Barbara's view on Mountain Meadows Massacre

Mountain Meadows Massacre: This is one part of the history of Mormonism which is little talked about but will be talked about more because of this documentary and also, I understand, a very negative-towards-the-Mormons movie about it is coming out in the fall so I think we each need our own personal understanding of what we think happened and why it doesn't shake our faith.

There is no doubt that there was a massacre and Mormons were involved. Where the doubt comes in is what role the church played and especially what role Brigham Young as the prophet and leader of the church played. The church's official position is that Brigham Young did not play any role in it. What I remember being told is that members in Cedar City sent a note to Brigham Young saying that this wagon train was coming and requesting information about what they should do. As I understand it, there were apprehensions because some members of the wagon train had been Missouri mobbers and the people in Cedar City were very anxious about this. The way it has been portrayed is that the mobbers were boasting about how they roosted the Mormons out of Missouri. It is said that Brigham Young wrote back and said, “Let them pass.” One thing to remember here is that it took up to two weeks for a communication to go from Cedar City to Salt Lake so the people is Cedar City probably acted before hearing from Brigham Young. This was not cited in the documentary. I have learned even in doing personal history how one slants the view by being selective in what one chooses to include and exclude. In any historical subject as explosive as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, there are always many different points of view and documents can be found to support any viewpoint one chooses to embrace.

I've looked for a reference about this communication between Brigham Young and the people of Cedar City. So far I haven't found it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Now there is so much on the Internet about it that it is hard to sort through it all to find a specific thing in a documented way. If anyone knows a reliable source which cites this communication, I would appreciate being directed to it.

I embrace the church's position because it is out of character for Brigham Young to have said anything else and I trust that there is historical evidence that this communication did occur. At this same period of time, Utah was being marched upon by the United States army. Brigham Young sent out his troops with the instructions that while they were to harass the troops to delay or prevent them in reaching Utah, they were not to take one human life. The quote about Brigham Young and the Indian chiefs in the documentary is probably taken slightly out of context. It said something to the effect that Brigham Young gave them permission to drive off the cattle from the wagon trains or something similar to that. That is something along the same vein that the Mormons were using against the US army. I don't think Brigham Young “commanded” the Indian chiefs. He had some influence with them. He may have been persuading them to not take human life. The Indians also felt invaded and they were ill-treated by most of the white people who passed through their lands so I don't think that whatever Brigham Young said to them was encouragement to mistreat the wagon trains but restraint to not harm these people.

The time given to the Mountain Meadows massacre in the documentary was totally disproportionate to the comparable importance in Mormon history. While deplorable, it really only involved a very few Mormons and I don't think in any way is representative of Mormons as a whole or the Mormon Church. The church has existed as a church about fifty years less than the United States has been an independent country. If one were to do a two hour documentary about the history of the United States and spend approximately 12 minutes of that time talking about the Mi Lei (I don't know how to spell it) massacre as if it were representative of all Americans. The Mi Lei a massacre was a massacre of a Vietnamese community during the Vietnam war by a group of American soldiers. It did happen and it is also deplorable but it would not rate that much time in an overview of all US history. They say that any time one points a finger at others, there are four fingers pointing back at oneself. The Mi Lei massacre is not the only one in American history—there are massacres against the Indians, the school massacres, the Klu Klux Klan murders, the bombing of Dresden, and others but we as Americans or other Americans wanting to put the Mormons in a bad light because of the Mountains Meadow Massacre do not feel ourselves personally responsible or even think these atrocities are characteristic of our country because they are not. As terrible as they are, each and every one, we as individuals or we as Americans do not set out to massacre others and neither do we as Mormons and we decry all these incidents where it has happened.

Also, not referred to is the fact that the church was involved in doing a memorial at Mountain Meadows. There is heart-wrenching sorrow at the core of Mormonism that such a terrible thing happened at the instigation of members of our church.

Mountain Meadows Memorial Helps Bring Healing

“Mountain Meadows Memorial Helps Bring Healing,” Ensign, Dec. 1990,  66

There was what President Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor in the First Presidency, described as a “spirit of reconciliation” in the air September 15 at a southern Utah memorial service for the victims of an 1857 tragedy.

President Gordon B. Hinckley so described the event as he spoke to about two thousand people gathered on the campus of Southern Utah State College in Cedar City. He also dedicated a memorial marker for the more than one hundred Arkansas emigrants who died in what is known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Some 120 emigrants, led by John T. Baker and Alexander Fancher, were traveling through the area on their way to California when they were attacked at a site about thirty-five miles southwest of present-day Cedar City. Only eighteen of the emigrants survived.

In 1988, a group of relatives of those Arkansas emigrants began planning for installation of a granite marker on the hill overlooking the site. Learning of their efforts, Dixie Leavitt, a Cedar City businessman and Utah state senator, helped organize a committee to move the project forward more effectively. The committee included representatives of both the Arkansas natives and Utah pioneer families. The group helped raise money for the new marker. It also won the cooperation of the Church in refurbishing an older marker at the site and of the state in preparing the site for the new marker.

During the memorial program on September 15, Roger Logan, a judge from Harrison, Arkansas, and J. K. Fancher, a descendant of Alexander Fancher, spoke representing the emigrant families. Paiute tribal chairwoman Geneal Anderson introduced Clifford Jake, a Paiute spiritual leader who performed a prayer ceremony as part of the memorial service. His prayer addressed the theme of reconciliation.

Brigham Young University President Rex E. Lee spoke representing descendants of LDS pioneer families from the area. As part of his address, he called representatives of the Arkansas families to the podium, clasped hands with them, and invited the people in the audience to stand and clasp hands with their neighbors in a gesture of reconciliation.

President Hinckley complimented the “courageous men and women who opened a dialogue that has led to this historic day.” He pointed out that the faith in Jesus Christ shared by many of those present had helped heal old wounds. “A bridge has been built across a chasm of cankering bitterness,” he said.

There will undoubtedly be a lot more discussion on this issue so each of you also must decide your position. The following was taken from the church website: One book that achieved national publicity was William Wise, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Legend and a Monumental Crime (Crowell, 1976). Unfortunately it is anti-Mormonism reminiscent of the past century and rests on the most superficial research. In a review of this book, Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington wrote, “It cannot be recommended as a model of careful scholarship, but it might well serve as a model of what careful scholarship is not.” For a more balanced appraisal of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one is well advised to rely on the thorough treatment by Juanita Brooks. (Mountain Meadows Massacre, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.)