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Tablet could provide massacre clues

PHOENIX (AP) — The National Park Service is trying to determine the authenticity of a lead tablet found last month near Page that could add insight to one of the darkest moments in the history of the Mormon Church.

The piece of lead scratched with misspelled words was found in January 2002 by a National Park Service volunteer who was cleaning up the ruins of the Lees Ferry Fort at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

It’s an exciting find but one tempered by caution as officials try to determine whether it’s history or hoax.

If it is real, it’s an insight into the mind of the only man executed for the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which more than 120 men, women and children from Arkansas and Missouri were killed by Mormons and Paiutes while traveling through southern Utah.

The lead tablet, signed “J.D. LEE,” may have been scratched by John Doyle Lee, who was executed in 1877 for his prominent role in the massacre. On the tablet, Lee pins blame for the massacre on then-church President Brigham Young.

“ON ORDERS FROM PRES YOUNG” is written on the plaque, shortly after the writer takes responsibility for “THE FANCHER,” a probable reference to Capt. Alexander Fancher’s ill-fated wagon train.

“I don’t give much credence to this lead piece,” Dean May, a University of Utah history professor who is Mormon, told The Arizona Republic.

“I don’t think that it’s very different from anything John D. Lee was saying in public at that time, with no evidence other than his own word.”

Church historians have found no evidence that Young plotted the killings.

The historical significance of the tablet may be that Lee actually believed that Young had ordered the killings through local church leader George Smith.

The National Park Service has been checking on whether the tablet is authentic since it was discovered Jan. 22, and, in the meantime, has set aside the tablet at its archaeological center in Tucson.

“We’re hoping to see if the metal was from the 1870s, in which case it might be authentic, or from the 1920s, where it wouldn’t be,” said Char Obergh, a Glen canyon spokeswoman.

The Mormon Church is reserved in its statements about the find.

“We think the National Park Service is taking the right approach in seeking to learn whether the object is authentic,” Glen Leonard, said in a written statement.

Leonard is director of the church’s Museum of Church History and Art.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre began on Sept. 7, 1857, when a California-bound wagon train traveling a northern spur of the Old Spanish Trail was besieged by Mormon settlers, Paiutes and the local militia.

After five days of shooting at one another, the locals convinced the Arkansas and Missouri emigrants that they could have safe passage through Mountain Meadows if they gave up their weapons and left some of their wagons behind.

Once they were out in the open, the emigrants were attacked and at least 120 of them were killed.

For years, the Mormon Church blamed the incident on the Paiutes.

But in recent years, the church, prodded by the emigrants’ descendants and the state’s secular press, has become much more attentive to the massacre, dedicating a memorial at the site in 1999.*

SALT LAKE CITY, May 1, 2001:  A forensic examiner says the lead tablet blaming Mormon Church leader Brigham Young for the 1857 massacre of 120 Arkansas pioneers is a fake.
William Flynn, a private Phoenix examiner hired by the National Park Service, said that the engraved sheet of lead appeared to be the work of convicted con man and alleged forger Mark Hofmann.  
Hoffman is serving is serving a life sentence for the bombing deaths of two people.  The slayings were an effort to cover up his extensive document forgeries, most of which involved Mormon history and seemed intent on shaking the LDS church's foundation. **