Thursday, July 31, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Books: The other Sept. 11

By Geoff Schumacher

The Mountain Meadows Massacre should be as familiar to Americans as Custer's last stand or the Donner Party tragedy, but it's not. Sally Denton and Will Bagley are trying to change that with excellent new books delving into one of the darkest episodes in U.S. history.

On Sept. 11, 1857, at Mountain Meadows, just outside Cedar City, Utah, leading members of the Mormon Church brutally and systematically murdered more than 120 emigrants from Arkansas who were traveling to California to make a new life. Because the 17 survivors of the massacre were all very young children, the church at first was able to keep the incident a secret. When word began to leak out, the Mormon leaders concocted a story blaming the local Paiute Indians for the slaughter in retaliation for the emigrant party's supposed poisoning of their wells and cattle.

That "clumsy" story, however, failed to hold up over time, and across the nation politicians, newspaper editors and an angry public demanded that the true perpetrators be punished. Mormon leaders, who controlled the Utah territory, worked to stymie and derail efforts to track down and prosecute the participants. In the end, 20 years after the massacre, just one of the conspirators, John D. Lee, was prosecuted for his role in the crime.

The massacre was big news in the 1860s and 1870s as newspapers reported on emerging details about the incident and Lee's two trials and execution by firing squad. But today few people are aware of what happened at Mountain Meadows, in part because church leaders worked to suppress the story well into the 1930s. The event's lack of staying power in the public mind is reminiscent of the story of Seabiscuit, the amazing racehorse that was one of the most inspiring stories of the Depression era yet was largely forgotten for decades until the publishing of a recent best-seller and the release of a popular movie. One hopes Denton and Bagley's books will have the same effect with the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

The authors have the same basic focus: what happened at Mountain Meadows, why it happened and who was involved. They both sift through evidence, hearsay and legend--lamenting censored and destroyed church records--and piece together a fascinating narrative of events leading up to the massacre, details of the horrible event and the convoluted aftermath. In the end, they reach roughly the same conclusion: Church leader Brigham Young either ordered the massacre or encouraged a "culture of violence" within the church hierarchy that made it an acceptable act.

"Within the context of the era and the history of Brigham Young's complete authoritarian control over his domain and his followers, it is inconceivable that a crime of this magnitude could have occurred without direct orders from him," Denton asserts. "Virtually every federal officer who became involved in future investigations of the massacre would conclude that Young personally ordered the atrocity, used his position to shield the killers who had followed his instructions, and personally directed the elimination of all evidence incriminating himself and his closest advisers."

Bagley's mission is even more directed to finding a link between Young and the massacre, yet, lacking a smoking gun, he stops just short of Denton's definitive conclusion. Still, he is no apologist: "Claiming that Brigham Young had nothing to do with Mountain Meadows is akin to arguing that Abraham Lincoln had nothing to do with the Civil War."

Bagley focuses heavily on the church's practice of "blood atonement," which justified shedding the blood of sinful Mormons "as an atonement for their sins." Just before the massacre, Brigham Young had initiated a fiery reformation effort in an attempt to renew his flock's "commitment to righteousness and to the kingdom." And, Bagley notes, "nowhere did the fires of Reformation burn as brightly as in Iron County," home of Mountain Meadows.

Denton, meantime, targets the "Danites," or "Avenging Angels," a secret group of Mormon loyalists organized under church founder Joseph Smith who intimidated dissenters and warred against anti-Mormon militias, as the primary perpetrators of blood atonement--and the Mountain Meadows Massacre. During the Reformation, she writes, they were responsible for a "reign of terror" that resembled the Salem witch trials.

Both authors spend considerable time discussing how the massacre went down, leaving none of the gory details untold. They describe the mind-numbing double-cross in which the Mormons convinced the emigrants to accept a truce and give up their arms, only to subsequently shoot them at point-blank range. While sensational in nature, these details help us understand just how horrifying this event was, and why the church worked so hard to keep it quiet. Bagley writes of the harrowing butchery:

"One witness `saw children clinging around the knees of the murderers, begging for mercy and offering themselves as slaves for life could they be spared. But their throats were cut from ear to ear as an answer to their appeal.'"

Denton describes the gathering of booty afterward:

"The meadow was a sea of mutilated bodies and bloody debris. Wagons were now dismantled and featherbeds ripped open in search of gold; utensils, tools, and home furnishings that had been strewn about were collected. The plunder proceeded with a strange quiet. Women from Cedar City and nearby settlements arrived to remove the calico dresses and lace pinafores of the women and children, pulling off their expensive shoes, and ripping earrings, brooches, and rings off the corpses. ... The bodies were piled in heaps with little or no attempt to bury them."

Overall, Denton, who grew up in Southern Nevada and co-wrote the myth-piercing Las Vegas history The Money and the Power, does a better job of placing the massacre within the context of American history, succinctly outlining the church's founding and evolution and the nation's hostile response to the Mormons' unorthodox beliefs. She explains how the relentless persecution of Mormons in other states helped foster a strong "us vs. them" mentality among church followers. She outlines how various U.S. presidents reacted to and interacted with the Mormon leadership, and how the Civil War interrupted efforts to prosecute the killers.

Bagley, a Salt Lake City journalist, is the detail man. While Denton provides an eloquent narrative, Bagley takes a more academic, investigative approach, exploring the numerous conflicting stories about the massacre and determining which are more credible. At times, Denton finds herself quoting Bagley to explain a nuance among conflicting accounts.

I read the books in the wrong order. Denton's book should come first, giving readers a dramatic narrative to follow and a solid historical overview of the massacre. For those who wish to plunge more deeply into the subject, Bagley is your next stop.

Denton and Bagley, both with family ties to the Mormon Church, do an admirable job of stressing that the Mountain Meadows Massacre should not serve as an indictment of all members of the Mormon faith, past or present. They note that many church members of conscience refused to participate in the massacre and condemned those who did.

"It would be part of the larger historical tragedy of Mountain Meadows that the outside world would level collective blame and guilt at Mormons in general," Denton writes. "For there were untold members of faithful and believing Mormons profoundly disturbed by the church's role in the slaughter and the subsequent dissembling."

The massacre is an important historical event, of value and interest to readers everywhere. But it is particularly poignant in this part of the country, where it occurred and where remnants of its bitter aftermath linger. It is haunting to think that the Arkansas emigrants who camped at Mountain Meadows were resting up before the arduous desert journey to their next major stop-off--the spring-fed meadow of Las Vegas. Nevada residents and officials also played ancillary roles in various aspects of the drama, including Mark Twain, who wrote extensively about the massacre for Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise.

Mountain Meadows, like so many other tragedies, must not be forgotten or ignored. Just as we remember the Holocaust, the Oklahoma City bombing (which supplanted Mountain Meadows as the largest civilian atrocity in U.S. history) and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, we must remember Mountain Meadows as a prime example of religious fanaticism gone terribly awry. "Mountain Meadows was a crime of true believers," Bagley writes in a sobering allusion to other crimes against humanity.

Just as we should not condemn all Muslims for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we must distinguish the zealous group of Mormons who perpetrated the Mountain Meadows Massacre from the millions of Latter-Day Saints then and now who lead virtuous, peaceful lives and would never even consider engaging in such savagery. Yet as much as Mountain Meadows is a painful blot on Mormon history, an incident many of the faithful would rather see buried, it must not be ignored or spun to put a better face on the church. It happened, and the task now is to learn from it.

Denton, in a recent op-ed column for the New York Times, explains that the Mormon Church to this day refuses to claim responsibility for the tragedy. "At a time when religions around the world are acknowledging and atoning for past sins, the massacre has left the Mormon Church in a quandary," she writes. "Roman Catholics have apologized for their silence during the Holocaust, United Methodists for their massacre of American Indians during the Civil War, Southern Baptists for their support of slavery, and Lutherans for Martin Luther's anti-Jewish remarks. But unlike the leaders of other religions, who are believed to be guided by the hand of God, Mormon prophets are considered to be extensions of him."

In other words, she says, the dilemma for Mormons is that questioning or condemning the actions of the prophet Brigham Young is the equivalent of questioning or condemning God. Still, as Denton notes, "without a sustained attempt at accountability and atonement, the church will not escape the hovering shadow of that horrible crime." Perhaps the serious, clear-eyed works of Denton and Bagley will spur a renewed movement to remove that shadow.