Nephi Johnson
Nephi Johnson, his personal and family background, and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Life
Name: Nephi Johnson
Lived: 1833-1919
Biographical Sketch
Nephi Johnson was born at Kirtland, Ohio, to Joel Hills Johnson and Anna Pixley. His parents were New Englanders who with other members of the extended family were early believers in Joseph Smith's restoration movement and followed him from New York to Ohio and later to western Illinois. By 1839, members of the extended Johnson family were in Carthage, Illinois and Johnson was baptized in 1842.
The Johnson family departed Illinois in 1846 and immigrated to Utah in 1848. The family settled in Parowan in 1850, then relocated to Johnson's Springs (modern Enoch) just north of Cedar City. From an early age, Johnson began learning the local Indian languages and became a proficient interpreter.
In 1857, Johnson was 2nd lieutenant in a platoon in Company D of the Iron Military District. Joel White was the captain of Company D and Daniel Macfarlane was his adjutant. Company D was attached to Major Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion. However, the members of Johnson's platoon were from Johnson's Springs, not Cedar City, and none of them, except Johnson, were at Mountain Meadows. The reason Johnson was singled out was because of his skill as an interpreter: Haight needed Johnson's linguistic skills to deal with the Paiutes he and Lee had unleased at Mountain Meadows.
Johnson rode to Mountain Meadows on Thursday, September 10. The following day during the massacre, he translated the order to attack to the Paiutes. He was listed in the 1859 arrest warrant issued by Judge John Cradlebaugh for those suspected of complicity in the massacre.
In 1858, he was in the exploring party into western Utah and Nevada, scouting for new areas for possible settlement. He also helped found the colony at Virgin City, where he lived for fourteen years and acted in succession as presiding elder, acting bishop and bishop's counselor.
Johnson explored the upper Virgin River drainage and he along with his brothers were the first whites to enter Zion Canyon. In 1862-63, he traveled with Jacob Hamblin to the Hopi mesas in northeast Arizona. He moved to Kanab, Kane County in 1871, where he fulfilled a series of positions including first counselor to the bishop, county commissioner, town president, superintendent of waterworks and road commissioner. Johnson was employed by John Wesley Powell in Powell's 1872 Colorado River expedition.
In 1856, he had married Mandana R. Merrill who bore him ten children; in 1860, he had married Conradina A. Mariger, who bore him sixteen children; in 1889 he married a widow with six children, who bore him one additional child.
He moved to Juarez, Mexico, 1889-1894, then relocated and lived his remaining years in Bunkerville, Nevada, were he served in the church in the office of patriarch to the Mormon community there. He died in 1919, survived by many children and descendants.
2nd Lieutenant Nephi Johnson, 2nd Battalion, Company D, Fort Johnson
His Role and Statements Relative to the Massacre
In September 1857, 23-year-old Nephi Johnson was part of the reinforcements sent to the Mountain Meadows on Thursday the 10th. On the morning of Friday the 11th, he delivered orders to the Indians to disburse and hide. At the time of the massacre he probably translated the orders to attack the women and children.
In 1876, Johnson testified in the second trial of John D. Lee. In later years he made several other important statements about the massacre. Part of the importance of Nephi Johnson was that as the years and decades passed he became more forthcoming about lesser known aspects of the massacre.
On his deathbed in 1919, a young schoolteacher witnessed his tortured, delirious recollections of the massacre more than six decades before. The experience prompted her in later life to write The Mountain Meadows Massacre. She was Juanita Leavitt, the granddaughter of massacre participant, Dudley Leavitt. Later, she was better known by her married name, Juanita Brooks.
References
Alder and Brooks, The History of Washington County, 32, fn. 13; Bagley and Bigler, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, 406-411; Bitton, Guide to Mormon Diaries, 183; Bradley, The History of Kane County, 151; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Appendix I, 224-226; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 7/1-3 (1939), 79; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 970; Fielding, The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee; Goodman, “New Look at Old Treasures,” Utah Historical Quarterly 26/3 (July 1958), 283; Jenson, LDS Biographical Encyclopedia III: 131-132; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Lee Trial transcripts; Newell, The History of Garfield County, 109; Seegmiller, The History of Iron County, 366; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 324-34; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C.
Nephi Johnson's testimony in the 1876 trial of John D. Lee
http://www.mtn-meadows-assoc.com/johnson.htm
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