My understanding is that John D. Lee was a scapegoat. He had been Brigham Young's commissioner of Indian affairs, or some such. He was around in the early stages of the confrontation with the wagon train, and managed to get the hotheads quieted down, with the understanding that the people of the wagon train were to be let go.

Lee left, and after that the massacre by "Indians" took place.

Some time later, the US put tremendous political and legal pressure on the Deseret administration in Salt Lake City, and the US District Judge gave some sort of ultimatum to Brigham Young, to resolve the crime. Since it was almost impossible to pin the whole thing on any of the real culprits of the massacre, and they needed something to show the Federals, they threw John D. Lee to the wolves.

ONE of the inaccuracies of the song, "The wagons, they still smouldered"--it was about six months after the massacre that Lee's execution took place, and it may not even have been at Mountain Meadows.

Dave Oesterreich