Mountain Meadows
When I first learned of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, back in April, I was intrigued. The story of Arkansas pioneers being slaughtered by Mormons in southwest Utah did more than just spark my curiosity. I felt compelled to visit the site & learn all I could. It's no secret that as a human population, we have perpetuated unspeakable acts of violence on one another, but I simply could not get my mind around this particular early-American atrocity.
Mormons, also called Latter-Day Saints or simply Saints, are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints & their tenets are recorded in the Book of Mormon. John Smith was the founder of this first-ever uniquely American religion & he himself authored the Book of Mormon. From the group's inception, it's members were harshly judged for their beliefs, & in the 1830s, the first wave of Mormon migration to escape the non-believers of the eastern states began. But they never really found any relief from the opposing & imposing opinions of the non-Mormons. When John Smith was murdered by an angry mob in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1844, the Latter-Day Saints packed up & headed even further west.
The Mormon pioneers, under the leadership of Brigham Young, arrived in what was then northernmost Mexico in 1846. Young claimed what is now all of Utah, most of Nevada & Arizona, & parts of California, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, & Idaho, renaming it Deseret. The Mexican government was technically in charge of this land, but because much of it was considered uninhabitable, the Mormons finally felt safe. Well, safe-ish. They made an uneasy peace with the Native Americans they found there, & settled into what was generally considered to be a hard life but a good life in an undesirable place, far away from the non-Mormons of the United States.
Much to the chagrin of Latter-Day Saints leadership, Deseret was brought under United States' control with the end of the Mexican-American War & the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848. Almost immediately, under the direction of Brigham Young, the population of Utah (with it's current boundaries, but still called Deseret) petitioned for, but was denied, U. S. statehood. As a consolation prize of sorts, the Utah Territory was created & Young was appointed Territorial Governnor by President Millard Fillmore. The political climate was an unusual one, as the 12,000 Mormons in Utah wanted a political entity aligned with their church beliefs. In that vein, they believed that the only way to guarantee autonomy & freedom of religion was to have their church leaders also be their government leaders. This was actually already a way of life, as civil & crinimal issues were brought before the church leaders & judged by church rules rather than the governmental courts or a police force. The U. S. Government as a whole, & the vast majority of the U. S. population, had a real problem with this new religion. Of course, freedom of religion was guaranteed in the U. S. Constitution, However, the creation of a church-state run by people of one & only one faith was viewed as a threat to the American way of life. This was still a time of slow-to-no communication across a huge expanse of land. The California gold rush of 1849 was still 2 years away, & the "golden spike" of the first transcontinental railroad was still 22 years away. So, it's hard now to imagine that the "Easterners" cared at all about those weird religious people way out there in Deseret. But oh, they did. Did they ever.
A huge part of what brought Mormons to the awareness of the everyday American was slavery. But probably not in the way you're thinking. On paper, the biggest obstacle to statehood for the new Utah Territory was the low population numbers. Only 12,000 of the required 60,000 souls occupied Utah when the terrirory was formed. In reality, the biggest obstacle to statehood was that those 12,000 were polygamists. I don't mean to overstate this. Not all 12,000 had multiple spouses or "sister-wives," but the all-encompassing religion of all 12,000 people was Mormonism, & Mormanism allowed, even advocated, multiple marriages. Back in the East, meaning everything east of Utah, the issue of slavery was already dividing our country. As you know, states' rights are addressed specifically in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, & the legal concept has been tested in both words & actions. As early as 1798, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison advocated states' rights when they wrote the Kentucky and Virgina Resolutions, & as recently as yesterday, states' rights to allow Marajuana use are challenging the Federal law that bans it. But pre-Civil War, the United States opted for a way to allow new states into the Union with popular rule. This meant that the population of a state or of a territory wishing to become a state could decide if they wanted to allow slavery or not. The brand-new Republican party was big on anti-slavery, which became synonomous with morality, which became synonomous with anti-states'-rights. "Slavery" and "polygamy" began showing up together in papers & speeches, & the immorality of both became a battle cry for those believing that states couldn't be trusted to govern themselves. Utah becoming a state meant that polygamists would be in charge, & that just could not happen.
With Brigham Young as Territorial Governor, Utah was surviving & even thriving. The Salt Lake Valley became a major trade thoroughfare for non-Mormons heading further west, and Salt Lake City itself blossomed into a religious, cultural, & economic center. Mormon pioneers & converts kept coming to their new holy city & the surrounding rural areas became hardscrabble but successful farms & orchards. The folks back East were worried, & stopping this runaway train became priority. In 1854, President Franklin Pierce attempted to appoint non-Mormon Lt. Colonel Edward J. Steptoe as Territorial Governor, but Steptoe refused the appointment & Brigham Young remained in the position by default. Further, the United States government did not want Federal positions filled locally, so President Pierce specifically appointed "Easterners" to key Federal positions. Saying those decisions went badly would be a grossly understating. They were disasterous. Three of the judicial appointees, Chief Justice William W. Drummond, Judge George P. Stiles, & Judge John F. Kinney, were thrust into the Mormon world in 1855. Drummond was prolific in his harsh judgement of Morman life in Utah, & his writings against polygamy ended up reaching the desks of politicians & newspapers back East. Interestingly, Drummond was his own sort of polygamist. He had a wife & children in Illinois but brought a D. C. woman to Utah with him, introducing her as his wife. Mormons were very vocal in their opposition to non-Mormon & outright-immoral appointees being forced upon them. And they took action. They spoke out, calling Drummond a hypocrite & demanding his removal from office. Also, local lawyers broke into Stiles' office. They gathered Federal papers & Federal law books, took them out back to the privy, & burned them all. The response by President Buchanan to the Mormon pushback was definitive. As a concession to the Mormons, he replaced the controversial judges, but he also sent 2500 Federal troops to Utah.
Had it not been for mail carriers' reports of troop movement from Missouri, the Mormons would have been caught completely unawares. And as if this weren't enough, one of their 12 Apostles, Parley P. Pratt, had just been murdered in Arkansas. Their response was, understandably, fear. The Mormons were now well into their 2nd, & in many cases 3rd, generation of fear. Fear of judgement, fear of persecution, & fear of retribution for their religious beliefs. Just plain fear. They had no way of knowing that troops under General William S. Harney were ordered not to shoot unless in self defense. In August 1857, before President Buchanan removed him from office, Brigham Young declared martial law. The state militia was an all-Mormon militia calling themselves the Nauvoo Legion. They armed themselves to defend against the advancing troops, aka advancing non-Mormons. They formed councils to meet with Native American leaders so there would be no misunderstandings about whom they were intending to fight. They rounded up all the available men & weapons, but were still grossly under-armed & under-manned. They built 2 camps in the Salt Lake Valley entrance to Salt Lake City, & started making handheld weapons from anything that was available. These are the actions of a very, very afraid group of people.
I give you all this background information because, after learning that there was even such a thing as a Mountain Meadows Massacre, I wanted/needed to learn so much more. I needed to understand what could push a group of ostensibly moral & God-fearing folks to slaughter innocents. Even now, having given voice to what I've learned, I'm still not sure I completely understand.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was this:
In early 1857, a group of about 120 Arkansans left Carroll County, Arkansas for California. By September, they had made it to the southwest corner of Utah, & set up camp near a spring. On September 7th, a group of Mormons attacked the camp, & several of the traveling party were killed. The horrified Arkansans buried their dead just outside their camp, but did not immediately roll out of Mountain Meadows. I think it speaks volumes about the harshness of an early Utah winter & the appeal of fresh water that a hundred-plus people would stay at a camp where several of their number were killed. They were still there when, four days after the original attack, the same party of Mormons arrived at the camp under white flag. The Mormons told the travelers that the previous attack was by Paiute Indians, & if they would turn over their arms & their supplies, this self-described benevolent group of Mormon men would lead them to safety. So, these trusting Arkansans did just that. The men & older boys were separated from the rest, & away the 2 groups marched. About two miles from the original site, all the men & older boys were killed. I'm sorry, let me say this correctly. These Mormon men slaughtered all the unarmed men & older boys. About a mile from the original site, the women & older girls were killed. Yes, these Mormon men slaughtered all the unarmed women & older girls. There is some speculation that the attack was continuous for the entire 4 days, & that some time around the 3rd day, the identities of the attackers became apparent, so killing all witnesses became necessary. Why would the Arkansans lay down their arms & walk away with known attackers? Nope. These Mormons came to the camp under false pretenses & led a group of scared, trusting, unwitting people to their deaths. I say "slaughter" because that's exactly what I mean. Recent accidental excavation unearthed remains of over 20 people. The men had been shot, & the women had blunt-force trauma injuries. It was most certainly a violent event. Seventeen young children were spared. Yes, 17 young girls & boys watched as their fathers, uncles, & older brothers were led away, then heard massive amounts of gunfire. Then these children watched with their own eyes as their mothers, aunts, & older sisters were beaten to death. Two years later, after living in Mormon households (some even were the households of the men who killed their families), all 17 of these children were returned to their extended families in Arkansas. Had it not been for one skull of one young man being preserved in the Smithsonian, the story may have been lost forever.
While in Utah in May & June, I got a library card. I currently have 2 relatively-new books about the Mountain Meadows Massacre (1 sanctioned by the Latter-Day Saints, 1 not) on hold in the Utah digital library consortium. As of this writing, I am still in the dark as to how the skull made it to the Smithsonian in the first place, how the children got back to Arkansas after 2 years with Mormon families in Utah, or the reasons why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints only just recently acknowledged the Massacre. I have visited the site. Five monuments in 3 locations, all in the space of about 2 miles. Wow.
In 1874, 9 Nauvoo Legion militiamen were indicted for either murder or conspiracy for their actions at Mountain Meadows. In 1877, 20 years after the massacre, Mormon John Lee was convicted for his part in the slaughter of innocents there & sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad at the site of the original attack.
In modern times, the skull of the unidentified young man was released by the Smithsonian & returned to Mountain Meadows for interment with other victims.
There is still so much to discuss. The U. S. troops did arrive in Utah in 1857. That part of American history is sometimes called the Utah War, the Mormon War, or the Bloodless War, & that story is not a simple one. The Latter-Day Saints leadership denounced polygamy in 1890, & on its 7th petition, Utah was granted statehood in 1896. The horrible Judge Drummond died a disbarred, penniless, drunken, petty thief in a "barrel house" in Chicago in 1888. The Mormons are no longer omnipotent, but are still very much in charge in Utah, & their alcohol laws confound this New Orleans bartender. I still have so much to say, & so much about our American history to learn. And I cannot WAIT to get back to Utah, that previously-undesirable land of unique & unimaginable stories.
Mormons, also called Latter-Day Saints or simply Saints, are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints & their tenets are recorded in the Book of Mormon. John Smith was the founder of this first-ever uniquely American religion & he himself authored the Book of Mormon. From the group's inception, it's members were harshly judged for their beliefs, & in the 1830s, the first wave of Mormon migration to escape the non-believers of the eastern states began. But they never really found any relief from the opposing & imposing opinions of the non-Mormons. When John Smith was murdered by an angry mob in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1844, the Latter-Day Saints packed up & headed even further west.
The Mormon pioneers, under the leadership of Brigham Young, arrived in what was then northernmost Mexico in 1846. Young claimed what is now all of Utah, most of Nevada & Arizona, & parts of California, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, & Idaho, renaming it Deseret. The Mexican government was technically in charge of this land, but because much of it was considered uninhabitable, the Mormons finally felt safe. Well, safe-ish. They made an uneasy peace with the Native Americans they found there, & settled into what was generally considered to be a hard life but a good life in an undesirable place, far away from the non-Mormons of the United States.
Much to the chagrin of Latter-Day Saints leadership, Deseret was brought under United States' control with the end of the Mexican-American War & the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848. Almost immediately, under the direction of Brigham Young, the population of Utah (with it's current boundaries, but still called Deseret) petitioned for, but was denied, U. S. statehood. As a consolation prize of sorts, the Utah Territory was created & Young was appointed Territorial Governnor by President Millard Fillmore. The political climate was an unusual one, as the 12,000 Mormons in Utah wanted a political entity aligned with their church beliefs. In that vein, they believed that the only way to guarantee autonomy & freedom of religion was to have their church leaders also be their government leaders. This was actually already a way of life, as civil & crinimal issues were brought before the church leaders & judged by church rules rather than the governmental courts or a police force. The U. S. Government as a whole, & the vast majority of the U. S. population, had a real problem with this new religion. Of course, freedom of religion was guaranteed in the U. S. Constitution, However, the creation of a church-state run by people of one & only one faith was viewed as a threat to the American way of life. This was still a time of slow-to-no communication across a huge expanse of land. The California gold rush of 1849 was still 2 years away, & the "golden spike" of the first transcontinental railroad was still 22 years away. So, it's hard now to imagine that the "Easterners" cared at all about those weird religious people way out there in Deseret. But oh, they did. Did they ever.
A huge part of what brought Mormons to the awareness of the everyday American was slavery. But probably not in the way you're thinking. On paper, the biggest obstacle to statehood for the new Utah Territory was the low population numbers. Only 12,000 of the required 60,000 souls occupied Utah when the terrirory was formed. In reality, the biggest obstacle to statehood was that those 12,000 were polygamists. I don't mean to overstate this. Not all 12,000 had multiple spouses or "sister-wives," but the all-encompassing religion of all 12,000 people was Mormonism, & Mormanism allowed, even advocated, multiple marriages. Back in the East, meaning everything east of Utah, the issue of slavery was already dividing our country. As you know, states' rights are addressed specifically in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, & the legal concept has been tested in both words & actions. As early as 1798, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison advocated states' rights when they wrote the Kentucky and Virgina Resolutions, & as recently as yesterday, states' rights to allow Marajuana use are challenging the Federal law that bans it. But pre-Civil War, the United States opted for a way to allow new states into the Union with popular rule. This meant that the population of a state or of a territory wishing to become a state could decide if they wanted to allow slavery or not. The brand-new Republican party was big on anti-slavery, which became synonomous with morality, which became synonomous with anti-states'-rights. "Slavery" and "polygamy" began showing up together in papers & speeches, & the immorality of both became a battle cry for those believing that states couldn't be trusted to govern themselves. Utah becoming a state meant that polygamists would be in charge, & that just could not happen.
With Brigham Young as Territorial Governor, Utah was surviving & even thriving. The Salt Lake Valley became a major trade thoroughfare for non-Mormons heading further west, and Salt Lake City itself blossomed into a religious, cultural, & economic center. Mormon pioneers & converts kept coming to their new holy city & the surrounding rural areas became hardscrabble but successful farms & orchards. The folks back East were worried, & stopping this runaway train became priority. In 1854, President Franklin Pierce attempted to appoint non-Mormon Lt. Colonel Edward J. Steptoe as Territorial Governor, but Steptoe refused the appointment & Brigham Young remained in the position by default. Further, the United States government did not want Federal positions filled locally, so President Pierce specifically appointed "Easterners" to key Federal positions. Saying those decisions went badly would be a grossly understating. They were disasterous. Three of the judicial appointees, Chief Justice William W. Drummond, Judge George P. Stiles, & Judge John F. Kinney, were thrust into the Mormon world in 1855. Drummond was prolific in his harsh judgement of Morman life in Utah, & his writings against polygamy ended up reaching the desks of politicians & newspapers back East. Interestingly, Drummond was his own sort of polygamist. He had a wife & children in Illinois but brought a D. C. woman to Utah with him, introducing her as his wife. Mormons were very vocal in their opposition to non-Mormon & outright-immoral appointees being forced upon them. And they took action. They spoke out, calling Drummond a hypocrite & demanding his removal from office. Also, local lawyers broke into Stiles' office. They gathered Federal papers & Federal law books, took them out back to the privy, & burned them all. The response by President Buchanan to the Mormon pushback was definitive. As a concession to the Mormons, he replaced the controversial judges, but he also sent 2500 Federal troops to Utah.
Had it not been for mail carriers' reports of troop movement from Missouri, the Mormons would have been caught completely unawares. And as if this weren't enough, one of their 12 Apostles, Parley P. Pratt, had just been murdered in Arkansas. Their response was, understandably, fear. The Mormons were now well into their 2nd, & in many cases 3rd, generation of fear. Fear of judgement, fear of persecution, & fear of retribution for their religious beliefs. Just plain fear. They had no way of knowing that troops under General William S. Harney were ordered not to shoot unless in self defense. In August 1857, before President Buchanan removed him from office, Brigham Young declared martial law. The state militia was an all-Mormon militia calling themselves the Nauvoo Legion. They armed themselves to defend against the advancing troops, aka advancing non-Mormons. They formed councils to meet with Native American leaders so there would be no misunderstandings about whom they were intending to fight. They rounded up all the available men & weapons, but were still grossly under-armed & under-manned. They built 2 camps in the Salt Lake Valley entrance to Salt Lake City, & started making handheld weapons from anything that was available. These are the actions of a very, very afraid group of people.
I give you all this background information because, after learning that there was even such a thing as a Mountain Meadows Massacre, I wanted/needed to learn so much more. I needed to understand what could push a group of ostensibly moral & God-fearing folks to slaughter innocents. Even now, having given voice to what I've learned, I'm still not sure I completely understand.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was this:
In early 1857, a group of about 120 Arkansans left Carroll County, Arkansas for California. By September, they had made it to the southwest corner of Utah, & set up camp near a spring. On September 7th, a group of Mormons attacked the camp, & several of the traveling party were killed. The horrified Arkansans buried their dead just outside their camp, but did not immediately roll out of Mountain Meadows. I think it speaks volumes about the harshness of an early Utah winter & the appeal of fresh water that a hundred-plus people would stay at a camp where several of their number were killed. They were still there when, four days after the original attack, the same party of Mormons arrived at the camp under white flag. The Mormons told the travelers that the previous attack was by Paiute Indians, & if they would turn over their arms & their supplies, this self-described benevolent group of Mormon men would lead them to safety. So, these trusting Arkansans did just that. The men & older boys were separated from the rest, & away the 2 groups marched. About two miles from the original site, all the men & older boys were killed. I'm sorry, let me say this correctly. These Mormon men slaughtered all the unarmed men & older boys. About a mile from the original site, the women & older girls were killed. Yes, these Mormon men slaughtered all the unarmed women & older girls. There is some speculation that the attack was continuous for the entire 4 days, & that some time around the 3rd day, the identities of the attackers became apparent, so killing all witnesses became necessary. Why would the Arkansans lay down their arms & walk away with known attackers? Nope. These Mormons came to the camp under false pretenses & led a group of scared, trusting, unwitting people to their deaths. I say "slaughter" because that's exactly what I mean. Recent accidental excavation unearthed remains of over 20 people. The men had been shot, & the women had blunt-force trauma injuries. It was most certainly a violent event. Seventeen young children were spared. Yes, 17 young girls & boys watched as their fathers, uncles, & older brothers were led away, then heard massive amounts of gunfire. Then these children watched with their own eyes as their mothers, aunts, & older sisters were beaten to death. Two years later, after living in Mormon households (some even were the households of the men who killed their families), all 17 of these children were returned to their extended families in Arkansas. Had it not been for one skull of one young man being preserved in the Smithsonian, the story may have been lost forever.
While in Utah in May & June, I got a library card. I currently have 2 relatively-new books about the Mountain Meadows Massacre (1 sanctioned by the Latter-Day Saints, 1 not) on hold in the Utah digital library consortium. As of this writing, I am still in the dark as to how the skull made it to the Smithsonian in the first place, how the children got back to Arkansas after 2 years with Mormon families in Utah, or the reasons why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints only just recently acknowledged the Massacre. I have visited the site. Five monuments in 3 locations, all in the space of about 2 miles. Wow.
In 1874, 9 Nauvoo Legion militiamen were indicted for either murder or conspiracy for their actions at Mountain Meadows. In 1877, 20 years after the massacre, Mormon John Lee was convicted for his part in the slaughter of innocents there & sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad at the site of the original attack.
In modern times, the skull of the unidentified young man was released by the Smithsonian & returned to Mountain Meadows for interment with other victims.
There is still so much to discuss. The U. S. troops did arrive in Utah in 1857. That part of American history is sometimes called the Utah War, the Mormon War, or the Bloodless War, & that story is not a simple one. The Latter-Day Saints leadership denounced polygamy in 1890, & on its 7th petition, Utah was granted statehood in 1896. The horrible Judge Drummond died a disbarred, penniless, drunken, petty thief in a "barrel house" in Chicago in 1888. The Mormons are no longer omnipotent, but are still very much in charge in Utah, & their alcohol laws confound this New Orleans bartender. I still have so much to say, & so much about our American history to learn. And I cannot WAIT to get back to Utah, that previously-undesirable land of unique & unimaginable stories.
