![]() First edition | |
Author | Juanita Brooks |
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Language | English |
Subject | Mountain Meadows massacre |
Publisher | University of Oklahoma Press |
Publication date | 1950 (1st Edition) |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) & (Paperback) |
The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950) by Juanita Brooks was the first definitive study of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. [1]
Juanita Brooks, a Mormon historian trained in historical methods, [2] was discouraged from studying the incident, [3] and she suffered some ostracism from fellow Mormons after its publication. [4] Her work was acclaimed by historians, however, leading to her recognition as an exemplary historian of the American West and Mormonism. Her account of the massacre was eventually accepted by the Mormon leadership.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre was the first work to fully document Mormon involvement in the massacre. In the book, Brooks demonstrated convincingly that the Mormon militia was responsible for the massacre, and that John D. Lee, the only militiaman executed, was effectively a scapegoat. She writes, "The church leaders decided to sacrifice Lee only when they could see that it would be impossible to acquit him without assuming a part of the responsibility themselves". [5]
The work cleared Brigham Young of any direct involvement, but did blame him for his incendiary rhetoric. [6] Brooks writes, "While Brigham Young and other church authorities did not specifically order the massacre, they did preach sermons and set up social conditions that made it possible." [7] In Brooks' unflinching narrative, she painted the Massacre as an overreaction by the Mormon militia forces, one that was a tragedy for all sides, resulting in the death of settlers and the tarnishing of the name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
On the role of her own grandfather Dudley Leavitt, Brooks seemed ambivalent. "We can only wonder as to Dudley's relation to the Massacre," Brooks wrote of him.[ citation needed ]
Much to the consternation of some, Brooks called Young "an accessory after the fact," a charge that rankled church leaders. "What raised the wrath of loyal Mormons was the massive evidence she presented that Young's cover-up of the crime made him an accessory after the fact, and that he stage-managed the sacrifice of John D. Lee", writes historian Will Bagley in his Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. "High-ranking LDS church officials especially resented her descriptions of actions that made them appear to be authoritarian bureaucrats obsessed with suppressing the truth." [8]
Ultimately, as historian Wallace Stegner and other Brooks allies had predicted, Brooks's scrupulously-researched book proved a boon to the LDS church through her careful limning of the challenges facing the church in its earliest days, as well as showing the toll the Massacre took on church members themselves. According to Jon Krakauer, Brooks's book, "is an extraordinary work of history, the seminal portrait of Mormondom under Brigham Young" and "In a very discernible sense, every book about the Mormon experience in nineteenth-century Utah published after 1950 is a response to Brooks's work." [1]
"The book was understated but unrelenting," noted three Brigham Young University historians who authored Mormon History. [9] "Brooks' honest examination of a topic many considered a taboo made The Mountain Meadows Massacre, like Brodie's book [ No Man Knows My History (1945)], a milestone. Although its research and scholarly perspectives now seem dated, the book helped create a new climate of openness in Mormon studies." [10]
After Brooks's work was published to critical acclaim, the modest former Utah schoolteacher, a graduate of New York's Columbia University, campaigned for a proper memorial to those killed. [11] She was joined in her call for the monument by another descendant of Dudley Leavitt, businessman Dixie Leavitt, father of Utah politician Mike Leavitt, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services and once the state's governor.
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 convicted of mass murder for his complicity in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre and sentenced to death. In 1877, he 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. Brooks remained a faithful believer throughout her life.
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.
Dudley Leavitt was an early patriarch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon pioneer and an early settler in southern Utah.
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.
In Mormonism, a penalty is a specified punishment for breaking an oath of secrecy after receiving the Nauvoo endowment ceremony. Adherents promised they would submit to execution in specific ways should they reveal certain contents of the ceremony. In the ceremony participants each symbolically enacted three of the methods of their execution: throat slitting, heart removal, and disembowelment. These penalties were first instituted by Joseph Smith in 1842, and further developed by Brigham Young after Smith's death. The penalties were similar to oaths made as part of a particular rite of Freemasonry practiced in western New York at the time the endowment was developed. During the 20th century, the largest Mormon denomination, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gradually softened the graphic nature of their penalties, and in 1990, removed them altogether from its version of the ceremony. Other Mormon denominations continue to have the penalties as part of their temple oaths.
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 Settlers. 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.
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.
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.
William Grant Bagley was a historian specializing in the history of the Western United States and the American Old West. Bagley wrote about the fur trade, overland emigration, American Indians, military history, frontier violence, railroads, mining, and Utah and the Mormons.
Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2002) by Will Bagley is a history of the Mountain Meadows massacre. The work updated Juanita Brooks' seminal history The Mountain Meadows Massacre, and remains one of the definitive works on the topic.
Richard Eyring "Rick" Turley Jr. is an American historian and genealogist. He previously served as both an Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as managing director of the church's public affairs department.
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."
Robert H. Briggs is a Fullerton, California, lawyer and independent historian. As of 2010, Briggs's area of historical research related to violence in frontier Utah, in particular the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.
Mormon studies is the interdisciplinary academic study of the beliefs, practices, history and culture of individuals and denominations belonging to the Latter Day Saint movement, a religious movement associated with the Book of Mormon, though not all churches and members of the Latter Day Saint movement identify with the terms Mormon or Mormonism. Denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by far the largest, as well as the Community of Christ (CoC) and other smaller groups, include some categorized under the umbrella term Mormon fundamentalism.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.