So the new president concludes that he needs to send a whole new set of territorial appointees to Utah, including one to replace Brigham Young as governor and that he’s going to send federal troops with them to ensure that they are placed successfully and with no resistance from local Utahns. The Utah State Division of Parks and Recreation is now responsible for its maintenance. Novak, Shannon A., and Derinna Kopp. Today, the site of the Mountain Meadow Massacre is said to be haunted. This atrocity is now known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. We focus on the only person that took the fall for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, John D Lee. In previous years, disagreements and miscommunication had resulted in growing tension between the Latter-day Saints and officials of the United States government. What did rejecting counsel then lead them to do? The Saints wanted to be governed by leaders of their own choosing and had rejected federal appointees who did not share their values, some of whom were dishonest, corrupt, and immoral. So there’s these kinds of stories, these kind of rumors, some based in fact, some exaggerated that reach Washington. https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/2007/09/the-mountain-meadows-massacre?lang=eng. We can’t read people’s minds and know what is in their hearts, so the only thing we know for sure about a person is that they really are a child of God. House of Mourning: A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, by Shannon A. Novak. Scopri Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy di Walker, Ronald W., Turley, Richard E., Leonard, Glen M.: spedizione gratuita per i clienti Prime e per ordini a partire da 29€ spediti da Amazon. On September 11, 1857, some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by American Indian allies, massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. It began as an attack, quickly turned into a siege, and eventually culminated in the execution of the unarmed emigrants after their surrender. The Mountain Meadows massacre was a mass slaughter of the Fancher-Baker emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, by the local Mormon militia on 11 September 1857. PS: I can’t stop without at least mentioning the many spin off ideas; my favorite is the question of whether the execution of John D. Lee was a sham and he escaped or not. (After students respond, write the following principle on the board: If we ignore counsel to do what is right, then we become more susceptible to making poor and even sinful choices. They are burning their supply wagons, doing everything they can to try and get the troops to be stopped on the plains that year. The men who killed Pratt were not even from that part of the country. We plan to continue all our operations, while reducing risk of infection by having staff work from home. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. Before then, it had been a part of Mexico although, in practice, it was ruled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their President Brigham Young. There were some casualties, mostly non-Mormon civilians. What I *do* know is that the forces that led to the MMM are still active in that area and it wouldn’t take a very big spark to light a new flame of war. Anyone. Killing innocents will always make me mad, make me hurt whether I am related to them or not. Two days after the massacre, James Haslam arrived in Cedar City with President Young’s message of reply, instructing the local leaders to allow the wagon train to go in peace. By Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard. More than almost any other event of Mormon history, this massacre has incited so much lying and exaggerating and denying on all sides to the point that it becomes larger than the original event. Invite a student to read aloud the handout section titled “Church Leaders Learned of the Massacre.”. It gets to the point of telling the story of the story. I visited the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre a few years ago. racial epithets hurled by fans against Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2826169-look-donovan-mitchell-jazz-and-nets-players-wear-t-shirts-denouncing-racism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre, https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/2007/09/the-mountain-meadows-massacre?lang=eng. Invite a student to read Helaman 5:12 aloud. Just a few months after Pratt’s death, around 100 immigrants from Arkansas were killed. Paiute Indians also suffered from being unjustly blamed for the crime. This decision was made without accurate information about the situation in Utah (see Church History in the Fulness of Times Student Manual, 2nd ed. House of Mourning: A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. (Students might mention that the Saints had been violently driven from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois; many had lost valued possessions and land; and some had been killed or had died during these persecutions. The militia commander, William Dame, a Church member, counseled Isaac Haight to ignore the emigrants’ threats. How should we respond when we learn of instances when Church members have failed to live according to the teachings of Jesus Christ? This one we managed to blame on the Federal troops (California volunteers) even though Mormon settlers in Cache Valley created the “need’ for it, provided the scouts and intelligence, and other support. That makes it okay to massacre, lie, rape and steal?..then blame the injuns? Before then, it had been a part of Mexico although, in practice, it was ruled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their President Brigham Young.To the U.S. Government, Young appeared to be a religious dictator of a theocratic state and Young’… I’ll take the blame for poor wording of the post, but Barbara made no such statement, so don’t put words in her mouth that she didn’t say. In 1857, when the Mountain Meadows massacre occurred, Utah and the United States were on the brink of war. Confrontations occurred between some members of the wagon train and some of the Latter-day Saints. Richard E. Turley Jr., “The Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Ensign, Sept. 2007, 17–21. Three years after the first Latter-day Saint pioneers reached the Salt Lake Valley, the United States government organized the Utah Territory and appointed Brigham Young as the first governor over the territory. The Utah War and Its Mountain Meadows Massacre: Lessons Learned, Surprises Encountered William P. MacKinnon FARMS Review 20/2 (2008): 237–51. Mike, for being a worn-out topic, you left an awfully long comment! A good start is the wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Yep. That’s among the principal people that were involved. This is the scene of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857. How can our faith in Jesus Christ strengthen us when we learn of instances when Church members have failed to live according to the Savior’s teachings? Finishing off the month of October, we bring to your our infamous Utahn segment. As the Baker-Fancher train camped at Mountain Meadows, some of the residents of Cedar City and the surrounding areas determined that some action needed to be taken against the emigrants. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. September Dawn had the potential of blowing the lid off this event and making it a household word for the American public the year Mitt Romney first ran for POTUS and lost to Jon McCain. When people try to pin it on the Parley Pratt murder, I want to remind them that the wagon train had left long before Parley arrived in Arkansas. Explain that because a number of local Latter-day Saints were responsible for planning and carrying out the Mountain Meadows Massacre, some people have allowed this event to negatively affect their view of the entire Church. We also talk about the Utah beer moving off shelves as we prepare for bigger and better beer… or something like that.. We haven’t talked about it before, but the wild horse population in Utah is massive. Yes, It has been documented that a lot of the money(gold), wagons, oxen , horses and cattle ended up in his nest. We seem to never internalize the essential lessons of this chapter of our history. Was the Mountain Meadows Massacre the result of previous persecution against Mormons? Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. One need go no further than the opposite end of the state of Utah (before accurate surveys moved the towns of Franklin and Preston from Utah to Idaho) and 6 years later to encounter the much less know Bear River massacre of hundreds of Shoshone Indians. So you see, one atrocity leads to another, and to another, and to another, and it never ends until enough people say “enough” and the past is the past; just stop keeping score. Most members are on the extreme end of this. Tensions erupted in Cedar City, the last settlement in Utah on the route to California. Because these Saints did not resolve their conflict with the emigrants in the Lord’s way, the situation became much more serious. Travelers in southern Utah will find two memorials just west of Utah State Route 18, between the towns of Enterprise and Veyo. At one point, Cedar City militiamen became aware of two emigrant men who were outside the wagon corral. An emigrant wagon train traveling west from Arkansas to California entered Utah just as Latter-day Saints were preparing to defend the territory against the coming United States troops. Barbara Jones Brown says the Pratt murder and Haun's Mill Massacre played virtually no role in Mountain Meadows Massacre. Have a student read aloud the handout section titled “Escalating the Confrontation.”, What should the Cedar City Church leaders have done when William Dame counseled them not to use the militia? I think these other things that I’ve been talking about were the motive. So that’s the environment and you’ve got this war hysteria going, on if you will, in Utah Territory. Yes, Brigham Young directed it. Wilford Woodruff, who later became President of the Church, claimed that upon re… Pretty ethnocentric of host and interviewee. You might also point out that there is great wisdom in the system of councils by which the Church is governed.). The attacks culminated on September 11, 1857, with the mass slaughter of most in the emigrant party by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district, together with some Paiute Native Americans. JR, (1) your point about Indian atrocities being ignored is well taken. But the short answer is that the death of the many may have been to cover the death of one (which is a despicable justification, but may be the best explanation of why they were all killed.). The emigrants quickly pulled their wagons into a tight circle, or corral, for protection. The Mountain Meadows Massacre, by Juanita Brooks (1950) Second, the consequence of losing that objective was exaggerated. Gospel Tangents, History, LDS, Morality, Mormon, Mormon & Crime, Mormon Culture, Violence. Utah History. The monuments memorialize the victims of a horrific massacre that took place there. It was sad to see Utahns react poorly to Westbrook. I had a professor at BYU who often mentioned that we are kinder when we see the “truth” about people, tying the definition of truth to the way things really are, and the things they really will be. This war footing led to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the lowest point in Mormon history. What resulted from the Cedar City leaders’ decision to disobey the counsel of William Dame, the militia commander? Mountain Meadows will forever be remembered as a place where something dark and evil happened. View all posts by Rick B. The Utah War. He did preside over the development of the fanatical toxic atmosphere that made the massacre possible and he did lie about it extensively, becoming an accomplice after the fact. © 2015 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. Barbara: A memorial from Utah’s legislature [was sent to Washington] saying, “Look, if you keep sending us federal officials that we don’t like, that we don’t agree with, we’re going to send them away. But the movie was poorly done and a complete flop. Whether the connection is Arkansas or loyalty to the federal government, the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows massacre saw the wagon train as worthy of retribution for things that they had no part of. “Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints,” Gospel Topics, lds.org/topics. On July 24, 1857, President Brigham Young was with a group of Saints celebrating the 10th anniversary of their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley when he received confirmation of earlier news that an army was coming to Salt Lake City. Some members of the wagon train became frustrated because they had a difficult time purchasing much-needed grain from the Saints, who had been instructed to save their grain. Some Indians recruited by the settlers rushed from hiding places to join the attack. The Utah Jazz guard purchased t-shirts for both the Jazz players and the Brooklyn Nets players who were in town. Really? So Brigham Young and church leaders interpret this as a threat and they vowed that the army, the troops will never enter into their settlements. Invite a few students to take turns reading aloud the handout section titled “Attack on the Emigrants,” and invite students to look for how Cedar City leaders continued to make sinful choices after ignoring the counsel they had received. I have wondered what I would have done in those days. Merely saying that, of course, doesn’t solve the problem of psychopaths who already believe it, but I think we can catch ourselves falling into these traps of bad thinking. GT: So, do you think that’s overplayed then? In an attempt to prevent news from spreading that Latter-day Saints were involved in the attacks on the wagon train, Isaac Haight, John D. Lee, and other local Church and militia leaders made a plan to kill all the remaining emigrants except for small children. Henry B. Eyring, “150th Anniversary of Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Sept. 11, 2007, mormonnewsroom.org/article/150th-anniversary-of-mountain-meadows-massacre. It's called Massacre at Mountain Meadows. They give a whole slew of motives and reasons for why this happened. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. What do you think it means to “agree with thine adversary quickly”? To help students understand this phrase, you may want to ask a student to read aloud the following statement by Elder David E. Sorensen of the Seventy: “The Savior said, ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly … ,’ thus commanding us to resolve our differences early on, lest the passions of the moment escalate into physical or emotional cruelty, and we fall captive to our anger” (“Forgiveness Will Change Bitterness to Love,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2003, 11). In September 1857, some Latter-day Saints in southern Utah Territory and members of an emigrant wagon train on their way to California came into conflict, and the Latter-day Saints, motivated by anger and fear, planned and carried out the massacre of about 120 emigrants. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a shameful tragedy, and there are still lots of questions and conspiracy theories about this event that we’re going to look at in the next episode. In that context, it means something close to the opposite of what Brown means by it in the quotation above. … Brother Sanders … said that learning his ancestor had been killed in the massacre ‘didn’t affect my faith because it’s based on Jesus Christ, not on any person in the Church’” (Richard E. Turley Jr., “The Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Ensign, Sept. 2007, 21). 1550-3194 (print), 2156-8049 (online) This article recounts the background and conse-quences of the Utah War of 1857–58 and comments on the power struggle that existed between Governor September Dawn a film by Christopher Cain (2007) The Mountain Meadows Massacre summary: A series of attacks was staged on the Baker-Fancher wagon train around Mountain Meadows in Utah. I have Morman friends that I love and do not blame them. Burying The Past: Legacy of The Mountain Meadows Massacre”, a documentary film by Brian Patrick (2004) And just four months earlier, Parley P. Pratt, a beloved Mormon apostle was killed May 13, 1857 in Arkansas. The conspirators feared this news would bring negative consequences upon themselves and their people. Approximately 100 settlers from Arkansas were killed. All of Europe is haunted. When you are so blinded by seeing power in terms of groups who have it and don’t have it, you can’t imagine a functioning pluralistic society. The other man escaped and brought news to the wagon camp that white men were involved in the attacks against them. For example, Brooks was ostracized (but not axed) for her disturbing book which has now become near the line of defense for the church. I’m really glossing over things quickly here, but you have what came to be called the Utah War erupt where the troops and the federal appointees, as they are nearing settlements of what was then Utah Territory. While that’s in the past, new situations will arise that are similar, so it is worthy in my opinion to study this event carefully and decide in advance in what circumstances I would take up arms against other humans. Saying he had not, Haight agreed to send a messenger, James Haslam, to Salt Lake City with a letter explaining the situation and asking what should be done. ”. 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