What’s missing from this glowing profile of the Mormon religion in the latest issue of Newsweek?
This: The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 120 men, women, and children.
The Newsweek article points out more than once that the Mormons were persecuted out of state after state. But it fails to mention an event that Mark Twain wrote about a hundred years ago, and that remains one of the worst massacres of Americans in our history.
The Mountain Meadows massacre occurred on Friday, September 11, 1857 in Mountain Meadows, Utah, several miles south of Enterprise in Washington County along the Spanish Trail to Santa Fe. Mormon militia and Paiutes killed an entire wagon train of Arkansas farming families known as the Baker/Fancher party, traveling from Arkansas to California together with a group from Missouri that called themselves the “Missouri Wildcats”. Around 120 unarmed men, women and older children were killed; 17 of the younger children (none older than six) were spared and all but one (who was raised in a Mormon family) were eventually returned to relatives in Arkansas.
If Newsweek wants to write an article about the two hundredth birthday of Joseph Smith, that’s fine. Let’s not at the same time whitewash the history of the religion he founded, however.
You’re attempting to link the article in Newsweek to the Mountain Meadows Massacre is irresponsible. That is like blaming the early Christian Apostles for the Inquisition.
“The exact reasons for the massacre remain unclear and are in dispute.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre
10 short minutes of research reveals that there is much unknown about the massacre and it is quite clear that those involved were acting on their own, not at all sanctioned by the LDS Church.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre did happen. But is it so critically important that it again deserves national press treatment here?
The Massacre has received much press treatment, especially in the recent years. However, I don’t see this as any attempt by the LDS Church, or anyone else for that matter, to “gloss over” history, as this subject has received sufficient attention in various outlets.
We do, however, need to be very careful to not use the Massacre as a basis for making a wide generalization that is ill-based by using the irrational acts of a small, local sample of panicked adherents to characterize and to treat the history of a world-wide religion.
Robert L. Millet, Professor of Religious Understanding at the LDS Church-sponsored Brigham Young University states, “The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 is truly one of the black marks on our history, an event that has spawned ill will, guilt and embarrassment for a century and a half. [There are many] factors leading up to the massacre: the fact that Johnston’s army was coming to Utah and that the “Utah War†seemed inevitable; the fact that Latter-day Saint Apostle Parley P. Pratt had recently been brutally assassinated in Arkansas; the fact that some of those who accompanied the Arkansans through the Utah Territory were Missourians who claimed to have had a role in the Hauns Mill Massacre in Missouri in which several Latter-day Saints had been killed by a mob; and the rather incendiary sermons of Church leaders toward those outside the faith who were seeking to disturb the peace. In other words, there was in the air a tension, a stress, a war hysteria that hung over the people — Mormon and non-Mormon alike — like a dark shroud. As a result of these and perhaps other factors that incited the local Latter-day Saint leaders and settlers to react, the massacre occurred and 120 people died. Whatever the reasons for why the Latter-day Saints chose to act as they did, in reality there is no excuse for what took place. It was an atrocity, both uncivilized and unchristian. The Saints knew better and had been taught to abide by a higher standard. ” (lds.org)
There is, to my knowledge, no documentation supporting that any regional or even top-ranking Church leaders at the time were involved in authorizing or sanctioning the acts of violence. Keeping in mind the difficulty and time lag of long distance communication on the frontier in the mid-19th century, it seems unlikely that the panicked settlers would wait the several days necessary to communicate with Church leadership hundreds of miles away.
I see this as an isolated incident of a small group of people who panicked and made the wrong choice. Sure, they were Mormons. There are now millions of Mormons throughout the world, probably some in your own neighborhood. You probably know who they are. You are certainly capable of drawing your own rationalizations and generalizations from your own experience with them. Are they irrational and prone to violence? Surely, if this were the case, and if it could be such attributed to a religion claiming millions upon millions of adherents worldwide over nearly two centuries, there should be many more than one or two outstanding examples of such violence.
Why would an isolated incident such as this Massacre be critically important in an article treating the broad history of a religion and a people? The only purpose I could imagine that one would want to include it would be support the false generalization that “all Mormons are violent.” If we want to support that obvious over-generalization, we can visit some other equally ridiculous overgeneralizations. It is like asking someone: “Would you like to understand Catholicism today? Then study carefully the atrocities of the Crusades and the horrors of the Inquisition.†Or: “Would you like to gain a better insight into the minds and feelings of German people today? Then read Mein Kampf and become a serious student of Adolph Hitler.†Or: “Would you like a deeper glimpse into the hearts of Lutherans today? Then be certain to study the anti-Semitic writings of Martin Luther.†Or: “Would you care to better understand where Southern Baptists are coming from? Then simply read the many sermons of Baptist preachers in the Civil War who utilized biblical passages to justify the practice of slavery.â€
I agree wholeheartedly with Lee Benson of Salt Lake City’s Deseret News: “Throughout history,†he wrote, “perfectly respectable religions have been used as the jumping-off spot for hundreds and thousands of people aiming for an orbit outside of what’s right. From Henry VIII when he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn to Osama bin Laden when he wanted to topple the Twin Towers to Cain killing Abel, it is a practice as old as mankind itself. Blaming religions for these unauthorized, self-serving spinoffs is like blaming Philo Farnsworth [the inventor of television] for MTV†(Deseret News, 21 July, 2003).
In a world where good sounding, controversial rationalizations sell, we need to keep in check what we assume as authoritive. I think the avoidance of such non-characteristic information was appropriate in the Newsweek article intended for such a broad audience and am in agreement with that position of its author.
I should like to point out that I had no idea that Newsweek now uses the Technorati trackers to link to posts about their articles.
I didn’t give this post national attention. They did. If you don’t like it, feel free to gripe to them.
So did write the original post or not?
So did [you] write the original post of not?
So did you write the original post or not?
(Haha! 3rd time is the charm.)
I think that the massacre accusation is like saying that the 9/11 tragedy is the Muslum religion. We all know that isn’t true. It wasn’t the muslims that sanctioned the awful 9.11 day. The mormon church didn’t sanction the masacre either, and like stated above by amatter, that is a very true statement about the massacre. The church states that was a very dark day in the history of the church. 9/11 was a dark day for the world, but a dark day for the peaceful muslums around the world. It is a day that if they could retract, they would. It is a day in the church that if they could reatract, they would. My great grandfather speaks of being in his mothers arms in the Hahns mill massacre. They were angry people that did a lot of wrongs on a very peace loving people. The mobs that ran these people out of missouri. Similar to other religions being exterminated, but weren’t.
We need to put the blame where it belongs, not on those who are innocent.
The problem with The Mountain Meadows Massacre is that there is substantial and credible evidence that the current prophet when it occurred (Brigham Young) very much knew about what happened and gave word to his favored “son” Lee to take care of this. Young then distanced himself from Lee and claimed that he (Young) never told Lee what specifically to do or how to take care of the problem. The LDS prophet had been telling people that the Federal Government was coming to take over “their” land, fueling a culture and society of suspect and mistrust, and, as you say, panicked adherents.
The really disgusting thing is how the residents came back and picked the bodies clean of every piece of clothing, even under things, took the children back and then attempted to extort money from the orphans remaining family and the Federal government to recoup their money.
Even the protestant Christians of today can say of the Crusades and the Inquisition: “Yes. Those are disturbing times in the history of our faith. Thank God we know better now.” Why can’t the current LDS prophet do the same?
I challenge “clothesguy” to read a history of his faith written by someone not of his faith. It is true that the Mormons were treated wrongly by the citizens of Missouri (“a small, local sample of panicked adherents” as “amatter” says) and even by the governor himself. They were also wrongly treated by citizens of other states but for some reason Missouri is the one most mentioned. (Hmmm, are we having a reversal here? Should I tell the Mormons to get over what happened in Missouri and that was a long time ago and that current Missourians aren’t that way at all, so why do you have to keep bringing it up? Think about it.)
I would agree that most LDS are peace-loving, but I would say that is a recent development. It has only been in the last twenty years that the calling of those Protestant Ministers as friends of Satan because they take a salary from their church (which, btw, Bishops are allowed to do, too) has been removed from the Temple. In the past, the LDS thought themselves above the Federal law in the counterfeiting of money, practicing polygyny (polgamy is not the correct word as it refers to more than one husband or wife and women aren’t allowed and never have been allowed to have more than one husband for eternity; polygyny is one man and multiple wives), and rackteering. Today, I would say that because of what they felt to be a federal government encroachment, they are Republican in their economic and moral politics, but are libertarian in their personal politics: if I’m not hurting you, why do you care what I do or believe?
I have learned much from living in this state. You won’t find a more consistently polite, helpful, hard-working, dedicated to their faith group, but I find their pleas of “please forget about it because it isn’t relevant” a bit absurd and obtuse. I won’t stay here because I want my children to grow-up with a diversity of culture, ethnic groups, socio-econmic status, and thought.
Btw, Meryl, I am going to trackback your post. I find it engaging and thoughtful.
Several answers:
Ryan: Yes, I wrote this post. What I did not do was link it from a national magazine, thereby giving my post a national forum, which is what amatter was complaining about.
The fact that Newsweek overlooked the massacre is significant, as the massacre was a significant event in the early days of the Mormons.
As for Amatter, yes, the issue does deserve attention. The Newsweek piece mentioned the persecution of Mormons, without mentioning that the Mormons slaughtered 127 innocent men, women, and children. It is a part of their history, as some just stated, just as the Crusades are part of the Catholic Church’s history.
Pretending that it didn’t happen doesn’t make it go away. Neither does glossing over or ignoring it when writing about the history of the Mormon church.
On the other hand, my experience with the Mormon church has been that Mormons tend to not give a shit what others think of their actions.
Witness the posthumous baptism of Holocaust victims.
But that’s a topic for another post.
Witness the posthumous baptism of Holocaust victims.
Yes, very true, Meryl. I vaguely recall reading or hearing on NPR that they (the LDS) removed those from the Holocaust from the list that they had posthumously baptized, but only at the request of a national Jewish organization.
Wait-that deserves a fact check. Ahh, here we are. So, they did, but then they didn’t, and now they won’t again. I like the last quote the best.
clothesguy,
I think that the massacre accusation is like saying that the 9/11 tragedy is the Muslum religion. We all know that isn’t true. It wasn’t the muslims that sanctioned the awful 9.11 day.
You have to be joking. 9/11 was planned and carried out by Islamic terrorists who were acting on one of the main tenets of their ‘faith’, namely, “Kill the infidel.”
Bryan
You have to be joking. 9/11 was planned and carried out by Islamic terrorists who were acting on one of the main tenets of their ‘faith’, namely, “Kill the infidel.â€
Maybe you need to brush up on the actual, instead of perceived beliefs of the religion of Islam. The Jihad, which is practiced by Sunni Muslims, is simply the struggle to please God. It is mostly an inward struggle, which I imagine most religions acknowlege in different forms. The majority of Sunni’s believe that a violent Jihad is only acceptable in times of self defense or to combat injustice.
It is not suprising that you know so little of Muslims because we live in a fact hating Christian society. Just so you know, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans are the only reason that we have the science and math that we have today. After the fall of Rome the Christians tried, and would have succeeded in destroying all available knowledge of these subjects if they could have.