Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Legend and a Monumental Crime

In September 1857, over 100 emigrants, including many women and children, were brutally ambushed and murdered in a peaceful meadow in southern Utah. Wise' thesis is that these murders were orchestrated and directed by Brigham Young, who was the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, or Mormon) as well as the territorial governor at the time. Growing up in the LDS Church, I'd been taught that the Massacre was the dirty work of local Indians, that the LDS Church had nothing to do with it, and that accusations of complicity by Brigham Young were nothing but filthy lies by the Church's enemies. [See, for example, Essentials in Church History, Joseph Fielding Smith, 1950, pages 418-422]. Basically, the LDS response has been: "We didn't do it. The Indians did it. But if we had done it, we'd have had a really good reason because those gentiles were so evil." Wise, though, has the upper hand in this debate. He has clearly demonstrated his thesis with far more references to verifiable history than anything I've ever seen offered by the Church. Wise begins by dispelling LDS propaganda to the effect that the train consisted of "Missouri Wild Cats," who intimidated the Mormons until they felt moved to murder. Appendix A lists the people in the Fancher train, which consisted mostly of prosperous families from Arkansas, including many women and children. Latter chapters also provide convincing evidence that the Fancher train was denied the opportunity to purchase supplies in Utah because of anti-Gentile sentiment that had been fanned by Brigham Young in advance of a US Army sent to re-establish law and order in the Utah territory. He also shows (through eye-witness historical accounts) that the Fancher train had originally planned to take the northern route, but were persuaded by Mormon leaders to take the Southern route, ostensibly to facilitate the ambush and murder by LDS members in Southern Utah.To understand the massacre at Mountain Meadows you must first understand the origin of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the violence that engulfed it's early years. This background information consumes over 1/3 of Wise' book. The author begins by describing Joseph Smith as a gold digger that hired out with local farmers to help them find buried treasure by looking at special "seer" stones. Joseph's boyhood was one of abject poverty, and get-rich schemes were an important part of his early life. Eventually this led him to create the Book of Mormon (see "Quest for the Gold Plates," by Stan Larson) and organize the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The early history of the Church was fraught with violence by both Gentiles and Mormons. On the whole, I think Wise does a balanced job of describing how and why the violence existed, and why it involved Mormons more than most other new religions of the time. These reasons include exclusionary LDS theology, the practice of polygamy and polyandry by Chu

I couldn't put this book down. It is a fascinating and damning story of Mormon complicity in the cold-blooded murder of over one hundred innocent pioneers traveling through the Utah territory under the theocratic rule of Brigham Young. It was especially interesting to read other accounts of the Mountain Meadows Massacre that were written by members of the Morman church and to see the way the church has tried to rationalize and justify this bloody deed by such antics as denying the number of emigrants killed, berating the character of the pioneers, blaming it all on the Indians, and changing the date of the massacre in order to make Brigham Young appear innocent. This is fascinating history for anyone searching for the truth.