Review: The Last Called Mormon Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, by John Gary Maxwell

Abstract

This thoroughly researched book investigates a little-known aspect of Mormon history, namely the settlement of the Bighorn Basin in 1900 and 1901 by ardent proponents of plural marriage—the final called colonization, that is, a migration officially mandated by LDS Church authorities. John Gary Maxwell argues that leaders of the colonization project saw the remote area of Wyoming as a potential home for a polygamous enclave. He frames the book by beginning with a general discussion of polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints (chapter 1) and concludes with a focused analysis of the polygamous practices of the leaders of the colonization movement (chapter 11) and the effects of plural marriage on state and national politics (chapter 12). Sandwiched in between is an analysis of the key players, the motivations for Mormon expansion—apart from polygamy—and the actual results of moving to the Wyoming frontier. The account includes an honest appraisal of Mormon efforts to dispossess Ute Indians and other Native Americans they encounter in their expansionary movements. The liveliest chapter, “Idealists Among the Pragmatists” describes the lives and times of the four leaders of the colonization effort—Abraham Owen Woodruff, Matthias Foss Cowley, John Whittaker Taylor, and Marriner Wood Merrill. Photographs of these four, along with other photos from the period, provide glimpses of a bygone but by no means forgotten era.Although the book suffers at times from repetition, it tells a fascinating story of outsized personalities with grand plans and questionable schemes. It will be of interest of scholars of Mormonism and historians of the American West.