Problems with Mountain Meadows Massacre Sources

The Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has gradually accumulated what may well be the largest and finest collection of information about the Mountain Meadows Massacre ever assembled. Many complex documentary problems have presented challenges in understanding, digesting, and interpreting this massive collection.

Though many people have written about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, few have appreciated fully the problems inherent in some key sources of information about it. Three sources readily illustrate the nature of these problems: (1) an 1859 report by James Henry Carleton, who investigated the massacre on site; (2) the transcripts of the two trials of John D. Lee; and (3) the 1877 book titled Mormonism Unveiled; or the Life and Confessions of the Late Mormon Bishop, John D. Lee; (Written by Himself). All these sources provide important information about the massacre, but they also have significant problems. Critical analysis can lead to a more thorough understanding of the sources, leading to more accurate history.

Carleton’s Report

One of the most frequently used early sources on the massacre is U.S. Army Brevet Major James Henry Carleton’s report of his 1859 investigation at Mountain Meadows.¹ The on-site investigation by Carleton and his men, occurring less than two years after the massacre, yields important evidence for modern scholars of the massacre. Yet careful analysis shows that portions of the oft-cited report rest on shaky foundations.²

For example, Carleton cites information he received from assistant army surgeon Charles Brewer, who went “up the Platte river on the 11th of June, 1857.” On this northern route, Brewer “passed a train of emigrants near O’Fallon’s Bluffs.” This train he remembered as “Perkin’s train,” being conducted by “a man named Perkins, who had previously been to California.” Brewer saw the train several times along the trail, last observing it “at Ash Hollow, on the North Fork of the Platte.” Relying on Brewer’s testimony, Carleton describes the train in detail, calling it “one of the finest trains that had been seen to cross the plains.” The train had “forty wagons” and “about forty heads of families,” and there were “three carriages along,” one of which had “something peculiar in the construction,” a “blazoned stag’s head upon the panels.” Brewer claimed that this carriage was “now in the possession of the Mormons.” He later concluded, after hearing reports and “comparing the dates with the probable rate of travel,” that “this was the . . . train . . . destroyed at Mountain Meadows.”³

The Brewer-Carleton account proves problematic, however, since the weight of evidence suggests that most members of the train massacred at Mountain Meadows traveled on the more southerly Cherokee Trail and could not have been at the places Brewer named.⁴ Still, multiple writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century have accepted and parroted Carleton’s report, repeating the intriguing but questionable details again and again without further analysis.

For example, in his 1870 volume Life in Utah; or, the Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism, John H. Beadle quotes Brewer’s descriptions of the emigrants at O’Fallon’s Bluff, with “forty heads of families” and three carriages, one with the “blazoned stag’s head upon the panels,” of which the Mormons took possession. Beadle also continues Brewer’s assessment that this was “one of the finest trains” crossing the plains.⁵ In his 1976 book Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Legend and a Monumental Crime, William Wise relies on Brewer’s description of the carriage with the blazoned stag’s head on the panels.⁶ In the Utah History Encyclopedia, published in 1994, Morris A. Shirts writes that the massacred emigrant company was known en route “as the Perkins train.”⁷ More recently, Sally Denton’s 2003 book American Massacre, though naming the Cherokee Trail in the text, provides a map outlining a route that passes near O’Fallon’s Bluff and Ash Hollow. In her text, she also repeats the description of forty wagons, three carriages, and the blazoned stag’s head.⁸

Whether the Arkansas train was indeed “one of the finest trains that ever crossed the plains” is a subject for a future article. The train unquestionably had property of great economic value.⁹ Brewer’s problematic description of the Perkins train, however, should not be used uncritically as evidence of the Arkansas train’s origin, wealth, or composition.

John D. Lee Trial Transcripts

The transcripts of the John D. Lee trials are another important, misunderstood source on the massacre. Lee was tried twice in the 1870s for his role in the killings; the first trial resulted in a hung jury, the second in a verdict finding Lee guilty. There are two separate transcripts of the trials: the Rogerson transcript in the Church History Library and the Boreman transcript in the Huntington Library.¹⁰ Nearly every scholar who has used the transcripts has accepted them at face value, not really understanding their complex history and nature.

Two court reporters, Josiah Rogerson and Adam S. Patterson, recorded the proceedings of the trials in Pitman shorthand.¹¹ Each reporter took shorthand notes of the first trial, most of which still exist, but each recorded or omitted slightly different aspects of the trial.¹² Rogerson claimed to have taken limited shorthand notes of the second trial, but the location of most of these shorthand notes, if still extant, is unknown.¹³ The majority of Patterson’s shorthand notes of the second trial still exist.¹⁴ Together, Rogerson’s and Patterson’s shorthand notes provide the most accurate record of what was actually said and done during the trials.¹⁵

Sometime after the trials, Rogerson agreed to make a transcript from his shorthand notes for Latter-day Saint leaders. He began transcribing his notes from the first Lee trial in 1883 and labored at the task for years, editing and condensing as he transcribed.¹⁶ Historiography in the nineteenth century was not what it is today, and trends emerge in Rogerson’s edits. A comparison of his shorthand record to his transcript shows extensive alterations.

Rogerson added and omitted negatives, changed numbers, and altered dates. He changed names, often omitting Isaac C. Haight’s name in an apparent effort to protect him.¹⁷ At the same time, he sharpened the focus on Lee—for example, where the shorthand reads that “white men incited” an Indian attack, his transcript says, “John D. Lee marshalled and led those Indians to the Mountain Meadows.”¹⁸

Other portions of Rogerson’s transcript expand speakers’ rhetoric. A stark example of these changes can be found in the closing argument of William W. Bishop, Lee’s attorney. In reference to the damaging testimony of witness Annie Hoag, Rogerson’s shorthand records Bishop as saying, “Her statement I think was the most remarkable statement [I] have heard in my life.” In the transcript, however, the text was amplified to include sexist sentiment in an effort to further discount Hoag’s testimony: “Her statements are so monstrous, that, coming from a woman, as they do, we cannot believe them true.”¹⁹

While Rogerson was laboring on his transcript, Patterson, the other court reporter, moved to San Francisco, where he died in 1886.²⁰ Meanwhile, presiding trial judge Jacob Boreman decided that he wanted to publish a book about the trials. Since Patterson was unavailable, Boreman commissioned reporter Waddington L. Cook, a former student of Patterson, to make a transcript from Patterson’s shorthand.²¹ Cook found Patterson’s shorthand difficult—in places impossible—to read.²² He therefore contacted Josiah Rogerson and requested his assistance in the project, asking Rogerson to bring his own shorthand notes, which were more decipherable than Patterson’s. The two of them completed the project, often relying on Rogerson’s notes.²³

While the resulting Boreman transcript more accurately reflects the original shorthand than the Rogerson transcript does, it too contains additions, deletions, and alterations. Some passages in the Boreman transcript have no basis in either the Patterson or the Rogerson shorthand. For example, in a section pertaining to Lee’s negotiations with the emigrants before the massacre, Lee’s attorney, W. W. Bishop, supposedly asks the question “Did Haight make any remark . . . ?” This inserted question, not found in the shorthand, erroneously places Isaac C. Haight at the scene of the killing.²⁴

Other passages in the Boreman transcript are amalgamations of both the Patterson and the Rogerson shorthand. Additionally, substantial sections of the Patterson shorthand—legal preliminaries, juror interviews, and many technical legal arguments, including some opening and closing arguments—were never included in the transcript. In short, the Boreman transcript, like the Rogerson transcript, is not a faithful transcription of the original shorthand.

Historians have used the transcripts in various ways, often relying instead upon newspaper reports and other published accounts for most of their information.²⁵ Juanita Brooks refers to the Boreman transcript in a few notes and in her bibliography, and she also includes the Rogerson transcript in the bibliography. Yet some of her discussion of trial testimony is inconsistent with the transcripts. She generally does not provide citations for her material and may have used secondary sources.²⁶ Anna Backus includes Philip Klingensmith’s testimony from the first trial in Mountain Meadows Witness; much of the testimony is apparently reproduced from the Rogerson transcript.²⁷ In Blood of the Prophets, Will Bagley cites the Boreman transcript for the first trial.²⁸ More often he relies on published accounts, including newspaper articles and Brooks’s book.²⁹

In the process of writing Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy, my coauthors and I determined that we needed a more complete, accurate picture of what was said at the Lee trials. We therefore commissioned new transcripts of both Rogerson’s and Patterson’s shorthand and compared all versions. Exhaustive examination of these sources has contributed significantly to our understanding of the trials and the massacre itself.

Mormonism Unveiled

Another major source that poses problems is Mormonism Unveiled, which appeared in print five months after John D. Lee’s execution. The book, purportedly written by Lee, includes his personal history and a confession about the massacre. Though the title hints at exposé rather than history, many authors continue to view the book as an accurate primary source. Other massacre scholars have debated the authorship of the book, ascribing a role to Lee’s attorney, William W. Bishop.³⁰

Juanita Brooks, for example, at first may have accepted Lee’s authorship without question, but later she doubted that he was the sole writer. “I should like to determine, if I can,” she wrote, “how much was written by Lee himself and what part was filled in by the Attorney, Bishop, from notes and conversations with Lee.”³¹ More recently, Will Bagley wrote, “Without the manuscript of Mormonism Unveiled, there is no way to resolve the question of its authorship, but internal evidence reveals that no one but Lee could have composed it.” Yet Bagley also noted “several puzzling errors” in the text that are difficult to reconcile while claiming single authorship.³²

Evidence indicates that while Lee composed much of the book’s underlying text, Bishop added sensationalized and erroneous details to the manuscript. This is evident both in Lee’s personal history, which comprises seventeen chapters dealing with Lee’s pre-Utah life, and in his confession.

A clear embellishment by Bishop appears on page 74 of the history. Lee purportedly claims that “after 1844” he began keeping a journal, but that most of his journals written to 1860 were taken by Brigham Young’s order and never returned. The account claims that these journals incriminated Church leaders and contained information about the massacre. “I suppose they were put out of the way, perhaps burned, for these journals gave an account of many dark deeds,” Lee supposedly wrote.³³ Yet if Lee really believed Young destroyed his journals up to 1860, he gave no hint of it in several letters written in the months preceding his execution. Seventeen letters in the Lee collection at the Huntington Library make reference to Lee’s journals without any mention of confiscated, destroyed, or missing journals.³⁴

For example, on September 29, 1876, Lee asked his wife Rachel to bring him “all of my Diaries from the time that I came to Iron country with G. A. Smith in 1850.” Then he decided that she should just bring all his journals.³⁵ When Lee did not receive all the volumes as requested, he sent instructions for other family members to send the remaining journals “to Marshal Stokes, who would send them to Col. Nelson.”³⁶ Marshal William Nelson did receive some Lee journals, as did Bishop, including portions that were supposedly destroyed. The Huntington Library now owns original Lee journals, obtained from Bishop’s and Nelson’s descendants, covering 1846 to 1876, although some volumes and pages are missing.³⁷

Bishop referred to the journals in a letter to Lee dated March 9, 1877—just two weeks before Lee’s death. Complaining that he had read Lee’s manuscript to that point and found that Lee had not written about his life in Utah, he begged Lee to record his Utah experiences, especially concerning “the Reformation and the massacre.” Bishop was competing in the marketplace with a written confession that Lee had given to prosecutor Sumner Howard in February. The knowledge of Howard’s copy was negatively affecting the marketing of Lee’s manuscript, said Bishop, “but by giving me your history during your life in Utah I can make the thing work all right yet I think. Send me such other Journals and writings as you have to throw light on the work.”³⁸

Bishop’s additions to Lee’s history introduce other inconsistencies. As mentioned, Lee supposedly wrote that he began keeping journals after 1844. Two problems arise from this statement. First, extant journals prove that Lee began keeping a journal well before that date. The journals that fell into the hands of Bishop and Nelson, however, apparently did not include journals that predated 1844, copies or originals of which are now in family possession, the Huntington Library, the Brigham Young University library, and the Church History Library.³⁹ Second, other parts of Mormonism Unveiled clearly describe Lee writing in a journal prior to 1844. In describing an 1841 missionary journey, Lee writes, “Knowing the danger of being lifted up by self-approbation, I determined to be on my guard, to attend to secret prayer, and reading and keeping diaries.”⁴⁰ Continuing his account of this mission, Lee again writes, “I was sitting by a desk writing in my diary.”⁴¹

Lee’s confession in Mormonism Unveiled is more problematic than his history. At first, Bishop did not hide his collaboration with Lee in writing the confession. The Pioche Daily Record published an 1875 letter from Bishop in which he wrote, “Lee, aided by myself and associates, prepared a full and detailed account of the case.”⁴² Bishop later claimed in Mormonism Unveiled that Lee had dictated the confession: “The Confession is given just as he dictated it to me, without alteration or elimination, except in a few cases where the ends of justice might have been defeated by premature revelations.”⁴³

The confession returned to the destroyed-diary story. On page 260, Lee purportedly wrote, “I could give many things that would throw light on the doings of the Church, if I had my journals, but as I said, nearly all of my journals have been made way with by Brigham Young; at least I delivered them to him and never could get them again.”⁴⁴

Several Lee confessions exist in addition to the one in Mormonism Unveiled, none of which is entirely reliable. Careful comparison of the confessions shows progressive embellishment, culminating in Mormonism Unveiled.⁴⁵ Like the trial transcripts, the embellishments show distinct trends. For example, Bishop amplified what the southern Utah settlers supposedly said about the emigrants. In the Howard version of the confessions, Lee says, speaking of the emigrants, “that one of them had said he had helped to kill old Joe Smith and his brother Hyrum.”⁴⁶ In the later Pioche Weekly Record version of Bishop’s abstracted manuscript, the statement reads “that some of the emigrants claimed to have been participants in the murder of the prophets at the Carthage Jail.”⁴⁷ In Mormonism Unveiled, this assertion is further generalized: “that these vile Gentiles publicly proclaimed that they had the very pistol with which the Prophet, Joseph Smith, was murdered, and had threatened to kill Brigham Young and all of the Apostles.”⁴⁸

Moreover, as time passed, Bishop sought to expand responsibility for the massacre to include Apostle George A. Smith and Brigham Young. All versions of Lee’s confession record a premassacre conversation between Lee and Smith. However, where the Howard confession has no comparable text, Bishop’s version in the Pioche Weekly Record has Lee assert that Smith, during that conversation, “never intimated to me that he desired any emigrants to pass in safety.”⁴⁹ In Mormonism Unveiled, this statement grows to the following accusation:

General Smith did not say one word to me or intimate to me, that he wished any emigrants to pass in safety through the Territory. But he led me to believe then, as I believe now, that he did want, and expected every emigrant to be killed that undertook to pass through the Territory while we were at war with the Government. I thought it was his mission to prepare the people for the bloody work.⁵⁰

Similarly, where the Howard version is silent, the Pioche paper has Lee say, “I have always considered that George A. Smith visited Southern Utah at that time to prepare the people for exterminating Captain Fancher’s train of emigrants.”⁵¹ Mormonism Unveiled repeats this statement but changes the word “considered” to “believed” and adds the condemnation “I now believe that [Smith] was sent for that purpose by the direct command of Brigham Young.”⁵² These supposed assertions by Lee seem incredible given that prosecutors had offered Lee his life if he would just charge Young with ordering the massacre.⁵³ Lee went to his death instead. Is it not curious, then, that such indictments suddenly appear in Mormonism Unveiled?

Perhaps the Ogden Junction editor in 1877 was not far off. After examining Lee’s confession in Mormonism Unveiled, he judged it “a Little Lee and a Little Lawyer.”⁵⁴

Conclusion

Historians must rely on evidence, and histories can be no more reliable than their underlying sources. None of the sources reviewed here—the James Henry Carleton report, the John D. Lee trial transcripts, and Mormonism Unveiled—can be taken at face value.

This brief article provides only a glimpse of the difficulties historians have faced in trying to reconstruct the complicated history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Much time and attention are required to deal competently with the evidence and to discern the truth from the faulty memories, myths, and deceptions associated with that tragic week in September 1857.