by James W. Ure
Mormons are certainly not alone in trying to square the shedding of innocent blood in the name of God. In the 13th century, the Roman Catholic Church established courts of the Spanish Inquisition, gaining confessions of heresy through torture and punishment by death. In 1692, Puritans in Massachusetts executed 20 people for allegedly practicing witchcraft.
But acknowledging any complicity in Mountain Meadows’ macabre past is fundamentally problematic for the modern church.
“The massacre has left the Mormon Church on the horns of a dilemma,” says Utah historian Will Bagley, author of a forthcoming book on Mountain Meadows. “It can't acknowledge its historic involvement in a mass murder, and if it can't accept its accountability, it can't repent.”
The massacre also shows a darker side to Mormonism's proud pioneer heritage, an element used today to shape the faith's worldwide image.
“The problem is that Mormons then were not simply old-fashioned versions of Mormons today,” says historian David Bigler, author of Forgotten Kingdom. “Then, they were very zealous believers; it was a faith that put great emphasis on the Old Testament and the Blood of Israel.”
Brigham Young's theocratic rule of the Utah Territory—he wore the hats of governor, federal Indian agent and LDS prophet—was at its zenith in 1857 when the mass murders at Mountain Meadows occurred. Reformation of the LDS Church was in full swing, with members’ loyalty challenged by church leaders. Young taught that in a complete theocracy, God required the spilling of a sinner's blood on the ground to properly atone for grievous sins. It was the Mormon doctrine of “blood atonement.”
The modern church contends blood atonement was mainly a “rhetorical device” used by Young and other leaders to teach Saints the wages of sin. Yet some scholars see its influence even today, pointing to such signs as Utah being the only state left in the nation that allows execution by firing squad. There is widespread disagreement, but some historians have concluded that blood atonement is central to understanding why faithful Mormons would conspire to commit mass murder.
Alternate explanations have included speculation that Indians threatened to prey on local inhabitants if Mormon settlers did not help them raid emigrant wagon trains. There also are the oft-repeated “evil emigrant” stories, accounts that the Arkansas wagon train antagonized Mormon settlers with epithets, poisoned watering holes that resulted in the deaths of Mormon children and Indians, and boastful claims of one contingent called the “Missouri Wildcats” that they were with the Illinois mob that killed LDS founder Joseph Smith.
Retold as fact in many accounts and in the National Register of Historic Places nomination for Mountain Meadows, the veracity of those stories has been called into question since the earliest investigations of the massacre.
Historian Juanita Brooks, in her seminal book, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, believed the emigrants met their doom in part through their own provocative behavior and because they came from the Arkansas county adjacent to the county where beloved LDS Apostle Parley P. Pratt had recently been murdered.
In his forthcoming Blood of the Prophets, Bagley points to new evidence that seems to blunt this one point of Brooks’ landmark research.
“[Noted historian] Dale Morgan alerted Brooks in 1941 to the likelihood that the emigrant atrocity stories had been ‘set afloat by Mormons to further their alibi of the massacre's having been perpetrated by Indians,’” Bagley writes, quoting from Morgan's letter to Brooks. “Even then it was well-established that the Fancher party came from Arkansas, and Morgan had never been satisfied with tales that the company included a large contingent of maniacal Missourians.”
That a wagon train mainly of women and children would be slaughtered for belligerence and taunting seems too farfetched to many historians today.
“When you have 50 to perhaps more than 70 men participate in an event like this, you can't just say they got upset,” says Bigler, a Utah native. “We have to believe they did not want to do what they did any more than you or I would. We have to recognize they thought what they were doing is what authority required of them. The only question to be resolved is did that authority reach all the way to Salt Lake City?”
Fifty years ago, when Brooks broached the question of Young's role and blood atonement in her book, she was labeled an apostate by some and “one of the Lord's lie detectors” by others, such as the late philanthropist O.C. Tanner. Brooks noted her own LDS temple endowment blessing was to “avenge the blood of the prophet,” a reference to Smith's 1844 murder. References to vengeance on behalf of slain church leaders eventually were removed from endowment ceremonies.
The journals kept by Mormon pioneers, who considered maintaining diaries a religious duty, continue to shed more light on the questions Brooks raised. Among key developments in the historical record:
—The Sept. 1, 1857, journal of Young's Indian interpreter, Dimick Huntington, recounts Young's negotiations with the Paiute Indians, who were offered a gift of the emigrant wagon train's cattle. When Paiute leaders noted Young had told them not to steal, Huntington translated Young's reply: “So I have, but now they have come to fight us and you, for when they kill us they will kill you.”
—Young, as superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Utah Territory, ordered the distribution of more than $3,500 in goods to the natives “near Mountain Meadows” less than three weeks after the massacre.
—The patriarchal blessing given to the commander of the Mormon militia in Beaver, Iron and Washington counties called on Col. William Dame to “act at the head of a portion of thy brethren and of the Lamanites [Indians] in the redemption of Zion and the avenging of the blood of the prophets upon them that dwell on the earth.”
There is also additional support for Brooks’ original premise: That Young wanted to stage a violent incident to demonstrate to the U.S. government—which was taking up arms against his theocracy—that he could persuade the Indians to interrupt travel over the important overland trails, thwarting all emigration. She was the first to note a frequently censored phrase from Young's Aug. 4, 1857, letter to Mormon “Indian missionary” Jacob Hamblin to obtain the tribe's trust, “for they must learn that they have either got to help us or the United States will kill us both.”
Hinckley has declared, “Let the book of the past be closed” at Mountain Meadows and believes it is pointless to continually speculate on why it happened.
“None of us can place ourselves in the moccasins of those who lived there at the time,” he said in an interview. “The feelings that were aroused, somehow, that I cannot understand. But it occurred. Now, we're trying to do something that we can to honorably and reverently and respectfully remember those who lost their lives there.”
Sessions, the Weber State University historian who serves as president of the Mountain Meadows Association, says Hinckley's efforts at reconciliation this past summer “may be the most significant event to happen in Mountain Meadows since John D. Lee was executed.”
Attitudes are changing, he says, pointing to the church's acceptance of interpretive signs at the Meadows that better explain who did the killing. As to who ultimately is to blame, perhaps that's not for anyone to judge.
“Somebody made a terrible decision that this has got to be done,” says Sessions. “I don't justify it in any way. But I do believe it would have taken more guts to stay home in Cedar City on those days in 1857 than it would to go out there to the Meadows and take part.
“You couldn't stay away. You would have been out there killing people.”
CHAPTER 1: BOMBSHELL
1. Wikipedia, s.v. “Deseret News,” last edited September 9, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_News (accessed September 22, 2017).
2. “1957 Pulitzer Prizes,” Pulitzer.org, http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1957 (accessed September 22, 2017).
3. John W. Gallivan, publisher emeritus, Salt Lake Tribune, memo to John Malone, Liberty Media Group, June 14, 1999.
4. Lucinda Fleeson, “The Battle
of Salt Lake,” American Journalism Review (March 2001), http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=335 (accessed September 9, 2016).
5. Michelle Celarier, “Vulture in Distress,” New York Post, July 26, 2012, http://nypost.com/2012/07/26/vulture-in-distress/ (accessed August 22, 2016).
6. Anonymous JOA source, in discussion with the author, October 2016.
7. Paul Rolly and Tom Harvey, in discussions with the author, 2014–2015.
8. Terry Orme, in discussion with the author, April 7, 2014.
9. “A Brief History of Salt Lake Tribune since Its Birth—with Photos of the Paper through the Years,” April 21, 2016, http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=3799788&itype=CMSID (accessed September 22, 2017).
10. Orme, in discussion with the author, May 8, 2014.
11. O. N. Malmquist, The First 100 Years: A History of the Salt Lake Tribune , 1871–1971 (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1971), 373–81.
12. Michael D. Gallivan, in discussion with the author July 10, 2014.
13. R. Gary Gomm to Steven Garfinkel, “The Quest No. 26,” Utah Newspaper Project: Citizens for Two Voices, http://www.utahnewspaperproject.org/ (accessed August 22, 2016).
14. Fleeson, “Battle of Salt Lake.”
15. Anonymous, in discussion with the author, June 17, 2014.
CHAPTER 2: DEEP AND HISTORICAL RESENTMENTS
1. Peggy Fletcher Stack, “A Daughter Steps into the Light out of the Shadows,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 3, 2006, http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4133935&itype=NGPSID (accessed September 11, 2016).
2. Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), p. xviii.
3. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950); Wikipedia, s.v. “Second Great Awakening,” last updated August 5, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening (accessed August 23, 2017).
4. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Vintage, 2007), pp. 37–39.
5. Peggy Fletcher Stack, “New Scholarship Coming to Mormon Lessons, but Will Instructors Really Teach It?” Salt Lake Tribune, December 1, 2016, http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4654869&itype=CMSID (accessed August 23, 2017).
6. Bushman, Joseph Smith, pp. 48–49.
7. Ibid., p. 72.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 60.
10. Ibid., p. 58.
11. Ibid., p. 59.
12. Fawn McKay Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1995), pp. 51–52.
13. Ibid., p. 54.
14. Ibid., pp. 55–63.
15. Ibid., pp. 77–79.
16. Ibid., p. 78.
17. Ibid., pp. 82–88.
18. Ibid., p. 99.
19. Ibid., pp. 95–106.
20. Ibid.
21. Bushman, Joseph Smith, pp. 181–82.
22. Brodie, No Man Knows, pp. 195–207.
CHAPTER 3: MISSOURI MASSACRE
1. John Hamer, Northeast of Eden: A Historical Atlas of Missouri's Mormon County (Caldwell County, MO: Far West Cultural Center, 2004); Wikipedia, s.v. “Far West, Missouri,” last updated June 12, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_West,_Missouri (accessed August 23, 2017).
2. Fawn McKay Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1995), p. 130.
3. “Section 127: The Nauvoo Temple and Baptism for the Dead,” in Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2002), pp. 314–15, https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-student-manual/sections-122-131/section-127-the-nauvoo-temple-and-baptism-for-the-dead?lang=eng (accessed August 4, 2016).
4. Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision 1846 (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000), pp. 82–86; Wikipedia, s.v. “Missouri Executive Order 44,” last updated August 10, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44 (accessed August 23, 2017).
5. Brodie, No Man Knows, pp. 254–55.
6. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 2007), pp. 365–66.
7. Ibid., pp. 342–55.
8. Brodie, No Man Knows, pp. 323–24.
9. Bushman, Joseph Smith, pp. 349–55.
CHAPTER 4: GOLDEN PLATES AGAIN
1. Milan D. Smith Jr., “That Is the Handwriting of Abraham,” Dialogue, a Journal of Mormon Thought 23, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 167–69, https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V23N04_169.pdf (accessed August 30, 2016).
2. Fawn McKay Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1995), p. 170.
3. Report of the committee appointed by the Philomathean Society (1858) of the University of Pennsylvania to translate the inscription on the Rosetta Stone, Philadelphia; Wikipedia, s.v. “Philomathean Society,” last updated June 26, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomathean_Society (accessed August 23, 2017).
4. Brodie, No Man Knows, pp. 174–75; Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 2007), p. 291.
5. “The Book of Abraham,” in The Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2000), pp. 28–41, https://www.lds.org/manual/the-pearl-of-great-price-student-manual/the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng (accessed August 4, 2016).
6. “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.lds.org/topics/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng (accessed August 4, 2016).
7. Bushman, Joseph Smith, p. xxii.
CHAPTER 5: POLYGAMY AND BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD
1. Fawn McKay Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1995), p. 137.
2. Ibid., p. 256.
3. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 2007), p. 403.
4. Wikipedia, s.v. “Nauvoo, Illinois,” last updated August 21, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauvoo,_Illinois (accessed August 23, 2017).
5. Ibid., pp. 410–12.
6. Ibid., pp. 423–24.
7. Ibid., pp. 437–77.
8. Wikipedia, s.v. “List of Joseph Smith's Wives,” last updated August 3, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives (accessed August 23, 2017).
9. Bushman, Joseph Smith, pp. 421–23.
10. “Prominent People Mormons Have Baptized by Proxy,” Mormonism Research Ministry, http://www.mrm.org/prominent-people-baptized-by-proxy (accessed August 23, 2017); Jordan Teicher and Richa Naik, “Here Are 10 People Posthumously Baptized by Mormons,” Business Insider, March 2, 2012, http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-10-people-posthumously-baptized-by-mormons-2012-3 (accessed July 27, 2016).
11. Brodie, No Man Knows, p. 364.
12. Ibid., pp. 362–66.
13. Bushman, Joseph Smith, pp. 522–25.
14. Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols, and Will Bagley, ed., “Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West,” in Kingdom of the West, vol. 8 (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), p. 14.
CHAPTER 6: A PRESS DESTROYED AND PERIL TO THE PROPHET
1. Fawn McKay Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1995), p. 368.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 369.
4. Ibid., p. 370.
5. Ibid., p. 372.
6. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 2007), pp. 539–41.
7. Brodie, No Man Knows, pp. 374–75.
8. Ibid., p. 377.
9. Ibid.
10. Lavina Fielding Anderson and Irene M. Bates, ed., Lucy's Book: A Critical Editi
on of Lucy Mack Smith's Family Memoir (Salt Lake City: Signature, 2001).
11. Brodie, No Man Knows, p. 377.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 378.
14. Ibid., pp. 378–79.
15. David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quinn Monson, Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 30–31.
16. Brodie, No Man Knows, p. 382.
17. Ibid., p. 386.
18. Ibid., p. 387.
19. Ibid., p. 388.
20. Ibid., p. 389.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 391.
24. Ibid., p. 392.
25. Ibid., p. 393.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 394.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 396.
32. Bushman, Joseph Smith, p. xx.
33. Brigham Young, “Necessity of Building Temples—the Endowment” (April 6, 1853), reported by G. D. Watt, in Journal of Discourses (Liverpool: F. D. & S. W. Richards, 1855), p. 29–33; Wikipedia, s.v. “Oath of Vengeance,” last updated July 13, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_vengeance#CITEREFYoung1853 (accessed August 23, 2017). For an expanded contextual view, see John Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
34. Young, “Necessity of Building Temples,” pp. 29–33.
35. Lowell M. Snow, “Blood Atonement” (paper; Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1992), http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Blood_Atonement (accessed December 5, 2016).
36. Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 1st paperback ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), p. 51.
CHAPTER 7: BRIGHAM YOUNG TAKES THE REINS OF A CHURCH IN CHAOS
1. John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 111.