Mountain Meadows Massacre and Mormon public relations
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Mormon public relations have evolved with respect to the Mountain Meadows Massacre since it occurred on September 11, 1857. After a period of official public silence concerning the massacre, and denials of any Mormon involvement, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) took action in 1872 to excommunicate some of the participants for their role in the massacre. Since then, the LDS Church has consistently condemned the massacre, though acknowledging involvement by some local Mormon leaders.
Beginning in the late mid-to-late-20th century, the LDS Church has made efforts to reconcile with the descendants of John D. Lee, who was executed for his role in the massacre (reinstating him posthumously to full fellowship in the church), as well as with the descendants of the slain Baker–Fancher party. The church erected a monument at the massacre site in 1999 blaming John D. lee, and has opened many of its previously-confidential archival records about the massacre to scholars.
LDS position in the 1800s
The first semi-official public statement by a church official concerning the massacre was by George Q. Cannon, then president of the LDS California Mission. In the October 13, 1857 edition of Cannon's San Francisco newspaper The Western Standard, Cannon responded to initial news reports of involvement by Mormons by charging the responsible journalists with writing "reckless and malignant slanders", despite knowing that the southern Utah Mormons were "as innocent of [the massacre] as the child unborn".[1]
The church's official newspaper in Salt Lake City, The Deseret News, was initially slow to comment on the massacre, and remained largely silent until 1869, when it again denied involvement by Mormons.[2]
In 1877, soon after Lee was executed for the massacre, Young was interviewed by a reporter, and told him that he considered Lee's fate just. He denied personal involvement, and denied that the doctrine of blood atonement played a role in the massacre, but stated that he believed in the doctrine, "and I believe that Lee has not half atoned for his great crime."[4]
Statements by prominent LDS leaders about the massacre
The Mormons documentary
In 2007, as the 150th anniversary of the attack approached, it was featured in a PBS documentary film, The Mormons.[5] Interviews with high-ranking LDS Church officials, who had made themselves accessible for interviews about Mormon topics, were posted online. In his interview, LDS apostle and descendant of massacre participants Jeffrey R. Holland spoke of the church's recent attempts to express regret "not for the church, not institutionally. No, try as people may, there has never been any smoking gun in Brigham Young's hand or anyone else's at that level of leadership of the church. But there was clearly local responsibility."[6]
In a PBS broadcast soundbite, LDS apostle, Dallin H. Oaks, said, "I have no doubt...Mormons, including local leaders of our church, were prime movers in that terrible episode and participated in the killing. And what a terrible thing to contemplate, that the barbarity of the frontier, and the conditions of the Utah war and whatever provocations were perceived to have been given, would have led to such an extreme...atrocity perpetrated by members of my faith. I pray that the Lord will comfort those that are still bereaved by it, and I pray that he can find a way to forgive those who took such a terrible action against their fellow beings."[7]
Expression of regret
On September 11, 2007, at the memorial ceremony for the sesquicentennial anniversary of the massacre, Henry B. Eyring, an Apostle who would join the First Presidency of the LDS Church the following month, read an official statement, saying:
We express profound regret for the massacre carried out in this valley 150 years ago today, and for the undue and untold suffering experienced by the victims then and by their relatives to the present time. A separate expression of regret is owed the Paiute people who have unjustly borne for too long the principal blame for what occurred during the massacre. Although the extent of their involvement is disputed, it is believed they would not have participated without the direction and stimulus provided by local church leaders and members.
Eyring was careful to place responsibility with local LDS civic and religious leaders, rather than with Brigham Young. Some, including Baker–Fancher Party descendants and historian Will Bagley, did not see this as an apology. Church spokesman Mark Tuttle agreed, saying "We don't use the word 'apology.' We used 'profound regret.'"[8] However, Richard E. Turley, managing director of the Family and Church History Department, said it was intended as an apology[8] and the church-owned Deseret News called this message "a long-awaited apology" from the LDS Church.[9]
LDS Church presence at the massacre site
The LDS Church, along with farmers, private landowners, and some government agencies, own the massacre site in Mountain Meadows, Utah.
The 1999 Monument and cairn replica built by the LDS Church
The original marker at the site, a cairn, was erected over the victims' mass graves, by Major J.H. Carleton. This marker was torn down by Latter-day Saints during Brigham Young's 1861 visit to the site,[10] then re-built in 1864 only to be torn down again around 1874.[11] In 1932 a memorial wall and marker was built around this 1859 cairn.[12] In 1990, the Mountain Meadows Association, with support from the LDS Church and State of Utah, built a monument overlooking the Mountain Meadows Massacre site.
In 1999 the LDS Church built and agreed to maintain a second monument at Mountain Meadows.[13] On August 3, 1999, during excavation for this new monument, a backhoe digging footings accidentally unearthed the remains of 29 victims; this would lead to hard feelings towards the Church by some descendants. The building of this monument as well as the dedication by Church President Gordon B. Hinckley can be seen in the documentary film Burying the Past: Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
The Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation, based in Arkansas, has attempted to buy the Church's property in the Meadows. They prefer it to be administered through an independent trustee or else for the property to be leased to the federal government for oversight as some kind of national monument. The church has declined this idea, and has purchased more property in the area to preserve it from development.[14]
Standing in the church of LDS massacre participants
Most of the main participants in the massacre remained in good standing with the LDS Church long after the massacre. In the fall of 1870, however, several of them, including Isaac C. Haight and John D. Lee, were excommunicated for their role in the massacre. After Lee's execution by firing squad, Brigham Young told a reporter that although he believed in the doctrine of blood atonement, "Lee has not half atoned for his great crime."[15]
In the late 1950s, LDS PresidentDavid O. McKay created a committee, chaired by Delbert L. Stapley to investigate the Mountain Meadows Massacre. This committee recommended that McKay restore John D. Lee's church membership, and McKay allowed one of Lee's grandsons to be baptized by proxy for him, and the church restored Lee's priesthood and full fellowship in the church. When Juanita Brooks expressed intention to publicize this church action, according to Brooks, Stapley threatened to undo the church action on behalf of Lee. However, the act was publicized in Brook's' biography of Lee, and no rescission was made, although Stapely recommended Brooks' excommunication, which McKay declined.[16] In 2007, LDS Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, whom Brooks taught English in high school, said that he believed Brooks was an "absolutely faithful Latter-day Saint…who had…probably helped the church come to grips with something that all of us wish had never happened."[6]
↑ Carrington 1869 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFCarrington1869 (help) ("Our silence upon this subject is frequently construed as an evidence of the inability of the people of this Territory to defend themselves against the cruel charges which have been made against them in connection with the tragedy. It is almost a pity to break this silence now.").
↑ Brooks, Juanita, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, P 183; 1950:U of OK Press ISBN0-8061-0549-6
↑ "Mountain Meadows Monument, Salt Lake Tribune, May 27, 1874.
↑ Morris A. Shirts (2007). "Mountain Meadows Massacre". Utah History Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 2016-10-18. Retrieved 2007-08-21. The most enduring was a wall which still stands at the siege site. It was erected in 1932 and surrounds the 1859 cairn.{{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
↑ Young 1877, p.242 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFYoung1877 (help)
↑ Prince 2005, pp.53–54 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFPrince2005 (help).
Further reading
Olson, Casey W. "The evolution of history: Changing narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah's public school curricula" (Thesis Utah State University, 2013) online.
Brigham Young was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877. During his time as church president, Young led his followers, the Mormon pioneers, west from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Salt Lake Valley. He founded Salt Lake City and served as the first governor of the Utah Territory. Young also worked to establish the learning institutions that would later become the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. A polygamist, Young had at least 56 wives and 57 children. He formalized the prohibition of black men attaining priesthood, and led the church in the Utah War against the United States.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a series of attacks during the Utah War that resulted in the mass murder of at least 120 members of the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train. The massacre occurred in the southern Utah Territory at Mountain Meadows, and was perpetrated by settlers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints involved with the Utah Territorial Militia who recruited and were aided by some Southern Paiute Native Americans. The wagon train, made up mostly of families from Arkansas, was bound for California, traveling on the Old Spanish Trail that passed through the Territory.
John Doyle Lee was an American pioneer, and prominent early member of the Latter Day Saint Movement in Utah. Lee was later excommunicated from the Church and convicted of mass murder for his complicity in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. He was sentenced to death and, in 1877, was executed by firing squad at the site of the massacre.
Juanita Pulsipher Brooks was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history. Her most notable contribution was her book related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to which her grandfather Dudley Leavitt was sometimes linked, and which caused tension between her and the church authorities. She also made significant archival contributions in the form of collected pioneer diaries documenting early Mormon history in the Dixie, Utah area.
George Albert Smith was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement. He served in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and as a member of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Blood atonement was a practice in the history of Mormonism still adhered to by some fundamentalist splinter groups, under which the atonement of Jesus does not redeem an eternal sin. To atone for an eternal sin, the sinner should be killed in a way that allows his blood to be shed upon the ground as a sacrificial offering, so he does not become a son of perdition. The largest Mormon denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has denied the validity of the doctrine since 1889 with early church leaders referring to it as a "fiction" and later church leaders referring to it as a "theoretical principle" that had never been implemented in the LDS Church.
The Mormon Reformation was a period of renewed emphasis on spirituality within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a centrally-directed movement, which called for a spiritual reawakening among church members. It took place during 1856 and 1857 and was under the direction of church president Brigham Young. During the Reformation, Young sent his counselor, Jedediah M. Grant, and other church leaders to preach to the people throughout Utah Territory and surrounding Latter-day Saint communities with the goal of inspiring them to reject sin and turn towards spiritual things. During this time, some of the most conservative or reactionary elements of LDS Church doctrine came to dominate public discussion. As part of the Reformation, almost all "active" or involved LDS Church members were rebaptized as a symbol of their commitment. The Reformation is considered in three phases: a structural reform phase, a phase of intense demand for a demonstration of spiritual reform, and a final phase during which an emphasis was placed on love and reconstruction.
The Baker–Fancher party was a group of American western emigrants from Marion, Crawford, Carroll, and Johnson counties in Arkansas, who departed Carroll County in April 1857 and "were attacked by the Mormons near the rim of the Great Basin, and about fifty miles from Cedar City, in Utah Territory, and that all of the emigrants, with the exception of 17 children, were then and there massacred and murdered" in the Mountain Meadows massacre. Sources estimate that between 120 and 140 men, women and children were killed on September 11, 1857, at Mountain Meadows, a rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail, in the Utah Territory. Some children of up to six years old were taken in by the Mormon families in Southern Utah, presumably because they had been judged to be too young to tell others about the massacre.
The history of the Latter Day Saint movement includes numerous instances of violence. Mormons faced significant persecution in the early 19th century, including instances of forced displacement and mob violence in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Notably, the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was shot and killed alongside his brother, Hyrum Smith, in Carthage, Illinois in 1844, while Smith was in jail awaiting trial on charges of treason and inciting a riot.
Although the Mountain Meadows massacre was covered to some extent in the media during the 1850s, its first period of intense nationwide publicity began around 1872. This was after investigators obtained the confession of Philip Klingensmith, a Mormon bishop at the time of the massacre and a private in the Utah militia. National newspapers also covered the John D. Lee trials closely from 1874 to 1876, and his execution in 1877 was widely publicized. The first detailed work using modern historical methods was published in 1950, and the massacre has been the subject of several historical works since that time.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was caused in part by events relating to the Utah War, an armed confrontation in Utah Territory between the United States Army and Mormon pioneers. In the summer of 1857, however, Mormons experienced a wave of war hysteria, expecting an all-out invasion of apocalyptic significance. From July to September 1857, Mormon leaders prepared Mormons for a seven-year siege predicted by Brigham Young. Mormons were to stockpile grain, and were prevented from selling grain to emigrants for use as cattle feed. As far-off Mormon colonies retreated, Parowan and Cedar City became isolated and vulnerable outposts. Brigham Young sought to enlist the help of Indian tribes in fighting the "Americans", encouraging them to steal cattle from emigrant trains, and to join Mormons in fighting the approaching army.
Mormon theology has long been thought to be one of the causes of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The victims of the massacre, known as the Baker–Fancher party, were passing through the Utah Territory to California in 1857. For the decade prior the emigrants' arrival, Utah Territory had existed as a theocracy led by Brigham Young. As part of Young's vision of a pre-millennial "Kingdom of God," Young established colonies along the California and Old Spanish Trails, where Mormon officials governed as leaders of church, state, and military. Two of the southernmost establishments were Parowan and Cedar City, led respectively by Stake Presidents William H. Dame and Isaac C. Haight. Haight and Dame were, in addition, the senior regional military leaders of the Mormon militia. During the period just before the massacre, known as the Mormon Reformation, Mormon teachings were dramatic and strident. The religion had undergone a period of intense persecution in the American mid-west.
The pursuit of the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows massacre, which atrocity occurred September 11, 1857, had to await the conclusion of the American Civil War to begin in earnest.
The conspiracy and siege of the Mountain Meadows Massacre was initially planned by its Mormon perpetrators to be a short "Indian" attack, against the Baker–Fancher party. But the planned attack was repulsed and soon turned into a siege, which later culminated in the massacre of the remaining emigrants, on September 11, 1857.
There have been several remembrances of the Mountain Meadows Massacre including commemorative observances, the building of monuments and markers, and the creation of associations and other groups to help promote the massacre's history and ensure protection of the massacre site and grave sites.
The Mountain Meadows massacre was a series of attacks on the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train, at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. The attacks culminated on September 11, 1857, in the mass slaughter of the emigrant party by the Iron County district of the Utah Territorial Militia and some local Indians.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950) by Juanita Brooks was the first definitive study of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
In 1857, at the time of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Brigham Young, was serving as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as Governor of Utah Territory. He was replaced as governor the following year by Alfred Cumming. Evidence as to whether or not Young ordered the attack on the migrant column is conflicted. Historians still debate the autonomy and precise roles of local Cedar City LDS Church officials in ordering the massacre and Young's concealing of evidence in its aftermath. Young's use of inflammatory and violent language in response to a federal expedition to the territory added to the tense atmosphere at the time of the attack. After the massacre, Young stated in public forums that God had taken vengeance on the Baker–Fancher party. It is unclear whether Young held this view because of a possible belief that this specific group posed a threat to colonists or that they were responsible for past crimes against Mormons. According to historian William P. MacKinnon, "After the war, Buchanan implied that face-to-face communications with Brigham Young might have averted the Utah War, and Young argued that a north–south telegraph line in Utah could have prevented the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
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