Seeing this blog, my first reaction was to post a “not intended for publication reply” to Gilbert on some claims from the Turley, Walker & Leonard volume that he’d clearly summarized, and I suggested they might not hold up to some easy fact-checking. He graciously replied, and I next e-mailed Will Bagley whose post appears above. I have no doubt Will is “tired to the subject”; he should be permitted that entitlement, after what, five in-depth books and countless articles and group presentations, but he’s also a marvelous friend who’s still willing to pick up the gauntlet when necessary.

Will’s material and his blunt charges against Brigham Young are available in the additional links and references he provided. Beyond noting I agree with his conclusions simply because the alternatives require too many convoluted mental leaps and “can’t be” assumptions, I’ll let others engage in that debate for the time being.

Equally complex and convoluted, however, are issues of “the persecution of the Saints” that form the basis of the first few chapters of Leonard et al. “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” was underwritten by the Mormon Church and clearly intended as a “rebuttal” to “Blood of the Prophets,” at least as far as the issue of Brigham Young’s guilt. Given the book’s “genealogy,” it is fair to address those claims without being attacked for “engaging in religious bigotry.”

It’s a cliché to suggest a comprehensive discussion and history of the Mormon Exodus would fill several encyclopedia volumes, so I’ll only briefly note some curious examples of historical distortion that warrant scrutiny. The backdrop, of course, is the easy observation, “The Mormons couldn’t get along with their neighbors,” and pro-LDS historians have found answering the “why” segment of that discussion particularly onerous and troublesome.

Perhaps that explains the authors’ fanciful, “Non-Mormon locals immediately resented the appointment of Mormon surveyors and Indian agents, one of whom was John D. Lee.”

In early 1850′s Utah there were essentially no “Non-Mormon locals,” excluding Jim Bridger up in Wyoming and possibly a few other stray mountain men who were decided anti-social sorts not given to communicating with Washington. Dr. Garland Hurt, the only other possible non-Mormon “candidate” didn’t begin his work with the Indians until 1855. And in the aftermath of the massacre, Hurt fled Utah, fearing for his life.

Some other questionable interpretations that suggest themselves: By the time of the Steptoe Expedition in 1854, the LDS practice of polygamy wasn’t simply rumor. Mormons themselves “announced it to the world” in their fall General Conference in 1852. This followed on the heels of a modest bestseller written by Captain John W. Gunnison that appeared in the Eastern press detailing a year he’d spent in Utah in 1849 doing survey work as part of the Stansbury Expedition.

Colonel Steptoe was in Utah because he’d been sent there to investigate the murders of Captain Gunnison and other men under his command in 1853. Most historians attribute the killings to Pahvant (Ute) Indians, but of course rumors abounded.

I’ll repeat my observation there were very few non-Mormons in Utah circa 1849-54, and Leonard et al are in error in suggesting conflicts between Mormons and non-Mormons created the initial friction that led to hostility between the Saints and the rest of the country. A review of Brigham Young’s fiery rhetoric at the time will point to more obvious origins. As in Mountain Meadows, a strong case exists for laying the blame on the LDS leader. Bagley and Bigler’s “The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War” point overwhelmingly to that conclusion.

It’s also doubtful Colonel Steptoe’s men led Mormon women away at gunpoint; they were known to be fleeing impoverished conditions that included plural marriages. My own great-great grandmother arrived in this valley as young girl of 15; the LDS missionary she’d fallen for in Scotland and come here seeking hadn’t told her about the first wife.

Moving on to the actual massacre itself, the Paiutes’ oral tradition is they weren’t involved, and there are credible reasons to believe few were (probably some participated, however, along with a number of “freebooters”). The initial attack on the Fancher-Baker train killed or seriously wounded most of the adult males in the party; Indian marksmanship with weapons they’d allegedly been provided is unlikely to have been that deadly, and the Southern Utah pioneers were also crack shots.

That should be sufficient for now; I’m grateful to see Shannon Novak has chimed in. Her fantastic forensic work–done under particularly pressured circumstances–offered considerable illumination; the victims’ remains she examined showed most were shot in the head at close range.

In truth, a large number of factors and some powerful and credible historical sources need to be factored into this discussion.

Logan Hebner and Michael L. Plyler. “Southern Paiute: A Portrait.” Logan: Utah State University Press, 2010, page 9.

I’m as tired to the subject as Juanita Brooks was, but have written my share of commentary on the atrocity, but I’ve written a lot about it since 2002.

Bagley, Will. “’They Have Slain My Children’: The Rescue of the Orphans of Mountain Meadows.” Wild West 17:5 (February 2005), 28–36.

Bagley, Will. “Big Trouble: The Legacy of Mountain Meadows.” Wild West 20:3 (October 2007), 50–57.

David L. Bigler and Will Bagley. The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War. Norman: The University of Oklahoma, 2011.

Dave and I also published “Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre” (Norman: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008).

Finally, later thoughts on why Brigham Young did it are in Deborah Lawrence and Jon Lawrence, eds. “Violent Encounters: Interviews on Western Massacres.” Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. An early edit of the interview, along with Dave Bigler’s “Terror on the Trail: The Massacre at Mountain Meadows” is available at:

http://www.oldspanishtrail.org/assets/downloads/Vol12-12006.pdf

The impact this had on Juanita Brooks life is included in an article written by Davis Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach titled: “Riding Herd: A Conversation with Juanita Brooks” which was published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 9, no.1 (Spring 1974): pp 11-33.

Novak, Shannon A. (2008) House of Mourning: A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.