War

[Anonymous]

rrosskopf wrote:

I don’t know whether or not the well was poisoned. It is irrelevant to the discussion. What is relevant is that the allegation was made, and suspects needed to be handed over for questioning, something that the Francher party refused to do.

I believe the speculation also extends to the narrative of authorities demanding that people in the party be turned over for questioning and by extension the narrative that the party refused to submit to questioning is also speculative. Do you have a citation for this?

rrosskopf wrote:

However, eight was the cut-off age, not six.

Again, it’s in the history books, no way of being absolutely certain who did what under what orders or who did what while subject to intense fear, but there were a few 7 year olds that were killed.

[Anonymous]

rrosskopf wrote:

No one is proud of it.

I appreciate the fact that you are trying to make it seem normal and understandable; even kind of reasonable. I can’t simply say I’m not proud of it. I’m actively disgusted by it. No amount of blaming the victims or saying it’s just like some other very tragic event will minimize it. It was the darkest day in Mormon History – worse than the murder of JS/HS, IMO. After all, in the story of Cain and Abel, what is worse, that Abel was the first person to die, or the realization that a person could kill another?

rrosskopf wrote:

However, eight was the cut-off age, not six. Third-graders, not first graders.

The distinction can’t really ease our conscience, though, right? Besides, no child OLDER Than 6 survived. It wasn’t based on the “age of accountability”, but rather on whether they would be old enough to remember. So, 6 seemed to be an arbitrary and inconsistent cutoff. Many children 6 or younger were also killed. The best we can tell, two of the survivors were 6, two where 5, and the remaining 13 survivors were 4 or younger.

I feel ashamed that people in the name of my Church could have done this. A family legend tells of the perpetrators coming to my great-great-grandfather’s house to ask him (as a 30-something) to come to their aid (which would have meant participating in the massacre). According to the story, he refused. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I mention it, because it’s telling that refusal was worth remembering and recounting, even though over the next nearly century-and-a-half, the people have quietly tried to justify this horrific event by blaming the victims. I believe that the majority of Mormons, including those who lived in Southern Utah, were astonished and saddened by the event.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

I believe the speculation also extends to the narrative of authorities demanding that people in the party be turned over for questioning and by extension the narrative that the party refused to submit to questioning is also speculative. Do you have a citation for this?

I too would be interested in a source for this. Is it included in the new book the church helped produce, Massacre on Mountain Meadows? If there is more context to the event then I would like to try to understand it. Even if true, this new “protecting cold blooded killers” idea does not come close to excusing what happened but anything to help understand the mindset of the Mormon settlers I would find useful. Sadly, the Mormons themselves became the ones to “protect cold blooded killers” once the US government began sniffing around.

rrosskopf wrote:

Many years later the US army slaughtered men, women and children at Wounded Knee. I can’t help but wonder if this is what they would have done in the Utah war to the hated Mormons. This US vs. THEM mentality was not particular to the LDS in Cedar City.

I agree that life was cheap for many at this time – especially if you were not seen to be part of the tribe. Racism is heavily intertwined with this. Many groups were seen as almost subhuman and treated accordingly. There were many incidents of slaughter of Native American peoples with the undercurrent narrative of taking their land. The Chinese immigrants were also terribly abused and even murdered at times. I believe that most communities frowned on the murder of the Chinese – preferring largely just to harass and restrict them – but when a murder did happen nobody (including the police) seemed interested in bringing the perpetrators to justice. The mistreatment and even murder of African Americans, first as slaves and then as free people, is well documented.

I am deeply thankful for a fairly robust government that investigates and prosecutes crimes and at least attempts things like blind justice, fair trials, adequate legal defense, presumption of innocence, etc. I believe that society has vastly improved on these and many other fronts. I am exceedingly fortunate to live in this day and age.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

I too would be interested in a source for this. Is it included in the new book the church helped produce, Massacre on Mountain Meadows? If there is more context to the event then I would like to try to understand it. Even if true, this new “protecting cold blooded killers” idea does not come close to excusing what happened but anything to help understand the mindset of the Mormon settlers I would find useful. Sadly, the Mormons themselves became the ones to “protect cold blooded killers” once the US government began sniffing around.

The September, 2007 Ensign contained an article about the MMM. It’s by one of the researchers for that new book you mentioned. I find the article to be relatively fair, though it is written from the perspective that is favorable toward the Church. It’s an overly-simplified telling (of necessity), and that makes it seem like it’s waiving off the involvement of the Church’s teachings and the extent of the war hysteria, but it is a good overview, nonetheless. Compared to my own view, I would say it’s about 12.5% more favorable to the Church than I am about the MMM, so that puts it at least in a realm of acceptability, IMO, compared to a lot of what you can find out there. The article is silent on the Church’s cover-up, which was undertaken partly in innocence (initially), as the initial stories held to the idea of an attack by the Piutes, and partly out of fear of retaliation from the US Gov’t, California, or other non-Mormons in general.

https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/2007/09/the-mountain-meadows-massacre?lang=eng

[Anonymous]

Thank you, OON.

I found the article to be well researched and informative.

Quote:

Some traditional Utah histories of what occurred at Mountain Meadows have accepted the claim that poisoning also contributed to conflict—that the Arkansas emigrants deliberately poisoned a spring and an ox carcass near the central Utah town of Fillmore, causing illness and death among local Indians. According to this story, the Indians became enraged and followed the emigrants to the Mountain Meadows, where they either committed the atrocities on their own or forced fearful Latter-day Saint settlers to join them in the attack. Historical research shows that these stories are not accurate.

While it is true that some of the emigrants’ cattle were dying along the trail, including near Fillmore, the deaths appear to be the result of a disease that affected cattle herds on the 1850s overland trails. Humans contracted the disease from infected animals through cuts or sores or through eating the contaminated meat. Without this modern understanding, people suspected the problem was caused by poisoning.

It seems clear from this portion and the remainder of the article that any supposed poisoning was not a major motivator in the massacre but instead became part of a cover story after the fact.

I appreciate knowing a bit more about this tragic incident than I did before.

[Author]

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