[The following is in relation to John D. Lee, who was one of the higher officers in the Mormon militia at the height of its power, and was one of the men in charge of orchestrating the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857. More context of the massacre can be found in the links below. Here, it is 1861, and Lee has prospered greatly from his position in the church. However, despite his vast personal wealth, it had recently become more and more apparent that, not only had Lee played a large part in the massacre of more than a hundred innocent men, women and children in 1857, he could also be brutal at home. As a result, his neighbors became hateful towards him.]
There were many in the community who shunned Lee and his family, and few confronted him to his face. Stories of his brutality were rampant, including one particularly gruesome tale later recounted by one of his wives that she had seen him slit the throat of a child survivor of the massacre who had spoken out of turn. The young victim had commented on Lee’s wife Emma wearing the silk dress and gold jewelry of the girl’s mother. In Lee’s orchard, “figs ripened black over the grave” of the murdered child, according to local legend. Hostile neighbors turned their cattle into his grain fields and diverted his irrigation ditches.
The “Ballad of John D. Lee” was chanted secretly to the strumming of a banjo, though never in his presence.
They melted down with one accord
Like wax before the flame
Both men and women, old and young
O Utah, where’s thy shame?
By order of Old Brigham Young
This deed was done, you see
And the captain of that wicked band
Was Captain John D. Lee
By order of their President*
This bloody deed was done
He was the leader of the Mormon Church
His name is Brigham Young.
Source:
Denton, Sally. “Mountain Meadows, May 25, 1861.” American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857. Vintage Books, 2004. 209-10. Print.
Further Reading:
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