GBH wants to keep Mountain Meadows in LDS hands ....

[_moksha]

I still haven't figured out what the Fancher Party did that made them "bad guys."

Sometimes people are merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[_Bond...James Bond]

I still haven't figured out what the Fancher Party did that made them "bad guys."

They went and got killed by the Lord's Anointed, and the Lord's Current Anointed are kinda upset cause it makes the Lord's Early Anointed look like the Lord's Mass Murderers (and not in the good Biblical Lord's Anointed Avenger-type Murderer way, but in a bad way, like those other Anointed of the Lord in said Holy Scripture who didn't let the Lord do the murdering himself, and instead were Vengeful before the Lord could be). So the Lord's Anointed have to make the Lord's Anointed's victims look like the Lord of Darkness's Anointed rather than the Arkansas Step-Children of said original Lord who also anointed the Anointed who killed the Lord's Step-Children because they thought they were possibly out to do something or other to the Lord's Anointed, the Lord's Anointed sneak attacked the Lord's Arkansas Step-Children in collusion with the Lord's less Anointed, less Righteous Lamanite Step-Children. When the Lord's Anointed were too wussy to win the massacre/ambush outright, they Lied to the Lord's Arkansas Step-Children and shot them in the back, thus making them the Lord's Lying Cowards. The Lord's Later Anointed realized that it was a bad PR Move for the Lord's Early Anointed, so they started acting like it was the Lord's Arkansas Step-Children's fault for traveling in a warzone when the Lord's Prophet couldn't get a wireless signal for his cell phone, and was unable to tell the Lord's Anointed Thugs to not kill those innocent travelers. So as you can see, its all the Verizon people's fault. They're the bad guys.

(you'll understand that when you sober up Coffee ;)

[_Blixa]

I just meant that I don't view the Mormons involved in a positive way.

The only instigator type I know of were the bunch of roughnecks the party picked up along the way who were braging about having the gun that shot Joseph Smith.

The poor Fanchers walked into a tinder box, and thr rough necks that were with them were like a big "kick me" sign on their backs. Mix that up with the slighty off kilter bunh in Cedar City, and you get what happened.

Thanks for the cut n' paste Gaz. Its only a sliver of the history of the markers/monument, however. There is a lot more to tell---and some interesting drawings and photos to go with it---that I hope will be collected in one place soon.

A couple of comments on your post above.

I think there were some very heroic Mormons who were "involved." I think its as important to remember the Mormons who actively protested and resisted this (sometimes at the cost of their lives) as it is the murderers. In fact, I think the church has missed an important part of "the story" by not making these people a significant part of their narrative. Why they haven't (or maybe can't?) is an interesting question to raise.

I'll write up a post about this later after I'm more awake.

Also I wanted to say this about your comment, "The only instigator type I know of were the bunch of roughnecks the party picked up along the way who were braging about having the gun that shot Joseph Smith."

There is no evidence of this ever happening. This is a story that wasn't told until many years afterward. It is very interesting and instructive to follow the genesis of the "evil emigrant" stories as they were created and circulated (and new ones are still being invented---witness the MAD thread!) In some cases, you can follow the "story of the stories" quite clearly.

[_Gazelam]

I look forward to your post Blixa. I have never taken the time really of doing any in depth study into Church history like you have. I tend to just study doctrine, and if I pick up some interesting tidbits of history along the way, more the better.

All of the stuff I've read about the old Cedar city bunch has been fairly negative, so if oyu have some positive information to post, I'd love to hear it.

[_Runtu]

I look forward to your post Blixa. I have never taken the time really of doing any in depth study into Church history like you have. I tend to just study doctrine, and if I pick up some interesting tidbits of history along the way, more the better.

All of the stuff I've read about the old Cedar city bunch has been fairly negative, so if oyu have some positive information to post, I'd love to hear it.

I'm still fascinated by church history, and not because I want to dig up dirt on the church. It really is an amazing story how the church came to be what it is. Of course, it would be an even more amazing story if the church were actually true. ;)

[_Paul Osborne]

Link

[_The Nehor]

I still haven't figured out what the Fancher Party did that made them "bad guys."

They went and got killed by the Lord's Anointed, and the Lord's Current Anointed are kinda upset cause it makes the Lord's Early Anointed look like the Lord's Mass Murderers (and not in the good Biblical Lord's Anointed Avenger-type Murderer way, but in a bad way, like those other Anointed of the Lord in said Holy Scripture who didn't let the Lord do the murdering himself, and instead were Vengeful before the Lord could be). So the Lord's Anointed have to make the Lord's Anointed's victims look like the Lord of Darkness's Anointed rather than the Arkansas Step-Children of said original Lord who also anointed the Anointed who killed the Lord's Step-Children because they thought they were possibly out to do something or other to the Lord's Anointed, the Lord's Anointed sneak attacked the Lord's Arkansas Step-Children in collusion with the Lord's less Anointed, less Righteous Lamanite Step-Children. When the Lord's Anointed were too wussy to win the massacre/ambush outright, they Lied to the Lord's Arkansas Step-Children and shot them in the back, thus making them the Lord's Lying Cowards. The Lord's Later Anointed realized that it was a bad PR Move for the Lord's Early Anointed, so they started acting like it was the Lord's Arkansas Step-Children's fault for traveling in a warzone when the Lord's Prophet couldn't get a wireless signal for his cell phone, and was unable to tell the Lord's Anointed Thugs to not kill those innocent travelers. So as you can see, its all the Verizon people's fault. They're the bad guys.

(you'll understand that when you sober up Coffee ;)

There's a lot of Anointing in this story. It's amazing there's any olive oil left in the world ;)

[Anonymous]

I look forward to your post Blixa. I have never taken the time really of doing any in depth study into Church history like you have. I tend to just study doctrine, and if I pick up some interesting tidbits of history along the way, more the better.

All of the stuff I've read about the old Cedar city bunch has been fairly negative, so if oyu have some positive information to post, I'd love to hear it.

Here you are Gaz, my list of Mountain Meadows Massacre heroes (Mormon only):

Mrs. Morgan of Beaver: contrary to “orders,” Mrs. Morgan traded a cheese for a bed quilt with the Fancher party. She and her husband were later cut off from the church.

A few others are recorded as having given food or traded with the emigrants: a Jesse N. Smith visited the train near Paragonah and afterward sold them flour and salt. Another Utah resident, Charles Wandell wrote that occasionally, “some Mormon more daring than his fellows would sack up a few pounds of provisions” and smuggle them to the emigrants, “taking his chances of a severed windpipe.” He records “an Englishman” trying to trade with the Fancher party but being stopped by the local bishop’s son holding a bowie knife to his throat.

William Leany of Parowan recognized a member of the train as William Aden (Aden was a young non-Mormon artist from the East who had been traveling through the West. He’d wintered in Provo where he’d made sketches and painted scenery for a local theatre group). Leany knew Aden because his father had protected Leany from an angry mob in Tennessee when he was preaching in public on a mission there. Since he felt a debt of gratitude to his father, Leany invited Aden to his house for a few meals while the train was camped nearby. When Aden asked if he could take some of Leany’s onions back to the camp, Leany gave him as many as he wanted. Word got out about this traitorous act and Leany got a severe beating with a picket torn from his own fence by the order of local militia Colonel Dame.

Joseph Walker: a Cedar City miller who refused to not help the emigrants and milled the the grain they had managed to buy earlier. Bishop Klingensmith sent a man with orders to Walker not to grind the grain, but Walker stood his ground, saying “Tell the bishop I have six grown sons and that we will sell our lives at the price of death to others before I will obey his orders.”

John Hawley: Hawley rode along with the Fancher party for three days south of Provo. In his autobiography he describes them as a group of families traveling with a large herd of cattle. He wrote that the captain of the party told him that they’d had some trouble over their cattle grazing, but just wanted get through the territory with as little trouble as possible. Hawley felt that the “Saints gave them more trouble than they ought,” and he arrived in Washington county ahead of the emigrants where were he found Lee and other officials already organizing the Indians to “commit hostilities on this Camp of emigrants.” He further recorded that the general sentiment in the South that September was that “all that came into the Territory must be cut off.”

As an example of the local feeling he cites first counselor in the local bishopric and Nauvoo Legion captain Harrison Pearce as proclaiming in a public meeting that he would like to see “all Gentyles strippt naked and lashed on their backs and have the Sun scorch them to death by inches.” In the same meeting Hawley argued against the plan to attack the emigrants saying that he would first have to be convinced that his own life was in danger and it wasn’t. Furthermore, harming these emigrants would have nothing to do with avenging the blood of the Prophets: “You only suppose [that some of the emigrants were somehow connected to Smith’s death] and that will not do for me.” A friend warned him that he should not speak openly against authority as afterward Harrison had called a secret meeting in order to debate killing Hawley.

Afterward Hawley spoke out against the cover up and apparently had many go round with Lee about it. Hawley wrote that Lee bitterly told him he had been persecuted more by Hawley “about that mountain affair than all the rest.”

William Hawley: One of the Nauvoo Legionnaires of Santa Clara called to the scene of the massacre mid fight. Apparently some of the men would not join in and protested. William Hawley is the one singled out by name in testimony and is quoted as saying he would rather defend the emigrants than kill them. He was reportedly chained to a wagon wheel to keep him from leaving.

Olive Coombs: One of the group of San Bernardino colonists who were recalled to Utah after the Mountain Meadows Massacre as part of Young’s “war strategy.” The journals and diaries of these returning Mormons make for fascinating reading because the route they had to travel back took them right through Mountain Meadows where the bones of the emigrants (and their hair and their clothes) still littered the terrain, unburied. Many of these colonists were shocked enough to “apostacize” and leave the church or, like Olive Coombs, ask a lot of questions about the incident. Juanita Brooks tells the story of Coombs, who had settled in Cedar City and taught school there: “she acted too interested in this incident, asked too many questions about it. Word went out that she was collecting evidence and planned to publish her findings.” George Wood, a man who may have been one of the participants in the massacre, went to her house and shot and killed her (while convicted of murder he only spent a few years in jail being later pardoned by Governor James Doty).

George Hicks: A balladeer who was one of the Saints sent to colonize the South in the Iron County mission, Hicks was very disturbed by the massacre, but believed the sermons denouncing it preached by Brigham Young. In fact, he carried a printed copy of the sermon he’d cut from a newspaper in his pocket and used it to defend Young against accusations of his collusion. When confronted about singing the ballad composed by U.S. soldiers after visiting the massacre site (which I think is “Oh, Utah Where Is Thy Shame?”), Hicks would use the Young sermon to argue that even the prophet abhored the crime and so should everyone else. Hicks thought Lee was most to blame and was enraged at Lee’s continued public insinuations of Young and other authorities’ involvement---especially Lee’s assertion that Young’s sermon was delivered merely to “blind the eye of the gentiles.” To Hicks this was “a base slander against a servant of God.” It therefore confused him that Lee continued to be in full fellowship, called on to preach, and continued to receive ecclesiastical permission for more wives.

Hicks wrote to Young about his worries: “If you are in favor of the Mountain meadows massacre I would like to know it...a few words from you will dispose of all my dark fears.” His letter was intercepted by the local postmaster, who displayed it at the post office and then gave it to Lee. Hicks wrote again confessing that he did not know what to make of Lee’s continued boast that Young’s anti-massacre sermon was sheer duplicity: “I scorned the idea at first but now I hardly know what to think, doubts and fears beginning to rise in my mind in relation to the matter, in short, my peace of mind is almost gone.” Hicks’ letter asked the perpetrators of the incident by punished at least by losing their Church standing so what they said would “not be at the expense of the Church.”

Here is Young’s reply to Hicks’ sincere and heartfelt questions:

“What would be the judgement of any reasonable being after reading your letter, since you say, “The bloody scene passes before you day and night,” and “it rests with such weight upon my mind” &c, why, that you yourself must have been a participator in this horrible deed. If this is correct, one can readily imagine why “it rests with such weight upon your mind,” and “why you cannot sleep at nights” ; the surprise would be that you could. In such a case, if you want a remedy---rope around the neck taken with a jerk would be very salutary.”

He went on to tell him, in essence, that knowledge of the Mountain Meadows Massacre wasn't necessary for his salvation: "As to your faith being shaken, if the Gospel was true before the 'Mountain Meadow Massacre' neither that nor any other even that may transpire can make it false."

I'm sure this list is incomplete, but at the very least it testifies that not all Mormon settlers in Southern Utah were bereft of conscience nor willing to follow all orders from their ecclesiastical superiors.

[_beastie]

Blixa,

These stories brought tears to my eyes. It's always reassuring to hear stories of human strength and courage, when it seems that most of our history testifies as to the opposite.

I have read some of these elsewhere, maybe in Bagleys' book, I can't remember. But Young's response to Hicks has always struck me as one of the more problematic bits of evidence for those who proclaim Young was not involved in any way, other than to try and stop the violence, too late.

Also problematic is how the "booty" was divided up between the saints. I can understand how items of necessity could not be wasted, no matter what their origin, in a harsh environment. But jewelry?

[_Blixa]

I compiled these from several sources, and I'm always on the lookout for more.