Murder on the Trail

Abstract

Murder on the Trail Donald L. Parman (bio) Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, Jr., and Glen M. Leonard . Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xvi + 430 pp. Illustrations, maps, appendixes, notes, and index. 29.95. The three authors have written a fascinating study about one of the most controversial events of western history. It involved the 1857 deaths of some 120 adults and older children who were traveling on a wagon train through southwestern Utah. The murders were committed by members of the Mormon militia and their Paiute Indian allies. The emotional impact was intensified by the fact that the emigrants were slaughtered while being escorted by the militia under a flag of truce. Except for massacres of Indians by the U.S. Army, the tragedy at Mountain Meadows was unparalleled in western history. The authors note that previous writings on Mountain Meadows can be divided into three schools. One group of authors has depicted the perpetrators as good individuals and the victims as evil people who committed outrages against Mormons while traveling from Salt Lake City to Mountain Meadows. The second school has portrayed the emigrants as innocent people and the killers as misguided zealots. The third approach has embodied "a common sense recognition that both victims and perpetrators were decent but imperfect people whose paths crossed in a moment of history that resulted in a terrible tragedy" (p. xiii). Juanita Brooks's classic study, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950), provided a model of objectivity which the authors, themselves Mormons, sought to follow. In addition, they have uncovered previously unused church and militia records, and, more importantly, the field notes of Andrew Jensen, a Mormon church historian, who interviewed Mormon insiders in 1892. The authors begin their narrative with the Mormons' expulsion from western Missouri. The Missouri militia in 1838, for example, attacked Mormon settlers at Haun's Mill and killed seventeen men and boys and wounded fourteen. Mormon founder Joseph Smith was jailed, and some 8,000 followers fled to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they prospered for a few years. Again gentile (non-Mormon) opponents initiated persecution similar to that in Missouri. Smith turned [End Page 230] himself in to gentile authorities and was incarcerated at Carthage, Illinois. A mob broke into the jail and murdered Joseph and his brother Hyrum. The authors interpret the Mormon troubles in Missouri and Illinois as local gentiles' fears of Mormons' growing political and economic power. In addition, the authors suggest American society had a long tradition of rioting and violence, especially against unpopular minorities. While these ideas are valid, an additional cause was that Mormon teachings clashed with existing Protestant doctrines. Frontier evangelical groups such as the Methodists, Baptists, and Campbellites saw the Mormons as competitors whose religion was false and perhaps dangerous to established society. It would have been useful, especially for unversed readers, to have added a chapter on key Mor-mon beliefs, especially those related to polygamy. After Smith's assassination, Brigham Young assumed leadership of the church, and in 1847 he led the first of some 6,000 Mormons to Utah. The authors note that initially the federal government met the Mormons halfway. Young served as territorial governor and Indian superintendent, and other official territorial positions were divided between Mormons and outside gentiles. The latter, however, usually left after a short stay in Salt Lake City and later strongly denounced the Mormons' lack of cooperation. The authors argue plausibly that the clashes were due to cultural differences. Mormons wanted to establish a religious commonwealth in which righteousness prevailed. The American territorial system, however, worked slowly through a series of steps of increasing self-rule leading to eventual statehood. In other territories, local leaders bitterly denounced federal officials' dictatorial rule. By 1857, however, the James Buchanan administration declared that Utah was in "substantial rebellion" and dispatched the U.S. Army to Utah, naming an official to replace Brigham Young as governor. The authors point to several other causes of stress in Utah at this time. These included bad weather, poor harvests, insect plagues, and a spiritual decline that was countered by a zealous religious revival in 1856–57. The latter resulted...