George A. Smith

George A. Smith appears as an apostle and general whose August 1857 journey through southern Utah brought him into conversations about war, Paiute participation, and the possible attack on an emigrant train. In John D. Lee’s later account, Smith’s questions and response to Lee’s predictions made the prospect of violence seem welcome. The narrative also preserves the limits of that evidence: Lee’s belief, recorded twenty years afterward, that Smith was preparing the settlements to destroy the Fancher train is presented as Lee’s conclusion, not as an independently verified command from Brigham Young.

Identity and Position

Smith was a first cousin of Joseph Smith and held the rank of general in the Nauvoo Legion. His authority combined senior religious standing with a military title. The book describes the settlements he had helped establish in southern Utah six years earlier as the most fanatical in the church, a characterization that situates his visit in a region already marked by intense religious commitment.

On August 3, 1857, the day the Fancher emigrant train reached the Great Salt Lake Valley, Smith left Great Salt Lake City by carriage for southern Utah. His itinerary took him through the towns of the region, where he addressed the local Latter-day Saints and urged them to prepare for holy war. The journey was therefore more than a passage through settlements: as the account depicts it, Smith used his standing to intensify a sense of impending conflict.

Appeals to Settlers and Paiute Leaders

In late August, while completing the southernmost part of his tour, Smith visited Jacob Hamblin, a missionary to the Lamanites who was respected by the Paiutes and had a cabin near Mountain Meadows. Smith delivered Hamblin a letter from Brigham Young, dated August 4, conveying that the Indigenous people must understand they would have to help the Mormons or face danger from the United States. The letter framed the crisis as a shared threat to both groups.

Around the same time, Smith met hundreds of Paiutes on the Santa Clara River, with John D. Lee interpreting. According to Lee, Smith told the gathering that a large American army was east of the mountains and intended to kill both Mormons and Indigenous people in Utah Territory. He urged the Paiutes to prepare for war and to follow Mormon direction, presenting that obedience as the will of the Great Spirit. The episode shows Smith addressing the Paiutes not simply as people with whom the settlers might cooperate, but as prospective participants in a conflict he described as imminent.

The Conversation with Lee

After the meeting, while the Mormons were riding away, Smith reportedly remarked on the Paiutes’ appearance and raised the possibility that they might attack an emigrant train if one passed through the area. He then asked Lee whether the southern settlers would join the Paiutes in such an attack. Lee said that he considered the question carefully before predicting that an emigrant train would probably be attacked and destroyed.

Lee recalled that his answer pleased Smith, who expressed gladness at hearing such an account of the settlers and said that God would bless them for helping build His Kingdom in the last days. In Lee’s telling, this exchange gives Smith’s earlier appeals a more immediate and troubling context: the discussion had moved from a general warning about war to the prospect of violence against a specific kind of passing party. The account attributes the exchange to Lee; it does not supply a separate record of the conversation.

Proximity to the Fancher Train and the Limits of the Record

Shortly afterward, Smith headed north with Hamblin and about a dozen Paiute leaders to meet Brigham Young. On the night of August 25, their party camped within shouting distance of the southbound Fancher train. Three emigrants walked over to visit the Mormons. When the travelers asked where they could rest and graze their large herd before crossing the Mojave Desert, Hamblin recommended Mountain Meadows, a valley near his cabin. This places Smith’s party near the train shortly before the later events at Mountain Meadows, but the account identifies Hamblin, not Smith, as the person who advised the travelers where to stop.

Writing twenty years after the conversation on the Santa Clara River, Lee said he had always believed Smith’s southern Utah tour was intended to prepare the local people to exterminate the Fancher train, and that Brigham Young had sent Smith for that purpose. That testimony is consequential but remains Lee’s retrospective interpretation. The narrative’s account of Smith’s speeches, the reported exchange with Lee, and his party’s later proximity to the emigrants supports scrutiny of his role in the period’s escalating threat; it does not, by itself, establish the full extent of his knowledge, instructions, or responsibility for what followed.