The Mountain Meadows Massacre

Review Essay The Mountain Meadows Massacre Irén E. Annus American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857. By Sally Denton. Vintage Books, 2003. xxiii + 306 pages. $14.95 paper. Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. By Will Bagley. University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. xxiv + 493 pages. $24.95 paper. Captain Alexander Fancher: Adventurer, Drover, Wagon Master and Victim of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. By Burr Fancher. Inkwater Press, 2006. xix + 283 pages. $22.95 paper. House ofMourning: A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. By Shannon A. Novak. University of Utah Press, 2008. xvii + 213 pages. $29.95 paper. The Mormon Mountain Meadows Massacre: From the Diary of John I. Ginn. By Steven E. Farley. 1st Books Library, 2003. xix + 162 pages. $28.96 cloth; $17.50 paper. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. By Juanita Brooks. Foreword by Jan Shipps. University of Oklahoma Press, 1991 [1950]. xxviii + 318 pages. $19.95 paper. T he 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre was in 2007. In September 1857 a group of settlers traveling in the Fancher wagon train crossed Utah territory on their way from Arkansas to California. They were stopping for a rest at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah when their camp was attacked. After several days of siege, they were lured into leaving their protected encampment when armed Mormons approached them under aflagof truce, promising 121 Nova Religio them protection for the remainder of their journey through Utah in return for their possessions. However, soon after the agreement had been reached, the approximately 120 men, women and children were murdered by their Mormon companions, apparently members of a Mormon militia troop, assisted by Paiute allies. As brief as it may seem, even this summary may not be regarded as factual by everyone interested in the massacre. This itself is an indication of one of the biggest problems with works regarding this event, specifically, the paucity of verifiable, precise pieces of information, without which no serious historical treatment may be achieved. As for the massacre, sources vary regarding the people involved: who exactly was traveling with the wagon train, who exactly attacked them, how many settlers were killed, and how many militiamen and Paiutes were involved. It is still a point of debate as to who in fact initiated and led the attack, and on whose orders they were acting. Also disputed is when, how, and why Paiutes participated. What we do know, however, is that all writings on the Mountain Meadows massacre rely on contemporaneous accounts, which include diary entries, interviews, documents such as official reports and letters, and some articles, most of which were composed retrospectively by authors with a variety of intentions. Although most of them were certainly attempting to report the story faithfully, these narratives, often autobiographical or political in nature, inevitably contain specific underlying motives, which often affect the tone, style, content, and ultimate message. This remarkable self-tailoring of the accounts of the events stems from the lack of publicly available evidence, and the assumption that individual authorship might compensate for this. Therefore, these texts constituted the narratives that have evolved into the definitive historical depictions of the massacre and its circumstances, eventually acting in place of the verifiable data historical research demands. This in and of itself indicates one of the major shortcomings of most writings on the Mountain Meadows massacre: they are various histories intended to expose the definite truth about this tragic atrocity, but, in fact, they simply offer various possible versions and interpretations of the event. They are based on a selection of sources treated as historically accurate, and the authors undoubtedly present the readers with their own, also ideologically positioned, particular readings. Further, most of the writers who have published on this topic are often neither trained historians nor academics, but pursue other careers and become involved for personal reasons. We seem to be faced with a real postmodern phenomenon: a series of analyses of a historical event, which have not acquired the status of metanarrative—not yet. Studies of the massacre present a multiplicity of voices, truths, and realities. Our minds, trained in the Enlightenment tradition of seeking and requiring data and proof as a definitive basis for 122 Review Essay real knowledge, are left with a sense that something is amiss. Moreover, it is as if we had traveled back in time, experiencing twisted, updated versions of pro- and anti-Mormon literature. As Sally Denton points out, authors tend to agree that up to "the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Mountain Meadows had been the largest civilian atrocity to occur on American soil" (p. 241). \fet standard United States history books largely fail even to mention the event. While it is also often claimed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disregards the massacre, it has appeared in a number of LDS histories, for example, by former church historian Leonard J. Arrington, in his books Brigham Young: The American Moses1 and The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints.2 Other works regarded today as classics within Mormon Studies also mention the event, such as Wallace Stegner in The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail3 and Jan Shipps in her Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition.4 It must be noted, however, that these works do not discuss the massacre in any real depth and are either silent or in denial about any Church involvement, and thus responsibility. A series of events in the last twenty years or so, however, has triggered a renewed interest in the events at Mountain Meadows.5 Some of the descendent» ofthose involved on both sides attended a meeting in 1988 to decide on the erection of a new on-site monument to commemorate the deaths in a proper manner. This led to the dedication of a granite monument in 1990 with a commemorative text, regarded as inaccurate by many because the wording seemed to suggest that Paiutes were responsible for the massacre. The monument, however, was quite shortlived. By 1998 a small earthquake and extreme weather conditions had damaged the granite block considerably, and so it was decided to erect a more appropriate monument. Groundwork started a year later, and, although soil samples were examined before digging started to ensure that no human remains would be disturbed, the earth removed by the backhoe operator contained a great many human bones. The dead started to speak to the forensic anthropologists of Brigham Young University, but only for a short time, as what was found of these twentyeight victims was soon reburied. But the memories and emotions the event stirred up stayed in the open for much longer, as witnessed by the number of articles and books published. The populist books by Burr Fancher and Steven Farley definitely convey anti-Mormon sentiment. Fancher, himself related to Captain Alexander Fancher, leader of the wagon train traveling to California, presents his "own interpretation of the life of Captain Alexander Fancher and his involvement in the history of the opening of the West" (p. ix). The narrative is embedded in the stories he was told as a child back in 1931 by his grandmother, Mattie Ma Fancher, who knew some of the survivors of the massacre quite well. Each chapter opens with 123 Nova Religio sections of her oral biography of Captain Fancher, followed by a more detailed section based on the author's research. Through this technique, the author creates a biography familiar to that already presented by generations of the Fancher family. Captain Fancher emerges as a man who was decent, honest, and hard-working, an experienced frontiersman with military training whose life was cut tragically short. It is quite interesting that Burr Fancher also includes a biography of John D. Lee, the only Latter-day Saint found guilty and executed for the massacre, based on his observation that 'John Doyle Lee and Alexander Fancher appear to run parallel courses throughout their event-filled lives" (p. 40). Fancher blames the Latterday Saints for the massacre and exposes his anti-Mormon sentiment in a number of places, often evident in the harshness of his wording. He concludes that the captain and the members of his wagon train were 'Victims of Mormon fanaticism and greed" (p. 28). He supports his claim by relating the massacre to the anxiety Mormons must have experienced when they learned that the United States government had sent troops against them: "If Brigham was to fight a war against General Albert Sidney Johnston's troops, he needed the property of Captain Fancher's train. It was the wealthiest train to ever pass through Salt Lake City and had gold, wagons, cattle, clothing, and horses that Mormons needed for fighting a war. Thus, an evil scheme was set in place by the movers and shakers of Mormondom" (p. 100). While this work is lacking in terms of historiography, it does contain a set of brief biographies of the survivors of the massacre (pp. 131-36) as well as a collection of pictures and documents, such as the text of the Carleton Report, the first official document on the massacre (pp. 195-222). Steven Farley is another author whose book is pseudo-historical—in fact he calls it a "novel" in the introduction (p. xiii). This work is filled with an evident anti-Mormonism, for example, the author refers to Mormons as "cowards" (p. xvi). This volume consists of two parts. The first section (pp. 1-59) contains the "personal recollections" of a Captain John I. Ginn of various events he lived through in 1857-1858. He was a member of a Texan group that passed "through the Mountain Meadows three weeks after the massacre, before any of the bodies had been buried" (p. xiv), and he wrote the first article about the massacre for a Los Angeles newspaper. The second section (pp. 60-161) contains the author's notes and his own reading of early Mormon history and the massacre. The historical value of the book lies in the diary entries of Ginn, an outsider's vivid descriptions of Utah territory and Mormon culture of the period. If we can set aside Ginn's marked anti-Mormonism and a general anti-religious attitude, his short text offers an informative and enjoyable read for anyone drawn to nineteenth-century Western and Mormon culture, daily life, concerns, and attitudes, as well as the world 124 Review Essay of Native tribes in the region. Juanita Brooks goes as far as to call it "a Wild West Thriller" (p. 127). As for the massacre, Ginn's repeated conviction was that it was a carefully planned revenge by Mormons for the murder of a Latter-day apostle, Parley Parker Pratt, a few months earlier, thus fulfilling Brigham Young's prophecy that "the Lord will avenge the death of His Apostle by the death of an [sic] hundred to one" (p. 23). The second half of the book, consisting of Farley's history of Mormonism from its birth to the late 1850s, is quite curious indeed. The author seems unable to decide if he wants to write a history proper or a historical novel. Based on his statement in the introduction, it is rather the second, but it lags far behind those by, say, Sir Walter Scott. It is not a homogeneous text, which makes it a less enjoyable read than a real novel. Its narrative is interrupted by the presentation of certain documents, at times with no clearly established link to the text itself. The most enjoyable novel-like treatment of the massacre is Sally Denton's American Massacre. Denton, an investigative journalist by profession and Mormon by descent, presents the reader with an exciting, elegant, and passionately written piece of prose "based on documentary evidence" (p. xi). Her book conveys the story of Mormonism between 1823, when Moroni appeared to seventeen-year-old Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith, and 1877, when Latter-day Saint John D. Lee was executed for his role in the massacre, after having been tried in a United States court. Denton's investigative novel establishes the broad historical and cultural context within which the massacre can be interpreted. In the course of her story Denton captures the struggle in which Mormons and the rest of Americans were engaged, leading to the worst atrocity ever in the history of both. Denton investigates not only how the massacre took place, but also why. She presents the compelling argument that the LDS Church hierarchy, including Brigham Young, was not only responsible for the massacre but also for covering it up. After the violence LDS leaders immediately understood the destructive effect it would have, and, therefore, 'John Lee set out to write the official account of the massacre, laying the blame, as Young had directed him to do, upon the Indians" (p. 173), creating a report "which would become the official version promoted by the church" (p. 175). A definite merit of Denton's book is that she also includes in her investigation, if only briefly, the third party involved in the massacre: the Paiutes. She sums up her findings as follows: A Paiute descendant of an eyewitness, recalling what his grandfather had told him when he was a child, said, "We knew we would be blamed. We had seen too much. We knew we'd either be killed by the Mormons or by the Americans, and either way we could no longer stay there. " Some members of the tribe left that night with the belongings they had with 125 Nova Religio them, many migrating into what is now eastern Nevada and northern Arizona; some went as far as Wyoming and Montana.... Like the Mormon killers, the Paiute Indians protected the secret from generation to generation, their few oral histories over the next century laced with the fear and reticence of telling all they knew about the massacre (p. 142). Denton's narrative is framed by the unearthing on 3 August 1999 of human remains in preparation for a new Mountain Meadows monument, as described above. This event serves as the springboard for Shannon A. Novak's book, House of Mourning. Novak was one of the forensic anthropologists entrusted with examining the site and the remains. While Novak has published two journal articles6 on her findings, this book is her most comprehensive treatment. It is a truly unique, multidisciplinary, academic contribution to the Mountain Meadows literature. Novak is intimately aware of all that has been written about the massacre, as she reveals in the introductory section, based on which she feels encouraged to take a new tack in her book, which is closely tied to her specialty. She "shifts attention from the question of motive to the question of loss" (p. 6), from deciding upon moral responsibility and debating Western or Utahan history to focusing on the members of the wagon train. Primarily drawing on the field of osteoarcheology, Novak approaches the human skeleton as an artifact, a witness to social realities, relationships and changes, and thus to the broader social landscape of an era (p. 11). Her meticulous study answers questions such as these on p. 11: What were the social and economic factors that brought this particular group together,firstin the Ozarks and then on the overland trail? How was daily life managed on a highland farm or a wagon train by men, women, and their extended kin? How was it that their deaths—and bodies—became symbolic capital that was used locally and nationally in political debates? And ultimately, how were such social, political, and biological processes manifested in human bones? Novak leads the reader through her investigation with patience and expertise—searching bodies and documents; mapping various walks of life, age, gender and territorial differences; and accounting for deeds, thoughts and aspirations—while she carefully composes her chain of propositions. She lends life to the bones, which in return honor us with a narrative of much broader significance than they might have been able to offer if they had not belonged to the victims of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. While Novak's work is groundbreaking in its approach and method, enlarging the scope of her interest to nineteenth-century life in the American West in general, Juanita Brooks' The Mountain Meadows Massacreis considered thefirstserious, near-classic treatment of the tragic 126 Review Essay incident. Originally published in 1950, the work was a pioneering study in a number of ways. It was, for a long time, the most widely researched, logically argued, meticulously written, and thorough treatment of the massacre. As a Southern Utahan and a Latter-day Saint, Brooks grew up hearing various stories about the massacre, prompting her to write this volume. Although she was not a historian—she was an English teacher and a writer—her work stands out as an admirable historical study carried out with genuine academic integrity. In the foreword to the current edition, Jan Shipps expresses her appreciation of Brooks' book by stating that it "stands as a monument to the power of history in human life" (p. ix), which sets the Saints "free from the necessity of denying their responsibility of what happened in that lonesome meadow" (p. ix). And is this not precisely the case? The Saints are freed since Brooks' interpretation of the events does not suggest that the Church had any concrete, direct, or definite role in the tragic events! One may wonder what, then, accounts for the icy reception given in Mormon circles to Brooks' work. Wlien published, the book was greeted with an overall deep silence on the part of the Church, except for one thing: the Church withheld all major tasks and responsibilities (callings) from Brooks, thus limiting her full and active membership. These were signs of official disapproval and reprimand of Brooks and her book. But why? It seems to me that the reasons were manifold. Most importantly, perhaps, the Church leaders were displeased by some of Brooks' suggestions. One, she proposes that Church leaders, including Brigham \foung, created a social environment in which such a deadly event could take place. Two, she neatly explains that Young had the "men chiefly responsible released from their offices in the church following a private church investigation" (p. 219), and that "since he understood well that their acts had grown out of loyalty to him and his cause, he would not betray them into the hands of their common 'enemy'" (p. 219). Moreover, she also claims that once the case had to be addressed publicly, "church leaders decided to sacrifice Lee" (p. 219). Ultimately, Brooks was questioning the Church's spotless position. Interestingly, Brooks' claim may have contributed to the decision by Church authorities to reinstate Lee's church membership and blessings in 1961. In the academic context, Brooks' book is exemplary in its attempt to carry out a meticulous examination and comparison of written sources and supporting evidence of various kinds, thus cross-testing their validity and establishing a firm basis for her claims. However, she tends to treat each source with equal significance, at times uncritically, taking each of them at face value, not considering the particular circumstances that may have resulted in authors reshaping aspects of reality in these documents. At the same time, I commend the honesty with which Brooks presents the conclusions to which her consistent methodological examination guided her. 127 Nova Religio In her foreword to Brooks' book, Shipps concludes: "Of more general importance, this work set a precedent for future Mormon historians willing to follow the documentary evidence wherever it leads" (p. viii). Indeed, many years later, LDS independent historian Will Bagley did exactly that in his book on the massacre. His volume, however, reaches far beyond that of Brooks. For one, Bagley wisely approaches his sources with a healthy suspicion in order to detect the authors' intentions, particularly in the various writings of the self, such as letters and diary entries. Bagley is determined to offer a critical reading of all his sources, treating writings by key figures in the massacre, such as Lee, with wellfounded caution. He is also able to include a considerable number of documents not found in Brooks' treatment, either because she had no access to them or chose to disregard them. Wfhile Bagley discusses all the key issues—why, when, and how—the ultimate purpose of his book is to create a portrait of the era and reveal "how decent men, believing they were doing God's work, committed a horrific atrocity" (p. xv). This is quite a different approach from what Brooks decided to undertake. In a broader sense, Bagley's book relates to other works that aim to unveil the dynamics of religious wars. The outcome of Bagley's efforts is an impressive, extremely eloquent study—possibly the most definitive ever completed on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. His thorough investigation begins from the time the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiutes) occupied the region. He then touches upon key moments in LDS history, in which Natives and Mormons met. He meticulously explains the delicate nature of the situation that eventually culminated in the violent tragedy. Bagley's investigation continues all the way to the present, with the hope that Church leaders will realize "that only the truth will lay to rest the ghosts of Mountain Meadows" (p. 382). But whose truth should this be? As it is clear in this essay, the massacre at Mountain Meadows has evolved as a topic that allows for diverse treatments. In terms of style, contemporary diaries and a variety of documents are available, as are investigative novels and historical analyses. In terms of the author's intentions, books vary in stance from being antiMormon to pro-Mormon. In terms of the author's ideological positioning, one may find works produced by non-Mormon, non-practicing Mormon, and devout Mormon writers alike. In terms of authorship, professional writers, researchers and historians offer their thoughts, as well as lay writers simply interested in the massacre for one reason or another. Further, perhaps with the exception of Novak, they all focus on revealing what happened exactly, as well as how and why it happened, making the role of the LDS Church and its members central in their treatments. And, despite all the variables mentioned above, all the authors are concerned to varying degrees with the extent to which the Mormon Church is unwilling to engage in any serious, meaningful dialogue on the massacre, therefore automatically denying the possibility 128 Review Essay of any role or responsibility it may have had in it. However, from the findings and their implications, it seems quite clear that the Church, in fact, must have played a role and had some responsibility. But now it is certainly up to the reader to choose the book most suited to his or her personal expectations in terms of focus, style, depth of interest, ideological background, and/or academic discipline. ENDNOTES 1 Leonard J. Arlington, Brigham Young: The American Moses (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 257-60, 278-80, 300, 385-86, 479-80, 493. 2 Leonard J. Arlington, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992 [1979]), 167-68,170. 3 Wallace Stegner, The Gathering ofZion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981 [1964]), 259, 277. 4 Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 163. 5 For an excellent summary of these events, see Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 365-76. 6 Shannon A. Novak and Lars Rodseth, "Remembering Mountain Meadows: Collective Violence and the Manipulation of Social Boundaries, "Journal of Anthropological Research 62 (2006): 1-25; and Shannon A. Novak and Derinna Kopp, "To Feed a Tree in Zion: Osteological Analysis of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre," Historical Archaeology 37 (2003): 85-108. 129 ^ s Copyright and Use: As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the copyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling, reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a violation of copyright law. This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission from the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. 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