime later, though it doesn’t appear to have happened by Brigham Young’s party or at the instigation of Brigham Young.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So the evidence indicates that Brigham Young did not order any desecration of the monument, but it seems like he also, by 1861, still believed John D. Lee’s justifications for the massacre and still saw it largely as an Indian attack.

Scott Woodward: So when he says “Vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little,” it seems from his perspective that if John D. Lee’s account is true, then God apparently allowed vengeance to be taken via the Paiute Indians in order for some retribution on those who were involved in the killings of Joseph Smith or the driving of the saints from Missouri or Illinois.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He doesn’t realize the actual facts of the matter yet.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and it seems like that’s the popular narrative that starts to circulate in Southern Utah, too, because the monument is rebuilt and torn down several times. On one occasion, after the monument was torn down, someone wrote on the cross, “Remember Hawn’s Mill and Carthage Jail”.

Scott Woodward: Oh, gee.

Casey Griffiths: Again, not Brigham Young or his party doing that, but the settlers in Southern Utah appeared to have accepted this narrative that the Fancher-Baker party were involved in Joseph Smith’s death and that what happened to them was divine justice. So that’s 1861. However, as facts start to come to light, Brigham Young is deeply disturbed by what he starts to find out.

Scott Woodward: How did he find out more about that?

Casey Griffiths: So fifteen months after the whole thing we’ve been talking about with the monument, Brigham Young visits Southern Utah again. In the intervening months a pamphlet was published by John Cradlebaugh, who’s a federal judge who was investigating the massacre. Cradlebaugh is really antagonistic towards the Saints. At the same time, several people that participate in the massacre, the most notable one is probably Philip Klingensmith, come forward and begin countering the narrative that’s told by John D. Lee and others that the massacre was carried out just by the Paiute Indians. When this pamphlet is published, apparently Brigham Young read it, and he was incensed. Like, he was very upset.

Scott Woodward: Because now it implicated Latter-day Saints and said that they were involved in the massacre.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, now John D. Lee is implicated in the massacre, and the evidence starts piling up that other Latter-day Saints were involved, that it wasn’t an Indian attack: that Brigham Young had been lied to.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So fifteen months later, this is April 1863, Brigham Young visits John D. Lee’s settlement, and according to a journal account from someone that was there, he speaks with John D. Lee directly about what had happened at the massacre. And, again, the backdrop here is that Church teachings are that shedding innocent blood is among the most serious sins that a person can commit. Like, other than denying the Holy Ghost, this is the most serious thing you can do.

Scott Woodward: Possibly unpardonable.

Casey Griffiths: Possibly unpardonable, yeah. And according to people that were there, when Brigham Young speaks to John D. Lee about this, John D. Lee again tries to say, it wasn’t me: it was the Indians. The journal account says, “President Young would not accept his testimony and at last said, ‘John D. Lee, do all the good you can while you live, and you shall be credited with every good deed you perform, but in heaven, where God and the Lamb dwell, you shall never be.’”

Scott Woodward: Oof. Oof.

Casey Griffiths: Apparently, when the confrontation ended, Lee just went out and wept bitterly.

Scott Woodward: So was it right after this that John D. Lee was excommunicated?

Casey Griffiths: He’s not excommunicated until October 1870, and that is when the prosecutions, when the investigation surrounding it, really start to kind of heat up.

Scott Woodward: So that’s, like, seven years after Brigham Young found out about his involvement.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, again, we don’t know everything that we’d like to know, but we know that by 1863 Brigham Young was aware of what had happened and was very, very upset over what occurred. Again, this just speaks to Brigham Young not ordering or knowing that it occurred.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Now, I should note, at the request of his descendants, John D. Lee’s membership was posthumously restored in 1961.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: And this is all complicated Southern Utah stuff. I’m not a direct descendant of John D. Lee, but I’m descended from—I’m sort of, like, a tangential descendant. I have relatives that still have complicated feelings about this. Isaac Haight was also excommunicated in 1870, but he was reinstated in 1874 because he wasn’t convicted of anything linked to it, but as you’ll see later on in our discussion, even after Isaac Haight is reinstated into the church, he has a complex set of interactions with people in Southern Utah who know what really happened and are not okay with what occurred. All of this kind of combines to create this complicated legacy, where it seems like when Brigham Young believed that it was an Indian massacre, he may have seen it as justified, but once he knows that it’s not an Indian massacre, that Latter-day Saints are involved, condemns those that are involved, and he does cooperate in the investigations, even though a lot of the investigations sort of take a turn to try and implicate him, but Brigham Young does cooperate as they go through into this, which, again, is maybe the next part of the story, which is how come it took so long for the perpetrators of the massacre to be brought to justice?

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Okay, so why did it take so long to bring the perpetrators of the massacre to justice? It’s a fantastic question. So let’s walk through this. So part of this is stemming from events outside of the massacre itself, all right? So the turmoil surrounding the approaching army in 1857 was not resolved for several months after the massacre as the events of the Utah War were resolved. When the army settles at its headquarters in Camp Floyd, about forty miles south of Salt Lake City, an uneasy peace set in. A detachment from Camp Floyd visited the site of the massacre and reburied bodies that had been disinterred by wild animals, and they’re the ones that built that stone cairn and cross that we were just talking about, but all of this was interrupted when the American Civil War broke out in 1860. And, really, if we want to talk about, like, the number one reason this takes so long, in just a nutshell, that’s it. Civil War. So Camp Floyd was abandoned as most members of the army left to go travel back east to fight in the conflict there. Albert Sidney Johnston, the commander of the army, he joins the Confederacy. He’ll die in battle against Ulysses S. Grant, actually, at Shiloh, and in the years that followed, the truth only comes out gradually. That’s another factor here. The massacre was, it turns out, a community crime. The militia were acting under orders. So James Buchanan also announced a general amnesty for everyone involved in the Utah War, and so that muddies whether anyone would be punished for the massacre because of their role in it, right, as militia who were acting under orders. Some federal officials were frustrated because other judges in Utah refused to reach out to the church to ensure their cooperation in the investigation. Jacob Forney, who replaced Brigham Young as the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Utah Territory, was exasperated by the judges because of their approaches to the Saints. In fact, he wrote this: he said, “Certain parties here who talk loudest did not make a proper effort to bring to trial the Mountain Meadow offenders by refusing to hold court within a reasonable distance of the parties and witnesses.” He said, “Court refused to accept the services of the territorial marshal, who proposed to apprehend the supposed guilty, and refused $1,500, which were offered by William H. Hooper, delegate to Congress from Utah, to aid in defraying the expenses.” And he says, “And I had the assurance of several leading Mormons that the supposed guilty should be arrested, and I had no reason to doubt their sincerity. I fear and regret to say it,” he wrote, “that with certain parties here there is a greater anxiety to connect Brigham Young and other church dignitaries with every criminal offense than to diligently endeavor to punish the actual perpetrators of crime.” An interesting snapshot into the legal system at that time in Utah, trying to find Brigham Young guilty of everything. Well, as you mentioned, Casey, like, Brigham Young bent over backwards to cooperate with the investigators, especially after he became aware of Latter-day Saint involvement in the massacre. A warrant was actually issued for his arrest, for Brigham Young’s arrest, by a federal judge in July of 1859, but nothing ever came of that. Later, in July of 1875, Brigham Young was called to Beaver, Utah, where the trial was being held, to attend proceedings and to give evidence. That same month he was deposed, and Brigham answered questions related to the massacre and denied any role in planning it. Ironically, justice for the massacre was probably delayed because federal officials were waiting on those involved in the massacre to implicate Brigham Young, which none of them ever did. So, couple things there, right? We got Civil War. We’ve got this weird amnesty thing where we’re not sure whether or not those who were acting officially as militia can be indicted for this. Then we’ve got kind of a rigged system against Brigham Young through the system of judges that are trying to go after him rather than trying to find the people who were actually involved in the crime and just a fumbling series of events that lead to such a long delay in bringing anyone to justice for this.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and Brigham Young, it becomes kind of this national media sensation, the trials do and everything. Brigham Young is interviewed by the New York Herald on May 6, 1877. He’s asked if orders to kill the immigrants came from church headquarters. Brigham Young’s answer, “None that I have any knowledge of, and certainly none from me. I would have gone to that camp and fought the Indians and white men who took part in the perpetration of the massacre to the death rather than such a deed should have been committed.” And another cool quote that’s found in Vengeance is Mine is Apostle Amasa Lyman. He’s another church leader that condemns the massacre once it’s known. He gives a speech where he rebukes church members, saying, “If they supposed that the kingdom is to be built up by shedding blood, they were mistaken, though some that had great taste for shedding blood might have gratification, but they would never gain salvation by such a course.” And then this classic quote: “The best way to avenge the blood of the prophets was to take a course to diminish the power of the devil.” So church leaders condemn this, but, I mean, prosecutors are out for blood. Ironically, their attempts to include Brigham Young may have lengthened the investigation and the term of punishment and caused it to go on for longer than it would have under normal circumstances.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And that leads to, I guess, our next question, which is, okay, after they are doing this investigation, why is it that John D. Lee is the only person who’s ever really punished for his role in the massacre, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So some of the people that are indicted for their role in the massacre, like Isaac Haight and John Higbee, go into hiding. They go into hiding, and they avoid the federal officials long enough that eventually they give up. Others, like Philip Klingensmith, turn state evidence to avoid prosecution. It was also really difficult to prosecute Isaac Haight and William Dame because they didn’t directly participate in the massacre. They just ordered the attacks and the massacre, and it was easy for them to dodge. For instance, William Dame was arrested in 1874, and he was held for two years but was released because of insufficient evidence. John D. Lee, on the other hand, was put on trial twice. His first trial ends with a hung jury, but in his second trial, Lee was found guilty, and you can read these court transcripts. I’ve read the end transcript of his second trial, where the judge explains and gives him several methods of execution. Lee chooses death by firing squad.

Scott Woodward: Oy.

Casey Griffiths: So Lee is executed in dramatic fashion on March 23rd, 1877, and all throughout the trial and everything, he keeps saying that he’s innocent. He said, I was innocent, “of ever doing anything designedly wrong in the affair.” He also noted, “It seems I’ve been made a victim. A victim must be had. I’m the victim. I’m sacrificed to satisfy the feelings, the vindictive feelings, or in other words, I’m used to gratify parties.” So Lee depicts himself kind of as the scapegoat, right?

Scott Woodward: As we learn the details of what happened, it does seem like he was the impetuous guy that’s rushing in and starts killing before even the planned attack was supposed to occur, right? I mean, he does seem to be the guy that led the charge.

Casey Griffiths: He led the charge, and the accounts of the actual killings themselves, which are really graphic and we’re not going to mention here, implicate Lee over and over and over again in the most grisly murders that took place there. So I want to mention a personal connection: the trial takes place in Beaver, Utah, where my mom and dad are from. Just up the road from my grandma’s house, actually, are the remnants of Fort Cameron, which was a military installation built in Beaver because of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. That’s where Lee is being imprisoned, and they wake him up, and they basically say it’s time, and they start to march him to the site. It takes two days to get to Mountain Meadows from there, and along the way, word spreads that the execution is going to happen, and it turns into kind of a media circus. Ironically, Brigham Young’s in St. George attending a conference when word comes that they’re going to execute John D. Lee, and Brigham Young asks several people to go and witness the execution for him. He doesn’t go himself. This is Turley and Brown’s descriptions of Lee’s final moments. He said, “In his final moments, Lee worried about the fate of his body. ‘Let them shoot the balls through my heart,’ Lee urged the officer. ‘Don’t let them mangle my body,’ he begged at the site where beasts tore the victim’s bodies after the massacre. His hands left free, Lee clasped them above his head and braced for impact. Those standing near the condemned men stepped aside, and Marshall Nilsen moved a short distance southwest. At exactly 11 o’clock, he gave the command, ready, aim, fire. Guns flashed, sending hot lead into Lee. Some of the bullets passed clear through, cutting ridges into the ground behind him. Lee fell back against his coffin in his final, oblivious sleep.” So.

Scott Woodward: Yikes.

Casey Griffiths: What a scene. Like, he’s taken to the massacre site, and he’s allowed to make that final speech that you referenced earlier, and then he’s executed at the massacre site. He’s buried in Panguitch, by the way. My aunt sent me a picture of his headstone, like, just to encourage me because I’m doing this, so.

Scott Woodward: Thanks. Thanks, aunt.

Casey Griffiths: Thanks, Aunt Nan, Aunt Vic. I appreciate it. Shout out to my Aunt Nancy and my Aunt Vicky.

Scott Woodward: Oh, man. So what happens to everybody else who was guilty of involvement in the massacre, like including Isaac Haight and William Dame? Did they just get off completely scot free, or what happens?

Casey Griffiths: So nine people are indicted for the massacre. Five are arrested: that’s John D. Lee, William Dame, Philip Klingensmith, Elliott Wilden, and George Adair, and the ones that we know the most about are Klingensmith, Lee, and Dame, but we’ve got to talk about Isaac Haight because he’s the one whose fingerprints are all over everything.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So after he kind of secures his freedom, this is Philip Klingensmith, he goes off to just be a prospector. There’s family traditions that say he became ill and went to an Indian camp in Arizona, where he died and was buried by his hosts. A newspaper report that Turley and Brown found in Nevada in 1881 said his body was found in a prospect hole in Sonora, Mexico. Some people said conspiracy theories that he’d been murdered by Latter-day Saints, although Brown and Turley note that a journalist from Pioche, Nevada expressed doubt, writing, “If he was really killed by the Mormons, they waited an unconscionable time to do so, missing many a good and more convenient opportunity.”

Scott Woodward: Okay, so he just dies. Like, out.

Casey Griffiths: He dies, yeah. Doesn’t seem like he was well beloved. William Dame, who’s, again, just to recap, the guy who orders the final massacre but is horrified when he gets there and sees what had actually happened—

Scott Woodward: He had been fed misinformation.

Casey Griffiths: Well, he’d been fed misinformation at first, and then, lesser, he was told that they knew what was happening, but Isaac Haight basically said, yeah, they’re almost all dead anyway. We just have to finish the job.

Scott Woodward: Which is more misinformation.

Casey Griffiths: More misinformation, and then that horrible sight when Dame and Haight tour the massacre site and Dame just keeps saying, I didn’t know there were this many.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: What are we going to do? I have to report this. Okay, so he is arrested, spends two years on trial, but is let go because of insufficient evidence.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Josiah Rogerson, who’s the one who makes the transcripts for John D. Lee’s trials, visits William Dame and reports that at the time that he visited him in 1884, Dame had suffered a stroke—that he was really struggling. Rogerson writes, “He winced and weakened under the charges as he was bringing them up.” Rogerson urges Dame to basically give a statement under oath that would be kept confidential until his death, explaining his side of all that took place, including what was said between Haight and he on the pile of posts near his barn in the so-called Tan Bark Council that we’ve been mentioned. Rogerson later said, “He sat confused and somewhat thoughtful for a few moments. Sad to relate, he replied to all of our pleadings, pleadings like the reserved Dame that we had always known him to be. ‘My days are numbered,’ Dame said, ‘and I do not care to say anything more about this matter than I’ve said on one or two occasions: that Brother Haight misunderstood me and that John D. Lee was advised and requested to do all that he could to keep the Indians off ’till answer came back from Governor Young. I am willing to be tried when I get across the river, and am willing that our father be the judge.’” Rogerson said, “We couldn’t get another word of admission from him, and a month or so after our interview, a second stroke took him across the river.”

Scott Woodward: “Across the river” sounds like code for into the Spirit World. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, so that’s William Dame. The other two, George Adair and Elliott Wilden, their cases were dropped for lack of evidence. Both men talked to others about the atrocity, but they always depicted themselves as minor players and didn’t mention that they killed anybody.

Scott Woodward: They’re just members of the militia?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, they’re members of the militia that are involved.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Besides John D. Lee, the person who’s most involved in the massacre, but isn’t actually at the site, is Isaac Haight.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Like, most sources point towards Haight being the person who ignored the council at Cedar City, said that they’ve got to attack them anyway.

Scott Woodward: And he’s the one that fed Dame the inaccurate information.

Casey Griffiths: He gives Dame the fake information, says that everybody’s already dead anyway. Haight goes into hiding, basically stays underground until the heat dies down a little bit. He’s on the move for a lot of his life. He moves in with a son and a daughter in a settlement near the San Juan River in New Mexico, and eventually he comes back to Southern Utah, comes back to Toquerville, but not to a warm reception. Just a couple days after he gets back to Toquerville, Charles W. Penrose, who’s a newspaper editor, gives a speech in Salt Lake about the Mountain Meadows Massacre that creates kind of a response from the Salt Lake Tribune. Both accounts mention Haight’s name and kind of stir up public feeling against him. Haight, during this time, was actually doing work in the St. George Temple. St. George Temple’s been dedicated at this point.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: So this is what Turley and Jones write about him. “According to his granddaughter, some Latter-day Saints recognized him in the temple and threatened him if he did not vacate the sacred edifice. As there was considerable buzzing in St. George, Haight wrote under a pseudonym to a daughter, and he decided to flee to Cedar City for a few days until things quieted down. Hostility among the people of St. George eventually drove Haight to Thatcher, Arizona, where he joined a nephew, Hyrum Brinkerhoff, on a colonizing mission to Mexico. To obscure his identity, he continued to use aliases. The mission proved difficult and lonely. ‘I think that most of those in this country have felt sorely tried to part with those that are dear to them as their lives wander as fugitives in a strange land and people,’ Haight wrote, ‘but when they have tried it as long as I have, they will not feel so impatient, yet I feel it very sorely.’” And Haight is kind of waiting for things to—officials to change in Utah. He’s saying, oh, I’ll just wait until the officials change so I can get a fair and impartial and speedy trial. And he’s, like I said, kind of laying low.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So Haight eventually serves as a clerk to Apostle George Teasdale, who’s living in Mexico. A settler there named George Calvin Williams encounters Haight going by his mother’s maiden name, the name of Horton, at a church meeting in Mexico. Williams, after seeing Haight, approached George Teasdale, saying the country wasn’t big enough for both him and Haight. And warning that one of us better get out of Mexico and do it quick, and Teasdale relays the conversation to Haight, who fled back to Thatcher, Arizona.

Scott Woodward: How did he know he was Isaac Haight and not Isaac Horton?

Casey Griffiths: I guess he just recognized him and knew about his role in the massacre. So Haight comes back to Arizona, where he dies of pneumonia on September 8th, 1886, and here’s maybe the most pathetic part of the story. Haight’s nephew keeps his body in a casket stowed in his cellar of his home and inn because he was expecting immediate family members to claim it.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: Nobody shows up.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: In fact, the way that Turley and Brown describe it is, after lying in the cellar for many years, Haight’s remains were finally buried in the Thatcher Cemetery. In more recent times, a relative erected a gravestone reading, “In memory of Isaac C. Haight, a noble man who’s gone to his rest. He paid the high price of leadership.”

Scott Woodward: “He paid the high price of leadership.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Ooh. Suggesting that sometimes as a leader, you have to make tough decisions and he made some wrong ones? Is that the idea?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, that’s a generous assessment. George Williams, the guy who tells Haight, like, Mexico is not big enough for both of us, actually, like, is really upset over this. He stews over Haight for a decade. He even writes the First Presidency about him and gets a response from the First Presidency, who at the time were Wilford Woodruff and his two counselors. They write, “With reference to Isaac Haight, we can, in some degree, we believe, sympathize with the feelings that have filled your heart on meeting him, but now he has gone to his God to meet his desserts, and for his sake we hope that he was not as guilty as common rumor charges. Some things in relation to that terrible act will never be known until the secrets of all hearts are revealed.” That, in a nutshell, is what happens to the main actors in the massacre.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Just, again, terrible. And I’ll reference back to Nephi Johnson again really quick. He’s the guy that we talked about last time that asked Juanita Brooks to write his story. She kind of puts it off, then she goes to his house. She gets there, and he’s sort of delirious, and she hears him shouting, “Blood, blood, blood.” Nephi Johnson was a young man in his twenties when he was a Paiute interpreter. That’s why he was called out to the site, and what affected Nephi Johnson was there’s a hill between where the men were killed and where the women were killed—the women and the children. Apparently Nephi Johnson was standing on that hill, and he was the only participant that saw both sets of killings, and that just wrecked him for the rest of his life to the point to where, you know, when one day Brooks sees him, he’s literally, like, in the last moments of his life, reliving what he saw. So it’s tough to kind of quantify the price that they paid, but it’s safe to say that the participants in the massacre didn’t live happy lives after. And even if only John D. Lee was executed for the act, the rest of them paid a price. Maybe not the price that they should have paid, but they paid a price for the actions that they engaged in.

Scott Woodward: What a tragedy. And maybe we should end today’s episode by just addressing the question that sometimes comes up where people ask, like, has the church ever actually given an apology or an official statement about the massacre, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And the answer is yes. As we mentioned in our last episode, the church has issued several apologies for the events that occurred at Mountain Meadows. Most famous of these was given by Elder Henry B. Eyring on the 150th anniversary of the massacre in September 2007.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We quoted from that last episode. Another touching apology, I think, occurred back in 1990 when Rex E. Lee, who is a descendant of John D. Lee, who was then serving as president of BYU, he actually held hands with descendants of the survivors of the massacre, and he thanked them for their Christian-like willingness to forgive. Later in the 1990s, President Gordon B. Hinckley toured the massacre site with Benjamin Pickles, who’s an archaeologist and head of historic sites. He was distressed at the condition of the site, and he later invited descendants of the survivors to meet with him and to offer their input into a new memorial. That new memorial was then dedicated by President Hinckley in 1999. That’s church leaders doing the best that we can do now. None of us were involved, none of them were involved, but it’s such a blot on our history, and we appreciate the efforts that have been made by leaders of the church and members of our church to try to help ease the pain and suffering of those who are affected by this story, by the descendants of those who survived, some of those children, those seventeen children, the relatives of those who were murdered. I mean, it’s a pretty wide net of people who were impacted by this, Casey, and I think our church has done a pretty good job, as best as, you know, we can do, raising monuments and publicly apologizing and meeting with the descendants of those who were massacred to try to do our best to heal some of these wounds, but . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Next week we’re going to be sitting down with Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —who are two of the key figures in not only telling the story of the massacre honestly and openly—I mean, we’ve been quoting a lot from their book here. It’s really, really well put together.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But both of them participated in the healing process. Like, we’re going to bring this up with them, but back in September, I toured the massacre site with Rick and Barbara, and this was with other members of the John Whitmer Historical Association. Again, terrible stuff, but they took us to this place in St. George where there’s what’s called a healing quilt, where it’s a quilt that has been put together by Latter-day Saints and descendants of the survivors of the massacre, and I just want to read a couple quotes from the quilt.

Scott Woodward: OK.

Casey Griffiths: For instance, Terry N. Fancher, you’ll recognize that name, who lives in Braintree, Massachusetts, their little swatch on the quilt, their piece of cloth, says, “But I’ve calmed and quieted my soul,” quoting from Psalm 131, verse 2. Marlon Jensen, who is a name you’ll probably recognize, he was the church historian several years ago, has a little patch on the quilt that says, “History cannot be unlived, but understanding and forgiveness make both the present and future brighter.” And then another swatch on the quilt from a descendant of a massacre survivor just says, “To forgive is divine.” So this is rough stuff, and we appreciate that you’ve stayed with us through the story.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It’s tough to hear. At the same time, too, sunlight is the best disinfectant, right? We’ve got to deal with this, and this is probably the most terrible story in our history.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But starting now, and with our next few episodes, we’re going to turn towards peace: how we can heal some things. Even as awful as the Mountain Meadows Massacre—efforts can be made to try and heal hearts that have been hurt because of it—and what we can do to try and bring peace on earth so that this legacy of violence that we’ve been discussing doesn’t happen again.

Scott Woodward: There will probably always be controversy surrounding the events at Mountain Meadows on September 11th, 1857, and it’s I think probably impossible to answer every question surrounding the massacre to everyone’s satisfaction. And even over 150 years later, there are still strong feelings, but healing has begun to take place. We’re grateful for that.

Casey Griffiths: We want to help with that healing. We hope that it’s helped you.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. In our next episode, we’re excited to sit down with authors Richard Turley and Barbara Jones Brown, who co-authored a groundbreaking book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, released in 2023, entitled Vengeance is Mine. This book has recently won the Best Book Award from the Utah Historical Society, the John Whitmer Historical Association, and others. We look forward to interviewing them about their excellent research, as well as to hear their very informed perspectives about this difficult topic in our history. If you’re enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it or by taking a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. That’s right: All of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. So if you’re in a position where you’re both willing and able to make a one-time or ongoing donation, be assured that your contribution will help us at Scripture Central produce and disseminate more quality content to combat false and faith-eroding material out there in the digital marketplace of ideas. And while Casey and I try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.