The survivors of the awful slaughter were seventeen children, from two months to seven years of age, who were carried, on the evening of the massacre, by John D. Lee and others to the house of Jacob Hamblin, and afterward placed in charge of Mormon families at various points in the territory.  All of them were recovered in the summer of 1858, with the exception of one, who was rescued a few months later, and though thinly clad, they bore no marks of ill-usage.  In 1859 they were conveyed to Arkansas, the Congress of the United States having appropriated ten thousand dollars for their rescue and restoration to relatives.

Those concerned in the massacre had pledged themselves by the most solemn oaths to stand by each other, and ever to insist that the deed was done entirely by Indians.  For several months this was the accepted theory, but when it became known that some of the children had been spared, suspicion at once pointed elsewhere, for among all the murders committed by the Utes, there was not a single instance of their having shown any such mercy.  Moreover, it was ascertained that an armed party of Mormons had left Cedar City, and had returned with spoil, and that the savages complained of having been unfairly treated in the division of the booty.

It is claimed that when John D. Lee discovered that the United States authorities suspected him as being the principal actor in the awful tragedy, he left the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and hid himself in one of the canyons of the Colorado,[22] where he remained for years suffering that terrible anxiety which comes to all fugitives from justice, sooner or later, and which is said by those who have experienced it to be absolutely unbearable.

In 1874, under the provisions of what is legally known as the “Poland Bill,” whereby the better administration of justice was subserved, the Grand Jury was instructed to investigate the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and find bills of indictment against John D. Lee, William H. Dame, Isaac C. Haight, and others.  Warrants were issued for their arrest, and after a vigorous search Lee and Dame were captured, Lee having been discovered in a hog-pen at a small settlement on the Sevier River.

On the 23d of July, 1875, the trial was begun, at Beaver City, in Southern Utah.  Much delay ensued, however, by the absence of witnesses, and by the fact that Lee had promised to make a full confession, and turn state’s evidence.  His statement was not accepted by the court, and the case was brought to trial on the 23d of July, with the expected result, that the jury, eight of whom were Mormons, failed to agree.