A MORMON CHRONICLE: THE DIARIES OF JOHN D. LEE (1848-1 876)—Edited by Robert Glass Cleland & Juanita Brooks —Two volumes (824 pp.)—The Huntington Library ($15).
John D. Lee was so bad at spelling that he called his diary his "Diarhea." This makes no odds, because by any other name Lee's Diaries would still remain one of the most extraordinary documents ever written by an American.
This fact has not been recognized before simply because Lee's Diaries have never been published, except for short bits. California's Huntington Library acquired the manuscripts in 1929 from the descendants of the man to whom Lee gave it a few days before his death. Edited and footnoted with care and devotion (but indifferently indexed), the Diaries are unquestionably an important historical find.
Utah & the Saints. John D. Lee was born at Kaskaskia, Ill. in 1812. His background was Roman Catholic, but in 1838 he became a Mormon and was adopted as a "foster-son" by Brigham Young himself. Lee recognized and obeyed only two superiors—God Almighty and Brigham Young. If these two seemed to differ, then Lee went along with Young as the man who knew more than God about Utah and politics. So when the Mormons decided to press southward to establish new cities and expand the Kingdom of the Saints, Young made Lee one of the principal leaders of the expedition. And Lee knew exactly what his duty was. He was to be fruitful and multiply, so that the hosts of Mormon might cover the face of the earth. Helped (according to the best estimates) by 19 wives, Lee obeyed—to the extent of some 65 children, plus uncounted adoptions and conversions.
Lee "carried from 2 to 3 colts Revolvers" and knew how to use them. He was a wagoner, a cobbler, a woodsman, a cattle breeder, a farmer, a doctor of sorts who could perform a "surguicicle operation," an impassioned preacher, a shrewd businessman, a layer-on of hands, a seer of fascinating visions. He was one of the toughest men that ever walked, but the Indians (who ate out of his hand) named him Yawgawts, which means Cry-Baby (Lee himself preferred to render it "Man of Tender Passions"), and his foster-father once exhorted him, saying: "I want you to be a Man & not —a Baby." Was there in Lee's devotion something soft, visible only to canny captains and savages? There seems to have been—and tragedy was destined to be born from it.
Houses & Habitations. For many years, all went well with John D. Lee. His Diaries begin with the famed westward march of the "Camp of Israel" to the Great Salt Lake—a moving mass of covered wagons, horses, mules, cows and oxen rolling over the "dusty and verry hot" trails. He records the daily search for precious pasture and fresh "waiter," the inevitable fevers, pains, accidents, deaths and childbirths. Throughout, imbuing the earthiest, coarsest things with the highest spiritual ardor, run the passionate preachings of the "Apostles."