First, I recognize that this must have been an incredibly difficult book for believers to write, and for believers to read, even more so than it is for nonbelievers to read. It is a heart-wrenching, ugly story, and the evidence obviously identifies the perpetrators as men who believed in the LDS church, believed in being obedient to its leaders, and believed they were doing the will of God. No matter how else a believer tries to reconcile this information, it must be troubling on a certain level, because it raises questions, once again, about the effect of and reliability of the spirit in terms of enlightening the faithful, and providing clear counsel via that same spirit.
I also believe that this book, along with Rough Rolling Stone (which I have not read, so I’m using that example based on the comments of others), marks a turning point in how LDS faithful feel permitted to approach history without running afoul of the brethren. Personally, I am convinced that this move away from adoring, whitewashed history was likely heavily influenced by the advent of the information age of the internet. Back when I joined the LDS church in1976, believers who were familiar with controversial issues could be fairly confident that potential converts, or members, would likely not be exposed to these same issues. Therefore, these issues could safely be ignored. That is no longer the case. I am quite certain that I would never have joined the LDS church had I had access to the internet, for example. Critics have long proposed that the church needs to confront these issues more openly, if for no other reason than to avoid the anger that many believers experience when discovering these things on their own, and feeling as if the church hid or ignored the information.
Having said that, I am personally persuaded that the conflict of interest discussed in depth in the previous thread did, indeed, have a notable impact on this work. I am not saying that this was deliberate on anyone’s part, but that does not negate its effect.
In the years I’ve discussed Mormonism with defenders of the faith on the internet, I’ve noticed that they usually draw a line beyond which they simply cannot go. This is particular noticeable when the reliability of revelation is discussed. Believers are quite willing to concede that revelation is not an entirely consistent or reliable instrument, and that this is the reason why prophets, and others, sometimes believe their ideas originated with God when they really originated in their own minds or cultures. If one follows this proposal to its logical conclusion, one would have to concede that the reality of ambiguous, or flawed, “revelation” means that one could reasonably question all revelations, even those that address the very basic foundational claims of the LDS church. However, this is a line that believers cannot go beyond. It is too threatening to preserving faith.
I believe that the new line that believers cannot cross, in regards to Mountain Meadows Massacre, is the possible involvement of Brigham Young. As DCP stated on the previous thread, if BY were found to be directly involved in ordering the massacre, that would call his prophet-hood into question. Reality is likely a bit more complicated than that. I think it is more likely that defenders of the faith would find someway to reconcile even this with maintaining faith in the church. We’ve seen this in the past. Once upon a time, some defenders of the faith claimed that if solid information were discovered that Joseph Smith had been taken to trial for money-digging, that would be the death-knoll for LDS truth claims. Yet that did not occur. I would imagine that, prior to the uncovering of the Book of Abraham papyri, many defenders of the faith would have thought that actually discovering the papyri and discovering they did not contain the text of the Book of Abraham would be a death-knoll for LDS truth claims. And yet it was not. True Believers can literally reconcile any information. But, of course, discovering that BY ordered the massacre would cause problems for believers, and there would be some who would lose faith. Additionally, ordering a massacre of innocents is far more damning than, say, Joseph Smith marrying a fourteen year old girl, so I don’t want to minimize the effect this could have. The fact that a practiced apologist such as DCP thinks that it would call his prophet-hood into question is significant.
After reading the book, I am personally convinced that the authors started their work with the already formed firm belief that BY did not order the massacre, because they believe in the church, and do not believe a prophet could engage in such an act. I think this a-priori belief created a skewed lens through which they evaluated evidence. It created the tendency to “notice” information that could absolve BY while not noticing information that could also condemn him. I will demonstrate my point in examples, starting with the two I offered earlier as “teasers”.
1. Massacre, page 98
One extended passage in the August 16 sermon was clearly meant for Washington, possibly in hopes of bringing about a settlement. “I…wish to say to all Gentiles,” Young told non-Mormons in the congregation, to “send word to your friends that they must stop crossing this continent to Calafornia for the indians will kill them.” He wanted Washington to know what it would lose by alienating the Mormons. The Mormon leader was raising the stakes by threatening the flow of goods and people across the middle of the continent. But there was also the practical reality that if the Saints fled to the mountains to fight a guerilla war, they could no longer mediate between emigrants and Indians. “This people have always done good to the travelers,” Young insisted. “They have kept the Indians from injuring them and have done all in their power to save the lives of men, women and children, but all this will cease to be, if our enemies commence war on us.”
This implies that the reason the Indians would start attacking emigrants would be due to the absence of the intervening Mormons, who would have fled. Yet look at the passage omitted in Massacre, but included by Bagley:
“If the United States send their army here and war commences, the travel must stop; your trains must not cross this continent back and forth. To accomplish this I need only say a word to the [tribes], for the Indians will use them up unless I continually strive to restrain them. I will say no more to the Indians, let them alone, but do as you please. And what is that? It is to use them up; and they will do it.” (page 91)
The bolded words clearly convey that BY was not just referring to what would happen of the Mormons were no longer around to protect emigrants, due to having fled from the feds, but he was referring to actively encouraging the Indians to attack emigrant trains.
This citation also makes clear that BY wasn’t just talking about the military when he referred to the risk of Indian attack, but was referring to civilian emigrants.
2. Another one, in regards to the involvement of George A Smith and Brigham Young. Here's the quote from Massacre, page 70:
In after years Smith’s journey to southern Utah became a matter of controversy, with some interpreting his sermons and even the places he stopped as a deliberate prelude to the Mountain Meadows Massacre less than a month later. John D. Lee’s several posthumously published “confessions” – which appeared two decades after the tour – said that while the party was passing through the Santa Clara canyon, Smith asked, “Brother Lee, what do you think the brethren would do if a company of emigrants should come down through here making threats? Don’t you think they would pitch into them?”
“They certainly would,” Lee replied, to which Smith answered, “I asked Isaac (meaning Haight) the same question, and he answered me just as you do.
Several months after the first publication of the this conversation, another version of Lee’s confessions appeared under the title Mormonism Unveiled. It made the charge against Smith even stronger. “I have always believed, since that day, that General George A. Smith was then visiting Southern Utah to prepare the people for the work of exterminating Captain Fancher’s train of emigrants,” the book said, “and I now believe he was sent for that purpose by the direct command of Brigham Young.” The passage would be used by some writers as key evidence for saying that Smith and Young had planned the massacre.
These statements, however, would have required remarkable prescience on Smith’s part. Even if he knew which trains would take the northern or southern routes to California, it is doubtful he knew their behavior on the road would include making threats against the southern Utah people. Moreover, Lee’s attorney and editor, William W. Bishop, almost certainly reworked Lee’s “confessions” in Mormonism Unveiled to improve its sales, including the charges against Smith and Young. Bishop had a motive before making these changes as his legal fees were tied to the book’s royalties.
Just moments before Lee’s execution – and after he had supposedly written the words in Mormonism Unveiled – Lee talked with a reporter from the then unabashedly anti-Mormon Salt Lake Tribune. The reporter pressed Lee to know what Smith had said to him before the massacre.
“Did he preach hostile to the emigrants?” the reporter asked.
“He was visiting all the settlements and preaching against the emigrants,” Lee said. Then referring to the people killed at Mountain Meadows, he added, “I don’t know that he meant those particular emigrants.” This – Lee’s final statement on the subject – makes it unlikely that he made the statement attributed to him in Mormonism Unveiled, especially since he had been offered his life by prosecutors if he would just charge Smith and Young with ordering the massacre. He went to his death instead.
Here's the passage discussing the same event from Bagley. I have highlighted the portion omitted in Massacre that I find pertinent, page 86:
Smith claimed that he enjoyed his “glorious interview” with the natives of the desert, but Lee found the large numbers of Paiutes that gathered around the Mormons impudent. As Lee translated, the apostle told them the Americans were their enemies and the enemies of the Mormons too. If the Indians helped to fight their mutual adversary, the Saints “would always keep them from want and sickness and give them guns and ammunition to hunt and kill game with, and would also help the Indians against their enemies when they went into war.” This pleased them, Lee recalled, “and they agreed to all that [he] asked them to do.”
During their visit to the Tonaquints, Lee thought Smith was a little fearful of the Indians. Lee hitched up quickly and left. “Those are savage looking fellows,” Smith said after a mile or so. “I think they would make it lively for an emigrant train if one should come this way.” Lee said the Paiutes would attack any train. Smith went into a deep study and said, “Suppose an emigrant train should come along through this southern country, making threats against our people and bragging of the part they took in helping to kill our Prophets, what do you think the brethren would do with them? Would they be permitted to go their way, or would the brethren pitch in and give them a good drubbing?” Lee said the brethren were under the influence of the Reformation and were still red-hot for the gospel. Any train would be attacked and probably destroyed. “I am sure they would be wiped out if they had been making threats against our people.”
Smith seemed delighted with Lee’s answer and rephrased the question, “Do you really believe the brethren would make it lively for such a train?” Lee said they would, and he warned that unless Smith wanted the Saints to attack every train passing through the south, Brigham Young should send direct orders to Dame and Haight to let them pass. The people, Lee said, were bitter, full of zeal, and “anxious to avenge the blood of the Prophets.” Smith said he had asked Haight the same question, and Haight gave the same answer. Smith thought the Paiutes, “with the advantage they had of the rocks, could use up a large company of emigrants, or make it very hot for them.” Lee again warned that if Young wanted emigrants companies to pass unmolested, he must give Dame and Haight explicit instructions “for if they are not ordered otherwise, they will use them up by the help of the Indians.” The conversation convinced Lee that Smith expected every emigrant passing through the territory to be killed. I thought it was his mission to prepare the people for the bloody work,” Lee wrote.
Federal investigators were later convinced Brigham Young sent letters south “authorizing, if not commanding,” the destruction of the Fancher train, but it is unlikely Young would commit such an order to writing. Lee’s tale of his ambiguous conversations with Smith on the Santa Clara may best reflect what actually happened. If Smith gave orders to kill the emigrants, they may have been no more explicit than to “use them up” or “give them a good drubbing.” Mormon leaders often spoke in code words whose meaning was clear only to insiders. One of Young’s favorite phrases, “A word to the wise is sufficient,” meant, “Don’t make me spell it out.” This ambiguity had many advantages; it sheltered Mormon leaders from accountability and shifted responsibility from top leaders to local authorities. But orders couched in such enigmatic terms were easily misinterpreted, a serious problem given the volatile atmosphere and the slow pace of communications in Utah Territory.
Lee arrived at his own conclusion: “I have always believed, since that day, that General George A. Smith was then visiting Southern Utah to prepare the people for the work of exterminating Captain Fancher’s train of emigrant, and I now believe he was sent for that purpose by the direct command of Brigham Young.”
This passage is extremely important, due to the fact that it demonstrates how the information in Mormonism Unveiled can be reconciled with Lee’s statement at his execution. Did Young directly order the massacre of the Fancher train, in specific??? Maybe not. But Lee told Smith that he was interpreting his words to mean that they should “molest” every emigrant company unless otherwise directed. So the end effect is the same. He didn’t need to order the massacre of that specific train. All trains were going to be attacked, unless specifically notified otherwise.
Now, perhaps the authors will choose not to trust anything Lee says about the matter. But they are content to refer to his words when they believe those words absolve Brigham Young, so to omit the information that demonstrates how his words at execution were consistent with Mormonism Unveiled is extremely misleading.
Again, this doesn’t have to be a deliberate, calculated act of omission. Studies demonstrate that the human mind helpfully “edits out” information that is too threatening to recognize, so they could have not “seen” the importance of the omitted section at all. In fact, I trust that some defenders of the faith will also not be able to see the importance of the omitted section, as well. I also trust it’s pretty clear to less emotionally invested folks.
3. July 23 picnic
Here’s how the authors summarized Brigham Young’s statements at the July 23 picnic, from page 35 of Massacre:
By that night, the Latter-day Saints were dancing, fishing, and enjoying the alpine beauty. At twilight, Young spoke to his guests. He said “he had things on his mind” that he had never told them. “These are the secret chambers of the mountains…calculated to ward off the traveller on the outside from coming down in here.” If only the Mormon people “would do right,” he promised, their enemies would never drive them from their mountain valleys. At the end of the program, Heber C. Kimball, one of Young’s counselors, “offered a prayer of thanksgiving unto God for his goodness to his people, prayed for Israel and Israel’s enemies, and renewedly dedicated and consecrated unto God the ground” where the Saints were camped.
The next day, July 24, the Saints’ celebration included patriotic speeches and three cannon salutes in honor of the people’s rights, their independence, and their leaders. Repeatedly, the partygoers also offered “three groans” for the state of Missouri. The Mormons had not lost their sense of humor, but neither had they lost their memory of the suffering they experienced in that state. Still later the territorial militia drilled, including a cohort of teenagers. Militia drills were a common part of public celebrations in mid-nineteenth-century America.
Here’s a passage from Bagley describing the picnic, page 80:
The messengers left Salt Lake the next morning at 4:45 for Big Cottonwood Canyon. At noon they rode into the vast camp of twenty-five hundred selected Saints assembled to celebrate Pioneer Day. A bugle summoned the crowd at sunset, and their leaders addressed them from an eminence at the center of the campground. Their exact remarks do not survive, but according to the Deseret News, a “scene of the maddest confusion” followed. Brigham Young told the crowd “they constituted henceforth a free and independent state, to be known no longer as Utah, but by their own Mormon name of Deseret.” Kimball “called on the people to adhere to Brigham, as their prophet, seer, revelator, priest, governor, and king.”
Brigham Young often recalled that on reaching the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, he had said, “If the people of the United States will let us alone for ten years, we will ask no odds of them.” He did not think about it again until ten years later, when he learned that Buchanan was sending troops to Utah. Now he predicted that the army would be followed by “priests, politicians, speculators, whoremongers, and every mean, filthy character that could be raked up [to] kill off the ‘Mormons.’” The prophet’s patience was at an end: “We have borne enough of their oppression and hellish abuse, and we will not ear any more of it.. In the name of Israel’s God, we ask no odds of them.”
Paints quite a different picture, doesn’t it? The people were exhorted to follow BY as their “king”, and then BY announced that the people who would follow the army would be hellish people committed to killing Mormons. Yet this information didn’t make it into Massacre.
4. Eleanor Pratt’s recounting of Parley’s murder
First, I can’t talk about the Pratt murder without mentioning the irony of the fact that he was killed by a husband who was angry about Parley taking his wife. According to Bagley, George A. Smith’s first case as a lawyer was to defend Howard Egan for killing a man who had seduced his wife. From page 41:
Smith argued that “If a law is to be in force upon us, it must be plain and simple to the understanding, and applicable to our situation.” He reasoned that “in this territory it is a principle of mountain common law, that no man can seduce the wife of another without endangering his own life.”
Back to my primary point, which is what the two authors chose to tell us about the widow’s recounting of the murder. Both authors accept that Eleanor was rushed back to SL and arrived during the time frame of the picnic. This is how it is summarized in Massacre, page 37, my emphasis:
Eleanor McLean Pratt returned to Salt Lake City with them, still fleeing from Hector McLean, who remained intent on locking her in an insane asylum. Eleanor was eager to provide vivid details of Parley’s assassination, but the accounts of the Silver Lake picnic would not mention her, perhaps because she didn’t attend or because Parley’s death had been known in Utah for more than a month. It was old news.
Compare this to Bagley, page 81:
By Sunday, July 26, the Mormon leaders were preaching in Salt Lake. Kimball caught the defiant mood of the people: “Send 2,500 troops here, our brethren, to make a desolation of this people! God Almighty helping me, I will fight until there is not a drop of blood in my veins. Good God! I have wives enough to whip out the United States, for they will whip themselves.” Along with his fellow apostles, Wilford Woodruff attended a prayer meeting in the evening at Young’s “Upper Room”. “Presidet Young expressed his feelings in plainness Concerning our Enemies.” The meeting was apparently restricted to males, but they read Elanor Pratt’s impassioned letter describing her husband’s murder and discussed their future plans. In his journal Brigham Young wrote, “We prayed for our enemies.”
Woodruff “got an account of the death and burial of Elder P. P. Pratt” from Pratt’s widow on August 1. The long narrative expressed her bitterness against Arkansas and her certainty that Parley Pratt’s innocent blood must be avenged. A lawyer in Van Buren had asked her “whether the Mormons would not avenge this man’s blood, even if the Court did nothing.” She assured him, “if the murderers can feel secure in any nation under heaven or upon any island of the sea they are welcome to feel so. One thing I know McLean has to die and go to hell for what he has done, and every man who assisted him in this deed.”
So was Pratt’s death really “old news”? by the way, BY mentioned Parley’s death in his August 16 sermon, as well, which I will address later.
Speaking of Eleanor Pratt, another serious omission in Massacre can be found in Bagley’s book, on page 98:
On August 1 Apostle Wilford Woodruff had called on “Eleanor Pratt & got an account of the death & burial of Elder P. P. Pratt. Years later Charles Wandell, an embittered Mormon apostate, reported that when the Fancher train passed though Salt Lake, the widow Pratt “recognized one or more of the party as having been present at the death of Pratt.”
Now, whether or not the authors of Massacre would choose to give any credence to the words of an embittered apostate, is it really fair and thorough to completely omit any reference to this charge?
I’m going to post this in installments. It’s just too long for one post, so I’ll post segments as I finish.