Brigham Young—John D. Lee

Brigham Young and John D. Lee were bound by a relationship that combined symbolic kinship, delegated authority, and a severe imbalance of power. Young adopted Lee as a symbolic son and entrusted him with work among the Southern Paiute; years later, as federal pressure over the Mountain Meadows Massacre intensified, Young urged Lee to leave his homes and eventually arranged for him to be treated as the sole guilty party. Lee’s obedience had made him useful to Young, but it did not protect him when the church faced demands for accountability.

Adoption and delegated authority

The relationship took an expressly familial form in Nauvoo. Shortly after taking leadership of the church, Young adopted Lee in a Mormon ritual, making him his symbolic son. The book presents this act as a sign of genuine affection as well as political attachment: Young valued Lee’s unfaltering obedience, even though Lee was a forceful figure who was not widely liked by his peers. The symbolic bond placed Lee within Young’s circle of trust, but it also reinforced the authority Young could exercise over him.

In 1856, Young appointed Lee Farmer to the Indians and made him the prophet’s personal ambassador to the Southern Paiute. The assignment connected Lee’s local standing to Young’s leadership and gave him a role as an intermediary. It also established a pattern that later became consequential: Lee acted within a hierarchy in which Young could assign responsibilities, give counsel, and expect compliance. The relationship was therefore more than a personal association; it was one channel through which church authority operated.

The wider political setting helps explain the force of that hierarchy. In Nauvoo, the church had secured unusual municipal powers, and Young’s successor leadership operated within a tradition of combining religious command with civic and military organization. Later, in Utah Territory, Mormon leaders shaped local legal institutions so that church influence could prevail when religious rules and federal authority conflicted. Lee’s own relationship with Young rested on this larger structure: personal loyalty and institutional obedience were closely connected, and Young’s directives could affect where Lee lived, what work he undertook, and how exposed he was to outside authorities.

The massacre and the protection of the church

Lee commanded the assault on an emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows, where Mormon participants and Paiute attackers were involved. His position as Young’s adopted son and trusted agent makes the episode part of their relationship’s history, but the account does not establish that Young ordered the assault. It instead traces the relationship’s consequences through the years afterward, when Lee became one of the principal suspects and the church faced renewed pressure to bring those responsible to justice.

Most of the Saints implicated in the massacre left for remote desert settlements to evade their pursuers. Lee did not readily abandon his homes and the life he had built in southern Utah. By then he was wealthy and had eighteen wives. In 1869, after Ulysses S. Grant intensified federal efforts to arrest those responsible, Young became concerned that Lee might be captured. Young advised him to sell his property and disappear. Lee brushed aside that proposal, remaining in the area and retreating into the hills when federal agents or bounty hunters approached.

The difference between Young’s advice and Lee’s response exposed a limit in their bond. Young could counsel Lee to make himself scarce, but Lee initially chose to stay near his established life. During a September 1870 excursion with John Wesley Powell, Young issued a firmer direction: Lee was to move far from Washington and Iron Counties and settle in the wilderness. The stated concern was that, if arrested, Lee might reveal secrets capable of damaging the church. Lee answered without enthusiasm, but Young insisted that the move was his wish and counsel. The exchange presents their relationship at its starkest: familial language remained, yet Young’s practical command over Lee was unmistakable.

Exile, prosecution, and scapegoating

A month after the 1870 journey, Young excommunicated Lee. Lee was sent to the upper end of the Grand Canyon to operate a shuttle service across the Colorado River, at the remote settlement he named Lonely Dell, later known as Lee’s Ferry. The removal severed him from the church and from the social position his earlier service had helped secure. Eleven of his wives divorced him; only two of his remaining spouses ever joined him at the outpost. Young’s action thus had consequences that extended beyond Lee’s own residence, reshaping his family life and leaving him in isolation.

The legal danger did not end with Lee’s exile. In November 1874, a U.S. marshal found him hiding under straw in a chicken coop at Panguitch, where he was visiting one of his remaining wives. His first trial, held in Beaver eight months later, ended with a deadlocked jury and no conviction. The verdict provoked widespread outrage and intensified anti-Mormon sentiment, increasing the pressure on church leaders to respond. The sequence matters to the relationship: after years in which Young had tried to keep Lee away from investigators, the failure of the first trial made the public demand for a visible punishment harder to deflect.

Young then abandoned the position that Native Americans were responsible for the massacre and chose to blame Lee alone. At Lee’s second trial in 1876, the LDS First Presidency screened the jurors, who were all Mormons, to ensure that Lee—and no one else—would be convicted. Jacob Hamblin, who had not been present at the massacre, gave the prosecution its decisive testimony; the account characterizes that testimony as persuasive but perjured. The court found Lee guilty of first-degree murder on September 20. By then, the relationship that had begun with adoption and been sustained by Young’s trust had ended in Lee’s isolation and condemnation. The book portrays the conviction as a sacrifice made to satisfy the demand for justice, or at least its appearance, while shielding the wider church from the full weight of collective responsibility.

Meaning of the relationship

The bond between Young and Lee is marked by a sharp reversal. Young’s adoption of Lee and appointment of him as an ambassador signaled inclusion and delegated power; his later orders removed Lee from familiar territory, and his political strategy made Lee the single figure held responsible in court. Lee’s continuing resistance to the first suggestion to flee also distinguishes loyalty from simple passivity: he did not immediately follow Young’s advice, but ultimately the authority Young exercised through church discipline and counsel shaped the rest of his life.

The relationship also illuminates the collision between church governance and civil law. Young’s concern was not only that Lee might be arrested, but that his testimony could expose secrets and harm the church. When federal justice became unavoidable, Young’s response shifted from keeping Lee beyond its reach to offering him as the person who could answer for the massacre. In that progression, symbolic fatherhood did not guarantee protection. It made Lee a trusted subordinate, and the trust that had served the institution ultimately left him especially vulnerable to its decision to contain blame in one man.