The September 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which a party of 120 emigrants, suspected of hostility toward the church, was murdered in southeastern Utah by Paiute Indians and a band of Mormons led by John D. Lee, who claimed to be acting on orders from Young himself.
Despite this atrocity, by 1858 Brigham Young had reached a reconciliation with the federal government, which issued a pardon for alleged Mormon offenses and for a time at least allowed the Saints to practice their religion and build their community without interference.
In 1871, Brigham Young was himself tried under an 1862 law that prohibited polygamy in United States territories, but though he had by this time married more than twenty wives, he was not convicted.
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