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Show 494 WESTERN WILDS. of the Stake" in the civil and industrial organization. John D. Lee was Bishop of one settlement, President of a " stake" or commune, Major of the county militia, Representative of the same county in the Legislature, official Indian interpreter, the husband of eighteen wives, and father, from first to last, of sixty- four children. Isaac Haight, his colleague in murder, was likewise a Bishop, a Captain in the militia, member of the council ( upper house of the Territorial Legislature), husband of four wives, and father of numerous children. Wm. H. Dame was Colonel of the regiment ordered out to commit the mas-sacre, and Bishop of Parowan, and held numerous minor offices. Higby, probably the most blood- thirsty of the lot, was an inferior Elder, a Captain in the militia, and generally held some executive office under the Territory. Bill Stewart, who boasted for years after the massacre that he " took the d d Gentile babies by the heels and cracked their skulls over the wagon tires," was only a private in the ranks, but for years before and after the massacre a member of the Church in good standing, as were all the other murderers down to the very day the United States officers chased them into the mountains. And yet there are good souls who maintain that the Mormon Church bears no moral responsibility for this massacre. Had an inferior officer of our army, when camped before Washing-ton, gone into the country and massacred the people of a Virginia village without regard to age or sex, and had General Grant not only overlooked the offense, but promoted the offender, the world would have resounded with denunciations. Yet the control General Grant had over his army was laxity itself compared with that Brigham Young had over Mormondom. To say that these men, of their own motion, and without a hint from head- quarters, did such a deed, is to say what every old resident of Utah knows to be a transparent false-hood. For fifteen years these men had never once followed their own minds in any matter of importance. One must take " counsel of the priesthood" on all occasions, whether he would go abroad or remain at home, open a farm, or go into trade, buy a cow or take an extra wife. There was no corner of the mountains so remote but some theocratic arm reached it. There were no walls high enough or thick enough to shut out church spies; there was no domestic confidence that was safe, for the ward teachers were expressly instructed to visit weekly every family in their jurisdiction, and " examine the man apart from his wife and the wife apart from the man, to the end that heresy may be rooted out." To say that this was the first crime of these men is to say what every lawyer knows to be folly. Criminals arc not |
