Columnist Susan Snyder: This history lesson may need revision

Tuesday, March 12, 2002 | 8:21 a.m.

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." -- James Joyce in "Ulysses."

The 30 Mormon men sent to settle the Las Vegas Valley in 1855 arrived on a 460-mile trail that traversed a peaceful meadow nestled in Southern Utah's red rock cliffs.

Two years later Utah's Mountain Meadows was the scene of a massacre that still haunts the faithful and fascinates historians. Historical accounts say the 127 men, women and children of a California-bound wagon were disarmed and lured into the meadow, where all were killed by church members and American Indians.

John D. Lee -- for whom the Lee's Ferry Colorado River crossing is named -- was the only LDS Church member tried. He was executed March 23, 1877, for disarming the Fancher party and leading them into Mountain Meadows.

All that remains is a marker at Mountain Meadows, and a decades-long debate over whether Mormon leader Brigham Young ordered the action. But a recent discovery could settle that dispute.

A Glen Canyon National Recreation Area volunteer found a lead scroll buried inside Lee's Fort outside Kanab, Utah, that claims Young ordered the massacre. The scroll is signed by Lee.

LDS officials have said they consider the January find a hoax until tests prove otherwise. National Park Service officials are running tests.

And Gerald Grimmett, a writer who lives in Red Cliffs, Utah, is awaiting the fallout. Grimmett wrote "The Ferry Woman," a historical novel released late last year, that explores the massacre and its aftermath through the eyes of Emeline Buxton Lee, John D. Lee's fictional 16th wife. In the book she runs the ferry in the 1870s.

Although it is a work of fiction, Grimmett based the book heavily in fact with information he gleaned from historical accounts, unedited letters Lee wrote from prison and interviews with Fancher descendants.

"If this is authenticated, it's going to blow the church apart. He directly implicates Brigham Young," said Grimmett, who has read the scrolls from photographs printed in Utah newspapers.

"I have read so much of John D. Lee," he said. "The spelling, syntax, emotions and sentiments are John D. Lee. There is no doubt in my mind."

But there is doubt in the minds of park service officials.

"It is either fact or fiction. We're not saying which," Char Obergh, Glen Canyon spokeswoman, said Monday morning.

The agency is working with experts from Arizona, Colorado and Washington, D.C., to date the lead scroll and determine the mine of its origin. It wouldn't be the first time the agency was stung by a hoax.

In 1999 an archaeologist working in Death Valley National Park found what he said was a 149-year-old wood trunk filled with coins hidden during an ill-fated gold rush. It turned out to be a fake.

Grimmett's book is an engaging read and intriguing look at an event few people discuss in public. If nothing else, the January discovery reminds us that history is a living thing that continues to evolve and evoke emotion.

"I just was not ever convinced that Brigham made the order," Grimmett said. "Now that this has happened, I have changed my mind."