The Earliest Written Account of the Mountain Meadows Massac

[_Joe Geisner]

If you get a chance, you need to read Connell's cutting edge piece just posted to JI. Connell's work is top notch, and with this discovery he has even stunned many long time researchers of MMM with this find.

Connell is also editing Charlotte's mother's letters. Augusta was Young's second plural wife. There will be even more eye opening than John Turner's exception biography of Young. Augusta could cut Young into little pieces.


http://www.juvenileinstructor.org/the-e ... -massacre/

[_just me]

OMG! Thank you for posting this!

[Guest]

n/m found it

[_Cicero]

Thanks Joe! This is fascinating.

[_Equality]

Fantastic stuff. Is this by the guy who documented the church's campaign of torture on gays?

Edited to add: answered my own question. Yes, this is the guy. He has done a lot of great research. http://connellodonovan.com/lgbtmormons.html

[_just me]

Fantastic stuff. Is this by the guy who documented the church's campaign of torture on gays?

Edited to add: answered my own question. Yes, this is the guy. He has done a lot of great research. http://connellodonovan.com/lgbtmormons.html

Oh, I've been on his site before. I love this guy. Damn.

[_sansfoy]

Fascinating, thanks.

[_Yahoo Bot]

Interesting but doesn't contribute hardly a thing. As the blog post points out, this identical information was communicated between Arapeen and Brigham Young on Sept 20th. But it does reveal that ordinary members were possessed of this information at about the same time Arapeen rode into town. (On the other hand, the Huntington diary strongly suggests that "new had reached the city" before the September 20 diary entry.)

Almost all of this letter simply recounts what Young had been already saying over the pulpit in published sources we have today.

But, O'Donovan tortures Huntington's diary entry (just as Will Bagley) had done.

The September 20 entry, as O'Donovan has it tortured, is:

"[September] 20 Arapene came to see Brigham Brigham told him now was the time to helpt himself to what he wanted [from non-Mormon emigrant trains] but he sayed he was [wants?] a squaw he sayed the Americans [i.e. non-Mormons] had not hurt him & he Did not want to hurt them but if they would only hurt one of his men then he would wake up he told me that the Piedes [Paiutes] had Killed the whole of a Emigrant Company & took all of their stock & it was right that was before the news had reached the City."

However, the entry from the diary that sits in the Historians' office (I have a typescript and an autograph copy) without the interpolations is:

"20 Arapene came to see Brigham Brigham told him now was the time to help himself to what he wanted but he say-cd he was a squaw he sayed the Americans had not hurt him & he Did not want to hurt them but if they would only hurt one of his men then he would make up he told me that the Piedes had killd the whole of a Emigrant company & took all of their stock & it was right that was before the news had reached the City."

The important thing to know from O'Donovan's tortured analysis is that O'Donovan assumes that the "Americans" are "non-Mormon emigrant trains." But early Mormon diaries show that when Indians referred to the "Americans" or the "Mericats" they almost always referred to the U.S. Army. [Often, the Emigrants were Irish, or English, or Scandinavian.] Here, we have an example of Huntington recounting what Arapeen is telling him, and Arapeen is able to distinguish in his comments between the Americans and the Emigrants. But O'Donovan wrongly assumes that the "Americans" are the emigrant trains.

Thus, elsewhere, when Huntington recounts meetings with Brigham Young, and the Americans, and cattle, it is very obvious that the Indians and Young are referring to the Army, not emigrant trains. (See the entry on page 14 of the journal where Young is talking about the army and "fighting" the Americans; page 35 talks about the "US Cattle".) But this blog entry that O'Donovan mangles or recasts Huntington to say that the Indians were talking about fighting the emigrants and stealing their cattle.

Nowhere is the misuse of this particular September 20 entry so acute as in Bagley's book. He reads this entry (see both versions above) to say that Brigham Young counseled Arapeen to take whatever he wanted from the Fancher train. This is one of Bagley's worst abuses. Rather, Young tells Arapeen to take the Army's cattle (a scheme Stenhouse confirms) and only then does Arapeen reveal to young that a massacre had taken place.

I discuss this major flaw in my review piece, which Geisner has read. I don't know if O'Donovan has. Geisner is so much of a Bagley sychophant that he can't see the flaws. Or admit to a single one. My short piece highlighting some of Bagley's more interesting flaws is at http://randomrunner.wordpress.com/2011/ ... -prophets/. You'll see that Bagley posts a reply to this piece on my website, and tackles only the charge that I make that he never set foot in the National Archives and instead relied upon a file provided by an anti-Mormon author, William Wiseman. Bagley says nothing about the other flaws I identify.

So, the executive summary is:

The Huntington quote O'Donovan uses is misused to make it appear that when Brigham Young was talking about fighting the army by giving their cattle to the Indians, Young was actually talking about killing an emigrant train.

[_Madison54]

The important thing to know from O'Donovan's tortured analysis is that O'Donovan assumes that the "Americans" are "non-Mormon emigrant trains." But early Mormon diaries show that when Indians referred to the "Americans" or the "Mericats" they almost always referred to the U.S. Army.

Orson Whitney (and others) stated that the Indians distinguished between "the Mormon settlers and the other white people....one class they called 'Mericats' - Americans - and the other class they called Mormons". They called all non-Mormons "Mericats" or "Americans"....not just the U.S. Army. So Arapene could have very likely been referring to a non-Mormon emigrant train.

[_Yahoo Bot]

The important thing to know from O'Donovan's tortured analysis is that O'Donovan assumes that the "Americans" are "non-Mormon emigrant trains." But early Mormon diaries show that when Indians referred to the "Americans" or the "Mericats" they almost always referred to the U.S. Army.

Orson Whitney (and others) stated that the Indians distinguished between "the Mormon settlers and the other white people....one class they called 'Mericats' - Americans - and the other class they called Mormons". They called all non-Mormons "Mericats" or "Americans"....not just the U.S. Army. So Arapene could have very likely been referring to a non-Mormon emigrant train.

He was so long after the fact, but -- no -- the contemporary pieces indicate that "Mericats" meant the Army or the US Government itself, directing the Army. See
http://www.deism.com/mormontodeism.htm (search "Mericats"). I realize that modern commentators seem to assume "Mericats" meant non-Mormons, but it usually did not. Mericats usually seemed to mean armed soldiers. I suppose there are times Wakara could not distinguish between armed settlers, irregulars and regulars.

Nonetheless, that is not a central element of my post.

So Arapene could have very likely been referring to a non-Mormon emigrant train.

Not likely. He drew a distinction between the Fancher train and the Americans, and so clearly so, in that Sept 20, entry.