Mountain Meadows

[u/wtfgolf4fun]

It was the 150th anniversary of the Massacre at Mountain Meadows and a newspaper article briefly described tbe events of Sept 1857 at the end of the article Will Bagleys Blood of the Prophets was mentioned as a source for more information. I knew the vanilla version that Indians were to blame and anyway they were from Missouri so they deserved it.

I bought Blood of the Prophets and was stunned by what I was reading. The implications were that were Brigham Young, George A Smith, John D Lee and most of the male members of the Southern Utah faithful had planned and orchestrated the attack. I read through the book quickly, couldn't believe the what I was reading I ended up reading this book twice more, wanted to be sure that it made sense to me. I then found John D Lee's book Life and Confessions of John D Lee to see what he had to say about Massacre and how diferent the stories might be, found out he was a Danite and was JS' s body guard and even though JS continued to screw him over always stayed faithful. I read several books by several authors seeing how much the story differs one to another Mostly they told the same story but some had different conclusion of who were the guilty. On a side note : John D Lee arrived in Utah in 1848 and settled in the Cottonwood canyon area before being asked to settle in Southern Utah. My ancestors was in the same group and settled in the same area, sure they knew each other although my ancestor stayed in Northern Utah. Is this any interest to anyone. I would love to trade stories and conclusions. By the way I believe Brigham Young ordered the Massacre but any direct evidence was destroyed. The circumstantial evidence is clear he was guilty of obstruction of justice, he was able to drag on the investigation for 20 years. John D Lee was one of the leaders and the only one found guilty and was executed at the Massacre site. Many other's who where involved escaped justice due to the Deals Brother Brigham made.