Ardis Parshall wrote:an earlier post wrote:I read Bagley when it came out, and found it a balanced view. In the book, he really doesn’t promote his view that Brigham was deeply involved. He is more dedicated to exploring what the sources say and what we really know. He makes some conjectures, but identifies them as such.
BiV, you’ve made this claim on two threads this morning. While I don’t relish a fight with either you or Will today, it would be irresponsible of me not to challenge your statements in the interest of other T&S readers who may not have the background to do so.
I too read Blood of the Prophets when it came out (actually, before it came out, in prepublication form). At that time, Will and I were close friends and participated in the same email discussion groups. I defended him when his statements were misrepresented both online and in an MHA discussion (incurring the wrath of Daniel C. Peterson’s acid keyboard in doing so), and I furnished Will with a few relevant documents. In turn, he encouraged and praised and helped me get started in business, introducing me to everyone and boosting my confidence by speaking as though I had already achieved what he and I only hoped I could achieve. We have serious philosophical differences now and Will no longer considers me a friend, but when BOTP was published, we cared about each other’s good opinion and we were genuine friends.
I say that not as a name-dropper but as background to this: The first time I saw Will after reading his book, he eagerly asked my reaction. When I hesitated and tried to be noncommittal, he pinned my shoulders against the wall (we were in the hallway at Sunstone) and insisted I answer – “At least you have to admit I was fair!” or words to that effect. He was so sincere, and honestly believed he had been fair, and I hated to give him my own candid evaluation that he had been anything but fair. I know from the look on his face when I replied that he intended to be and believed he had been fair – and I use know with the same gravity I use when I say “I know life continues after death.”
Nevertheless, BOTP is not fair or balanced; Will fully lays the blame for the massacre at Brigham Young’s feet, just as he explicitly stated in the program last night; he follows only those sources that tend (sometimes through their ambiguity) to support his view, and he makes countless unsubstantiated allegations without identifying them as such. Because he is one of the most talented storytellers writing in Mormon history today, and because he so beautifully weaves quotations into his narrative, you have the impression that he is using sources appropriately and in context, but I submit that greater familiarity with the sources demonstrates that he uses sources so selectively as to be (even if unintentionally) deceptive.
Three examples:
In his writing, and in his appearance last night, Will states that nothing, absolutely nothing, happened in Utah without Brigham Young’s knowledge. In the case of MMM, Will doesn’t limit that to Brigham Young’s post-MMM awareness of what happened; last night he stated that MMM was a deliberate demonstration to the nation that Brigham Young controlled overland travel. Will believes and repeatedly writes/states that nothing happened in Utah without Brigham Young’s knowledge, meaning prior knowledge and approval and direction. Besides that being so patently foolish to anyone who considers time and distance and human nature, it is contradicted by the records. Oh, sure, you can find any number of documents dictated by Brigham Young directing the minutest details of this or that project. To anyone who has read Brigham Young’s fuller record – and I unhesitatingly include myself in that number – this view of “not a sparrow falls but Brigham Young directed it” is demonstrably false. Letter after letter after letter after letter flows out of Brigham Young’s office, pleading and urging and scolding and attempting to drag his wilful and independent flock into following his advice. His sermons – too often cherry-picked for their isolated colorful and inflammatory lines and not studied in full as his congregations heard them – attempt to persuade his people to do something other than what they have been doing. If Brigham Young controlled everything in the absolute way Will insists, there would be no need for the pleading and persuasion shown in the documentary sources, and no need to chastise anyone after the fact.
BOTP is full of contradictions – Will writes whatever supports his thesis, without regard for how one bit of “evidence” contradicts another. He writes, for example, as part of his effort to paint Mormons as merciless, depraved people, that illegitimate children were “plentiful” in southern Utah (without supporting citation, by the way); he also lists fornication and adultery as crimes falling under the penalty in his explication of blood atonement. He does not explain how fornication or adultery resulting in so many illegitimate children coexists with the terror of being blood-atoned for such crimes. Will writes – and stated last night – that Mountain Meadows was ordered by Brigham Young to threaten the United States by demonstrating his power to close transcontinental travel. I have struggled to reconcile the contradictory ideas of massacre-as-demonstration-of-power with massacre-must-be-concealed. The massacre could only serve as a warning if Mormon direction were publicized, not concealed. And Will can’t backpeddle by saying Brigham Young concealed it only when he realized it was going to work against him because the United States was more powerful than he was, because Will documents the coverup as beginning within hours after the massacre.
The most egregious problem is the one that has been thoroughly aired in published reviews. Will’s most powerful “proof” of Brigham Young’s direction of the massacre – a proof that was championed last night by Judith Freeman – is Dimick Huntington’s journal, supposedly showing that Brigham Young “encouraged his Indian allies to attack the Fancher Party to make clear to the nation the cost of war with the Mormons.” Forget that nothing in the relevant Huntington entry speaks of killing people, only of taking cattle. Forget that Huntington doesn’t mention either the Fancher train or any other company as brought to the attention of the Indians (yet the Fancher train, according to Will, is specifically targeted because of the presence of Arkansans who had been accused, Will claims, by Parley P. Pratt’s widow of PPP’s assassination). Forget all those gaps in the chain, and realize only that Will misread – unintentionally, I have no doubt, and caused only because he saw what he expected to see rather than what was actually there – the entry in Dimick Huntington’s journal. Instead of the Indians agreeing to go and “raise [allies]” as Will printed it, Huntington writes that the Indians stated they were going to “raise grain.” Far from agreeing to attack the emigrants, as Will needs the entry to say in order to support his claim, the Indians refuse to participate in any trouble, and instead proclaim that they are going home to watch the grass grow. [Later printings correct “allies” to “grain” but the brackets are inexplicably retained.]
Blood of the Prophets is a beautifully written book, well arranged, with flowing, fascinating prose. Will takes you to the scene of the massacre and forces you to see and feel the horror of it all. He follows the lives of the surviving children and justly evokes pity and compassion. The book has won any number of awards from many kinds of organizations because of its prose, and because people who don’t know any better assume it is a fearless, praiseworthy recitation of historical truth. There is a reason, however, why it has not won awards from the organizations and historians most familiar with relevant Utah history and the sources that must be considered in any rational, balanced examination of the massacre – only those who are familiar with the full spectrum of Mormon-related documents, not the cherry-picked out-of-context excerpts favored by so many historians, realize how badly BOTP fails as history.