In 1861 Brigham Young finally visited the site. Apostle Wilford Woodruff recorded his reaction: "We visited the Mountain Meadow Monument put up at the burial place of 120 persons killed by Indians in 1857. The pile of stone was about 12 feet high, but beginning to tumble down. A wooden cross was placed on top with the following words: Vengeance is mine and I will repay saith the Lord. President Young said it should be Vengeance is mine and I have taken a little."3
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3. Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 9 vols. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1984), 5:577.
I'm sure most of you are familiar with this citation. What interested me was the reaction of one poster in particular, called rick7475:
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... opic=27468
OK, I am missing something here.
BY uttered a few angry perhaps misquided words (did he even know all the facts?) and let some of his followers tear down a monument. Perhaps you can claim some a little disrespect on his part, perhaps anger, guilt for the Mormons involved, whatever.
And yet somehow this makes BY guilty of something a prophet wouldn't do or even involved somehow in the massacre itself?
And yet, when I read the Bible or the Book of Mormon, we have accounts of prophets who have done things that are far more serious, denying Christ, denying God, literally killing men, women and children (not just talking about vengence, but doing the deed itself), cutting off the penises of dead soldiers and collecting them, killing children, starting wars, destroying cities, displacing entire peoples ...
And yet some people, Christians even who supposedly read the Bible, have the audacity to quote a few angry statements from BY and try and pursuade us that a true prophet would never do such a thing?
And lets remember, that the United States was at war with BY. Even after BY had committed troops to fight in the Mexican War to prove their loyalty. Why wouldn't he be angry? The persecution never stops. And even through all of this, he ordered the wagon train to be left alone.
What an irony that in the Bible it is OK for Biblical prophets to wipe out Canaanites, yet a prophet such as BY is condemned for simply uttering a few words of anger when he NEVER EVEN ORDERED THE MASSACRE.
And to top it all off, a whiny bunch of self serving descendents of the wagon party, from their comfortable arm chairs and living rooms, have the nerve to say that they are traumatized. What a load of crap. My ancestors of 150 - 300 years ago suffered far worse than the Fancher Party. I am not tramatized that my native American ancestors were forced off their land, killed, raped, and emasculated as a people by white soldiers and white government. I am not traumatized that my French Canadian ancestors were forced from their homes in the freezing Canadian winter and starved to death at Quebec because American forces ravaged and destroyed my ancestoral home. I am not traumatized by my great grandmother who drowned in the icy waters of the Atlantic when the Lusitania full of innocent men, women, and children was torpedoed by a German U-Boat.
We all know that the Fauncher Party descendents are all 'traumatized' because of greed, bigotry, and a shot at media attention.
One of the basic teachings of Mormonism is to honor one's ancestors. Perhaps the descendants of the fancher party are just trying to honor their ancestors by telling their story.