Jaye wrote:
Dubbs wrote:
Just Reading wrote:
[b]
Poor Dubbs the attack happend in the early morning hours of September 7th and all were dead by the 11th of September,.

Wow, it now happened on the 7th and not the 11th? You are seriously one of the most inacurate people I know bigdumby.

Wren can you correct him that it happend on the 11th?

It began as an attack on Sept.7th in the early morning hours as the emigrants sat eating breakfast, quickly turned into a siege, and eventually culminated on September 11, 1857, in the execution of the unarmed emigrants after their surrender.

John was right.

Don't ask me, Dubbs, since you don't accept my comments. Ask John and Jaye.

Dubbs wrote:
Jaye wrote:
The Churches Modus operandi (M.O.) seems to have worked more successfully in the Inter-Mountain West then it did in Missouri, where they actually got the United States government to massively murder American Native people (Bear River Massacre) and eventually protected the Mormons squatter rights in assuming control of the many fertile valleys and main water sources (Las Vegas and etc.)of the far West.

This is in contradiction to your past comments about ownership of land, and the native american belief that you don't believe you own the land. So how can you say that your land was taken, if you don't own it to begin with?


And the church got the US government to murder people? Come on James, your getting ridiculous now, the US government disliked the Mormons in those days, there is no way they would murder people for them.

Here is a quote from Brigham Young on the subject...

"A significant policy established by Brigham Young at the time recommended that the Mormon settlers establish friendly relationships with the surrounding American Indian tribes, particularly with a policy to "feed them rather than fight them" Shoshoni Frontier, p. 17


Your view of history is a bit of Jame

The Native American belief regarding ownership of land was this:

They believed that the earth was their mother, and that rather than believing that the land belonging to them...they believed that THEY belonged to the land.

This did not stop some rivalry between bands regarding hunting territories...but this rivalry was necessary for survival, and to prevent decimation of their prey through over hunting.

Most of the Natives were nomadic, and didn't settle in one area for 12 months out of the year, but would follow the buffalo herds to hunt, and jerk meat and harvest and cure hides...and would then travel back to their winter campgrounds...although there were tribes in certain areas who were not nomadic, because the area they lived in provided for their needs year round.

As far as what James said about the Mormons influencing the government to murder Native Americans at Bear Creek...he was partly correct.

Even though the government had no great love of Mormons, and even though Brigham Young had announced that he would rather feed the Indians than to fight them...the Mormon settlements and other white settlements put a great strain upon the resources of the land, and resulted in the unrest of the local tribes.

And with the murder of a son of a local Shoshone chief who happened to be fishing in the wrong place at the wrong time and was suspected of the theft of a Mormon settler's stray horse...hostilities commenced, and the federal government was ordered to settle the issue.

You would do well to do some research on the issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_River_Massacre

I have read that, and it in no way says the Mormons influenced the government to attack and kill the indians, if YOU read the link you gave, you would see there was many things that influenced the attack. The Mormons influenceing them to attack as not mentioned. Nice try jaye, but you need to take your own advice and do some research yourself.

Lovie wrote, "Records show that Hibee and Height met on this matter long befor Lee was called in. and from what I have read. Lee had to be talked into it. He also was absent on the first day, but took part after thing had already got started. READ Dubbbies it a great way to learn!"

Evidence indicates that it is very possible that Lee may have been in on it from the start, and that the was one of the disguised white men as Indians that attacked on the first day.

Remember that testimony and statements from everyone who was involved remain automatically suspect until corroborated by other objective evidence.

Jaye wrote:
Lovie wrote:
so James, Jaye and or Wren, I read that Lee was a guard of BY, was that his body guard, or does it have hidden meaning? I know in Salt Lake BY had other guard around him to. Who and what were they. Why I ask, one of my ancester is a Gaurd of JS and then to BY. After reading the past few days, A light went on and I'm thinking maybe Danites??? Please correct me if I'M wring.

DUBBS please don't answer this, you have know idea!

(From PBS)

John Doyle Lee
(1812-1877)

A man whose life was stained by tragedy, John D. Lee is perhaps the most controversial figure in Mormon history.

Born in 1812 in Kaskaskia, Illinois Territory, Lee had a tumultuous childhood. At age three, his mother died after years of lingering illnesses, leaving Lee to his alcoholic father. From age seven to sixteen Lee was raised in an uncle's family. He worked for a time as a mail carrier before assuming managerial responsibility for his uncle's farm, then worked several years as a store clerk in Galena, Illinois. Finally, Lee moved to Vandalia, Illinois, where he met and married Agatha Ann Woolsey in 1833.

It was in Vandalia that Lee and his wife encountered Mormonism. In 1837 a Mormon missionary converted the couple to the young religion, which had been formally organized only seven years before. Lee's religious passion quickly became the driving force in his life, prompting him to move in 1838 to a homestead near the Mormon town of Far West, Missouri.

The large influx of Mormons into Northwest Missouri caused enormous tensions with the non-Mormon ("gentile" population. Many of the gentiles were hostile on purely religious grounds, but they also resented the political and economic power which the cohesive Mormon community had acquired. Individual confrontations soon exploded into near warfare involving murder, destruction of property, and cycles of raids and counter-raids between the Mormons and gentiles. Lee played an active role in many of the military conflicts, and soon became a member of the Danite Band, the formally organized Mormon militia. Finally Missouri's governor ordered the Mormons expelled or exterminated, sending an army which surrounded their community and forced the Mormon leadership to surrender.

As the Mormons began preparing for their trek eastward to Nauvoo, Illinois, Lee's religious devotion continued to strengthen. In 1838 he was promoted within the priesthood and made a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, the body which directed the church's extensive missionary activities. From 1839 to 1844 he spent much of his time winning converts in Illinois, Tennessee and Kentucky. His commitment impressed the church leadership, and in 1843 he was chosen to guard the home of the church's founder and prophet, Joseph Smith.

John Lee's religious fervor only grew in intensity as the young religion entered its darkest hour. In June 1844 a mob dragged Joseph Smith and his brother from their jail cell in Carthage, Illinois, and murdered them, causing a crisis of leadership within the church. In addition, there was internal dissension over the doctrine of plural marriage, which had been formally announced within the church in 1843. Lee accepted the new doctrine, soon taking five more wives, and he remained devotedly loyal to the church leadership, especially the new leader, Brigham Young, whom Lee assisted during the Mormon flight to the "Winter Quarters" near the confluence of the Platte and Missouri rivers.

Having been persecuted from their religion's birthplace in New York to Missouri and Illinois, the Mormons had by 1846 decided to seek their own Zion in the American West. This journey, the first leg of which was the removal from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters, was to take the Mormons to Utah. By 1847 the first wagons began arriving in Utah's Salt Lake valley. After serving briefly in the Mexican-American War as a member of Brigham Young's "Mormon Battalion," Lee joined the gathering masses of Zion in Utah.

For the next decade, Lee played an important role in expanding the Mormon refuge in the West. He became a prosperous farmer and businessman in Southwestern Utah, helping to establish communal mining, milling and manufacturing complexes. He became the local bishop and the Indian agent to the nearby Paiute Indians. And he continued to be a frequent visitor and trusted confidant of the church leadership in Salt Lake City.

Even in the far West, however, neither Lee nor his co-religionists were beyond the reach of the country whose persecution they had fled. In 1857, prompted by complaints about church power in the territory and a public outcry against polygamy, the United States sent an army to Utah, raising Mormon fears that the final annihilation was at hand. This invasion was the backdrop for the still-controversial Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which a wagon train of about 120 gentile immigrants, suspected of hostility toward the church, was destroyed by Mormon and Paiute forces in southwestern Utah.

Lee's involvement in the massacre -- the extent of which is still vigorously disputed and will probably never be known -- was to haunt him for the next two decades, and would ultimately lead to his execution. He had written a letter to Brigham Young shortly after the massacre which laid the blame squarely on the Paiute Indians, but even among his own neighbors rumors of Lee's guilt abounded. In 1858 a federal judge came to southwestern Utah to investigate the massacre and Lee's part in it, but Lee went into hiding and local Mormons refused to cooperate with the investigation. Folk songs dating back to this year blamed Lee for the massacre. A warrant for his arrest remained outstanding.

Although the church sought to lower Lee's profile, by removing him as a probate judge, the Mormon leadership continued to return his immense loyalty. In 1860, Brigham Young visited one of Lee's mansions and publicly praised his personal industriousness and communal economic contributions. In 1861 the residents of Harmony, Utah, elected him as their presiding elder.

But Lee could not escape the legacy of Mountain Meadows. By the late 1860s, his diary, and letters from several of his wives, speak of persistent harassment by his Mormon neighbors for his connection with the massacre, including threatening letters and the ostracization of his children. In 1870 a Utah paper openly condemned Brigham Young for covering up the massacre. That same year Young exiled Lee to a remote part of northern Arizona and excommunicated him from the church, instructing his former confidant to "make yourself scarce and keep out of the way."

The next several years brought a continued decline in Lee's fortunes. He had several episodes of severe illness; drought followed by torrential rains destroyed many of his buildings and crops; former neighbors preyed upon his livestock and otherwise took advantage of his absence; several of his wives deserted him. Nevertheless, he was managing to eke out a living in a homesteader's cabin near the Colorado River in Northern Arizona (at one point hosting John Wesley Powell's 1869 expedition before their trip through the Grand Canyon) when a sheriff captured him in November 1874.

Lee's first trial ended inconclusively with a hung jury, probably because of the prosecution's misguided attempt to portray Brigham Young as the true mastermind of the massacre. A second trial, in which the prosecution placed the blame squarely on Lee's shoulders, ended with his conviction. The trials were the subject of enormous public attention and gave rise to many accounts of the massacre and of Lee's life. These accounts, naturally, vary widely in their factual accuracy, but many contain the classic elements of anti-Mormon paranoia: fear of Mormon political and economic power and horror at the sexual depravity assumed to be implicit in plural marriage. Most play up the fact that Lee had numerous wives and emphasize the plight of the women and children killed and captured at Mountain Meadows. Lee himself continued to profess his innocence.

Nearly twenty years after the massacre, Lee was executed at Mountain Meadows. Although angry at Brigham Young's treatment of him, Lee's final words maintained the deep religious faith that had marked his entire adult life:

"I have but little to say this morning. Of course I feel that I am at the brink of eternity, and the solemnities of eternity should rest upon my mind at the present... I am ready to die. I trust in God. I have no fear. Death has no terror."

So...in recap...In 1838 John D.Lee was promoted within the priesthood and made a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, the body which directed the church's extensive missionary activities.

In 1843 John D.Lee was chosen to guard the home of Joseph Smith. After the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum, Lee assisted Brigham Young with the immigration west.

He served in the Mormon Battalion, and was an influential member of the faith for a decade.

He was also a bishop, an indian agent, a frequent visitor to Salt Lake City, and a trusted confident to the LDS hierarchy of leadership.

Even after the massacre, Brigham Young praised Lee for his industry and efficiency and Lee was elected as Presiding Elder...but eventually his Mormon peers began to persecute him, his wives and his children.

In 1870, a Utah paper openly criticized Brigham Young for covering up MMM, and that same year, Brigham Young exiled Lee to Arizona, excommunicated him, and instructed his former friend and confident to "make yourself scarce and keep out of the way."

No wonder Brother Lee felt so deeply betrayed.


You are so wonderful, this is so good. I e-mailed it to my hubbie, He will like it a lot. Heres my ancester that I was talking about.

Obituary - Shadrach ROUNDY
July 4, 1872

...At Nauvoo he was one of the Prophet Joseph's guards, was with him whenever danger threatened, and was trusted and honored by him with marks of great confidence...

...For some years he acted at Nauvoo as Captain of the City Police. In the exodus from that place he was with the leading Co.; and afterwards, when the Pioneers left Winter Quarters, under the leadership of the Prophet Brigham, early in 1847, to find a home for the people at some point in the great wilderness embosomed in the Rocky Mt., he was an active member of the Co., and was the first man to break the sod of Great Salt...

...he was appointed Bishop of the 16th Ward which position he filled until failing health required relief from its duties...

What do you think? I think Gaurd means Danites!!!

I don't think the family will be pleased!

I also noticed that there are a lot of Similarities, in Lee and Roundys lives. with calling and responsibilities.

Thank you so much Jaye and by the way thank Wolf for what she did for me on the 16th. I was really sick the whole next week and now I feel MUCH better!!!

Lovie wrote:
so James, Jaye and or Wren, I read that Lee was a guard of BY, was that his body guard, or does it have hidden meaning? I know in Salt Lake BY had other guard around him to. Who and what were they. Why I ask, one of my ancester is a Gaurd of JS and then to BY. After reading the past few days, A light went on and I'm thinking maybe Danites??? Please correct me if I'M wring.

DUBBS please don't answer this, you have know idea!

Bodyguards to Joseph or Brigham (and many men were both) might only involve personal security, or possibly may involve Danite/Avenging Angel responsibilities, or may involve even deeper actions.

Betzz wrote:
Jaye wrote:
Apparently Dubbs has very conveniently forgotten all the many times he has copied and pasted very long articles as it suited him to do.

Nah . . . he just wants an excuse to belittle you for providing reality-based facts. It's just what he does to make himself feel better about his lack of historical knowledge.
Didn't you mean any knowledge at all?