Did Brigham Young Order the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857 is perhaps the darkest day in Latter Day Saint history. So how did Latter Day Saints go from being peaceful religious settlers to massacring over a hundred men, women and children in a day? It is pretty shocking. But what does it say about the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints? And how did we even get there? Welcome to Informed Saints. My name is Jasmine. We've got Stephen and Neil in the studio, and today we also have Casey Griffiths. Welcome. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Hi. [00:00:27] Speaker A: So, Casey, you are a assistant professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. You also are the co host of the podcast Church History Matters, which we are big fans of here. And you are heavily involved in church history research. Your emphasis is in church education, and you have been a former president of the John Whitmer Historical association and you've been involved in mha. So you have a lot of knowledge on this topic and we're excited to learn from you. [00:00:50] Speaker B: I am excited to be here and talk about Mountain Meadows, which isn't the funnest thing to talk about, to be honest with you, but it's a very, very necessary conversation that anybody that takes our history seriously has to encounter sooner or later. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And I see this come up all the time and it's recently come up in like, even film. There was a Netflix show that came out a year or two ago called and it covered that event. And it was just. It paints a very dark picture of Latter Day Saints in general. And so I think it's important to kind of unpack what really happened there and how much that was true, how much of what you usually hear online is true of Mountain Meadows Massacre. And then like, let's actually get down to the bare facts here. [00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:33] Speaker A: So we're going to be drawing from a few sources today. We've got Vengeance is Mine and Massacre at Mountain Meadows. These are authored by Rick Turley and also Barbara Jones Brown and Ronald Walker and Glenn Leonard. So you got a bunch of them. These are published by Oxford University Press. And we also have this. What you don't know about the 100 most important events in church history, and this one was authored by Casey. So we're gonna be drawing from different sources, but there's a lot to go over. [00:01:59] Speaker C: And there is in this, One of the 100 events talked about here is the Mountain Meadows Massacre. [00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:05] Speaker C: Important clarification. [00:02:06] Speaker B: And that was with my co authors, like a serious discussion. Like, do we want to talk about this? Is this one of the hundred most important events? It's not one of the 100 greatest [00:02:15] Speaker C: events, certainly not right. [00:02:17] Speaker B: But we felt like it was necessary to include it. And I want to also, giving a shout out to both of these two books, just say that Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown are both dear friends of mine and they are the experts on Mountain Meadows. Like, I've been to the site with them several times, toured through it. We actually visited the site with Barbara a couple months ago and we were working on a video that will come out in a couple weeks that goes through it. They've done some really, really important work and just clarifying here's what we know and here's what we don't know. And I'm going to try and follow their example as a way of saying, hey, there are things we wish we knew, but we just don't about Mountain Meadows. And there are things that happened that were tragic and nobody needs to basically try and justify what happened there. We are all responsible for dealing with what happened there. And it says a lot about us as a people as to how we feel about this. Like you said, Jasmine, I think it's correct to call it the darkest day in the history of the church. All discussions about Mountain Meadows should start with the admission that on September 11, 1857, Latter Day Saints, assisted by a group of Paiute Indians, killed between 140 and 100 men, women and children. There's no way to sugarcoat that. There's no way to brighten that. There's no uplifting narrative you can put, [00:03:37] Speaker D: no faith promoting, little spin you can put on that. [00:03:39] Speaker B: And once we acknowledge that, then the next question needs to be, well, why? How does this happen? And what was the religious component to it? What was the context that it happened in? Not that we're trying to justify their actions, but we don't at least try to understand why they did what they did. We have to accept that Latter Day Saints are susceptible to paranoia and fear and they can act in violent ways. We're still human beings. And Mountain Meadows is a great, great sort of case study to say, how do things go wrong? Like on the worst day in the history of the church, what were the factors that led to those terrible, terrible events that happened that day? [00:04:18] Speaker D: Well, maybe you should get right into it then. Maybe again, let's set the stage. Let's set the stage. People can read the books themselves and then get kind of the full. We'll give kind of the eclipse notes version. But Casey, what's happening in 1857, starting that summer of 1857, that would lead to this horrible thing. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Okay, So, I mean, the first piece of context that a person really has to understand is the Utah War, which some historians have spoken of as America's first Civil War. It's not north versus South. It's east versus West. In some ways, it's understandable because Latter Day Saints were basically an independent polity out here in the west, and the United States was always going to try and exert greater control in other ways. The Utah War is mystified because it basically starts when a group of federal officials who weren't getting along with the Saints abscond the territory and go and tell the president, James Buchanan, who, by the way, is not generally thought of as one of our best presidents. [00:05:12] Speaker D: Yeah, okay. [00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So nothing. Sorry. James Buchanan. [00:05:16] Speaker D: Any fans of James Buchanan? But history does not look kind of James Buchanan. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Confidential surveys are published. James Buchanan never winds up in the top. [00:05:23] Speaker D: I'll say he's no Abraham Lincoln or [00:05:25] Speaker B: George Washington, anything like that. At any rate, Buchanan just sends the army to Utah without any kind of investigation, without contacting Brigham Young, who's the governor, and saying, hey, what's going on? The army just starts on its way. And when word reaches Utah that a third of the United States army, which the United States army wasn't huge at this time. This is pre Civil War, but it's still about 2,500 troops is coming, it causes a panic in the territory, and Brigham Young kind of battens down the hatches. So that's part of the immediate context, is that the army's coming to Utah. There's been very little to no communication between the Saints and the federal government as to why the Army's coming. So is the army coming just to exert greater control or to forcibly evict the Saints from their homes or worse? [00:06:14] Speaker A: You know, they've had precedent for being evicted from their homes. I mean, they have reason to maybe feel panic at the thought of a government trying to get them out or kill them. In Missouri, they were kicked out by the state government, and they tried to appeal. The federal government didn't get any help. And in the Nauvoo, the same thing. They were kicked out in Kirtland, the same thing. And so when you hear an army's coming, after you've been through that, like, three different times, it's understandable why there might be some apprehension about what's going to happen. [00:06:39] Speaker B: Right. So the Saints are fearful because they don't know why the army's coming, or at least they don't have very good reasons as to why it's coming. And on the opposite side of the table, the federal government hasn't done a great job communicating its intentions either, or trying to investigate what the trouble was in Utah without sending an armed force into the territory. So both sides are immediately kind of on the defensive. And Brigham Young, who has the Nauvoo Legion, which is the militia left over from Nauvoo, immediately starts strategizing and figuring out, well, how are we going to meet this threat? They decide to adapt what's called the Sebastil Strategy, which was from the Crimean War. It was basically, we're going to slow the army down, we're going to raid their supply trains, we're going to actually try and stop them so that they don't make it to the mountains before winter sets in. And that'll buy us time to figure out or negotiate or see what's happening. So there's actually some sort of funny stories from the Utah War where stuff happens, like Lot Smith and a group of raiders employed by the church come across a supply train. And they ride up and kind of politely say, hi, I'm Lot Smith. I'm with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We're here to destroy your supply train. And the captain apparently, and this is the way locksmith tells the story, he said, for God's sake, don't burn the wagons. And Lot Smith says, it's for God's sake, we are going to burn the wagons. They burn all the wagons down. [00:08:06] Speaker C: But they made it a point to introduce themselves and make sure, like, hey, get all your men out. No one gets hurt. [00:08:13] Speaker D: It's a very Mormon thing to very politely burn down somebody's wagon train. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Right, I'm here, I'm going to burn down your wagons. Hopefully it's okay if you want to stand over here. There is one cook, an overweight cook, who has a heart attack while they're doing it. It's a military casualty. But outside of that, I mean, there's one quote that kind of captures the Utah War better than anything I can think of as the army is coming west. And by the way, the strategy works, they're stopped at Fort Bridger, they get to Fort Bridger and the whole place has been burned down too, which is sort of the makings of a miserable winter for the army. But public opinion starts to turn against Buchanan too. Like, why are you doing this? Seems like a huge overcompensation. Meanwhile, there's this amazing guy named Thomas L. Kane. Thomas L. Kane is a non Latter Day Saint. He's a friend of the Saints. He came and visited the Saints while they were at winter quarters. He got sick. They nursed him back to health. And so he goes to James Buchanan and actually says, I know Brigham Young, and this doesn't sound like him, and says, will you empower me as a peace Commissioner? James Buchanan says, yes, but the Army's already on its way. What are you going to do? And Cain takes upon himself to get to Utah before the Army. He actually gets a steamer, sails down to Panama, crosses the isthmus of Panama, sails all the way up to San Francisco, gets on a horse, and gets to Salt Lake City Christmas Day. [00:09:34] Speaker C: It's wild to me that that was the faster way to go. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he arrives there immediately, runs into Brigham Young and says, are you rebelling against the government? Brigham Young says, I don't know what they're talking about. Will you empower me as a peace commissioner? And he actually crosses through the mountains and meets with the army and sets up a deal where before the army comes in, they're going to take Alfred Cumming, who's the governor. He's the appointed governor who's supposed to replace Brigham Young, through the mountains. And they do that. And that sort of settles the whole thing peacefully. It's also settled peacefully because the public turns against them. Like, this is the quote I wanted to share. This is from the New York Times, and I love this quote. It says, the Mormon War has been unquestionably a mass of blunders from beginning to end. Whichever way we look at it, it is a great mass of stupid blunders. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Oh, my. So not even the American populace is in favor of it. [00:10:23] Speaker C: Becomes known as Buchanan's blunder. [00:10:24] Speaker B: Buchanan blunder. Right. And I have no idea. How do you justify this? Some people have speculated that. I mean, we're three years prior to the Civil War, and if there's a way to unite a divided people, it might be by setting them against another. So let's forget about north versus South. Let's focus on these weirdos over in the West. I don't know if that's Buchanan's strategy, because the whole thing seems like a huge overreaction to begin with. With. But that context, which on the surface is sort of like a fun Western [00:10:54] Speaker D: kind of a railroad adventure. Yeah. [00:10:57] Speaker B: And sometimes we make the mistake of saying, well, the Utah War was largely bloodless because the spring after that winter, Johnston's army comes into Salt Lake, Brigham Young voluntarily gives up the governorship, Alfred Cumming takes over they agree to not stay in Salt Lake, the Army, and move on to where Eagle Mountain is and set up Kit Floyd there and stay there for the most part until the Civil War breaks out, when most of the army actually goes back and fights for the Confederates. [00:11:24] Speaker D: Yeah, Johnson, he dies in the Civil War. [00:11:26] Speaker B: He died fighting at Shiloh against Ulysses S. Grant. And so even Alfred Cumming, who's from Georgia, goes home when the Civil War breaks out. And again, the whole thing kind of exposes anxieties that they may have had pre Civil War in the United States that they act out by overreacting to things happening in the west where they feel like they can control elements. So we do a disservice by saying, well, the Utah War was largely bloodless. It caused huge upheavals. Everybody in Salt Lake moved to Provo for a couple months. The army coming through terrified a lot of people. And to say that it was bloodless is also not true, because that's the context of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. [00:12:05] Speaker C: And I do think it's worth noting that there was a lot of, like, anti Mormon sentiment on, like, the rank and file, like in the rank and file among the Army. Right. They were. A lot of them were motivated by, oh, we want to go those Mormons. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well. And the delaying tactics that the Nauvoo Legion uses to slow them down only increases the kind of hatred. There's quotes from people in the army saying, like, we're going to get in there and we're going to use our artillery and we will make short work of the Mormons. [00:12:33] Speaker C: Right. [00:12:33] Speaker B: And so, I mean, these are soldiers and they're trained to fight and they want to fight. And so those statements make sense in context, but they also provide justification for the Latter Day Saint side of things, saying, if we have to fight, what sort of strategies can we use? The strategy that the Nauvoo Legion used was largely nonviolent, but there were other more extreme things said. And that's part of the problem is, if you ask me, does Brigham Young bear any guilt for the Mountain Meadows Massacre? I would say, yeah, he does, but his guilt is primarily that he's using sort of inflammatory rhetoric to get people ready for what could be a very difficult and bloody struggle. And he starts sharing things like, well, maybe if we have to fight, the Native Americans will come and assist us, which stirs people up further. And he seems to have adopted a strategy, too, of saying, well, let's make the federal government realize how valuable we are. We're going to stop offering protection to wagon trains coming into the territory. And we're also going to accrue resources, which means they're not going to share with wagon trains coming through. And there were even some people on the Latter Day Saint side who felt like maybe we should take resources from these wagon trains that are coming through. [00:13:44] Speaker D: When you have that war hysteria, that war paranoia, passions are going to be inflamed on both sides, you're going to get mostly rhetoric, but sometimes violent actions on both sides. Right. And it is not an environment that is conducive towards letting cooler heads prevail. [00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And, I mean, they're staring down the barrel of what could possibly be the most severe and bloodiest persecution the church has ever faced. This isn't a group of Missouri mobbers. [00:14:08] Speaker D: This is the federal army. [00:14:10] Speaker B: Yeah. This isn't the militia from Warsaw that killed Joseph Smith. This is the army of the United States, a third of the army of the United States. And they are coming to your territory with hostile intent, and you don't know what their end game is. And so, I mean, that kind of hysteria does create the environment that makes Mountain Meadows possible. And I would say Brigham Young bears responsibility for that. So does his counselor, George A. Smith, who is the one who primarily goes through the southern settlements, just basically tells them, get ready for war. I think we'd also do a disservice if we didn't say there's a religious component to this, too, that some people got to the point where they felt like, this is the final battle. [00:14:48] Speaker D: Armageddon is here. [00:14:50] Speaker B: This is exactly what we thought would happen. And when people start thinking in millennial apocalyptic terms, we've seen this again and again and again, but it tends to lead people to do extreme things that [00:15:03] Speaker D: are sometimes very so in this environment of the Utah War. War, hysteria, war, paranoia, passions inflamed on both sides. In comes a wagon train from Arkansas, the Baker Fancher Baker party from Arkansas. And it really seems like it's a wrong time, wrong place, really unfortunate time when they end up in Utah. But tell us a little bit about them. The Baker Fancher party. And Mountain Meadows is in southern Utah, not northern Utah. And we don't have to do the whole route of where they go, but they end up in southern Utah, outside of Cedar. What happens there in Cedar City in August, early September of 1857 that leads to Mountain Meadows? Can you tell us a little bit about them and the situation there? [00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So the Fancher Baker Party we know a little bit about, but what we know about them also is highly suspect, too, because this isn't a story where there's two sides. One side is completely killed at the massacre, and the only survivors are children who can't share details. And so there's a lot of people telling this story on the latter day Saint side who are trying to cover up or justify or explain. But the general story that was told was that the Fancher Baker party comes into the Utah territory, and they've already been told to batten down the hatches. And when the Fancher Baker party tries to secure provisions, they're generally told, no, we're preparing for war. [00:16:24] Speaker C: They're trying to preserve the Saints, are trying to preserve resources in the case of a prolonged conflict with the army. [00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah, we're set up for a siege. And I mean, the narrative that emerged from the saints, and again, this is highly suspect, was that they were belligerent, that they were really rude. [00:16:42] Speaker D: Threats of violence, some reported threats of violence, in some cases, reported threats of [00:16:46] Speaker B: violence, in some cases. There may have been just a horrible set of circumstances, like misunderstanding. They come near Fillmore and there's some sort of conflagration with the name Native Americans. There's a conflict there. And several of the cattle that are with the wagon train, they die there. And apparently a little boy came up and he was taking the hide off one of the cattle, and he cuts his face accidentally, and his whole face within a day turns black, and he dies within a day or two. There's another woman who accidentally is doing the same thing. She cuts herself, she gets really sick, and that causes rumors to start to spread that this isn't a wagon train, that it's some sort of COVID fifth column that's being sent through to poison water sources or poison. Well, the authors of the book Massacre of Mountain Meadows looked at that specific event and went back and actually found out that, okay, from what we know, it sounds like what happened was there was an anthrax outbreak among the cattle that the Fancher Baker party had. And the symptoms that killed the little boy and made that other woman sick seem to align pretty clearly with anthrax. But it's one of those things that just increases the amount of hysteria as they head down what today is basically the i15 corridor and are denied assistance by each settlement as they go. Now, when they get to Cedar City, we don't know exactly what happens, but there is some kind of conflict, and it's been blown out of proportion to where, you know, one person on our side said someone from the Fancher Baker party claimed they were in the mob that stormed Carthage, or this was the [00:18:19] Speaker D: gun Joseph, stuff like that. Yeah. [00:18:22] Speaker B: And people that described it even said they were Missourians, which, as far as we know, there weren't any Missourians in the Fancher Baker party. So that's another one of the big questions is, were there Missourians? Was there another group that kind of melded with them? Because sometimes wagon trains would take in people and then the people would leave and so on and so forth. All we can say for sure is that something happened at Cedar City that caused Isaac Haight, who is the stake president of Cedar City, to decide that they needed to seek retribution, they needed to fight back. [00:18:54] Speaker D: The account we get is some kind of threat of violence or harassment against Isaac hate by members of the Baker Fanger party. Again, as we keep saying, the truth [00:19:04] Speaker C: of these claims and reports, they're all after the fact. And, yeah, they're all only coming from the Latter Day Saint point of view. Right. But there is some sort of conflict. I understand there's a story about, like, several of them are frustrated about not being able to get resources or whatever, and they go to Isaac Haight's house or something and they make threats. Kind of the account that's there. [00:19:28] Speaker B: One source says they wanted to basically mill their grain. They wanted to use the flour mill, and they were being charged an exorbitant price. And they go and they surround Isaac Haight's house and start calling for violence against him. Whatever happened, it spooks Isaac Haidt enough that he decides they need to take violent action against the Fancher Baker party. [00:19:50] Speaker C: And this, even though I think we just need to be clear, reading this, I just could not believe, even with all the context, you're just like, man, [00:19:58] Speaker A: how could it escalate? [00:19:59] Speaker C: Because he decides they need to take action after they are leaving, right? Like, they're rolling out of town, they're on their way out. And for some reason, Isaac Haight still decides, I want to get him back or something. [00:20:11] Speaker B: And that's one of the big questions surrounding this. Was a massacre the intent? Was the intent to kill them all? Or was the intent to chasten them? Or was the intent to steal their cattle? Because the Fancher Baker party also has a very attractive herd of Texas longhorn cattle. That is something that Latter Day Saints would have desired. So is Isaac Haight intending for this to be a massacre, or is he intending to do something lesser? And then it spins out of control? There's no way to know. This is all Monday morning quarterbacking, but it's also possible that the massacre was not intended to kill everybody in the wagon train, but then spun out of control and gets worse and worse and worse. Like I said, it's the worst case scen on the Latter Day Saint frontier at the time. [00:20:56] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, let's walk through kind of the days leading up to Mountain Meadows. Not necessarily hour by hour, but, you know, there are some key players that come into the story around this time. Another one of them is John D. Lee. Right. Kind of the most infamous character, perhaps involved with Mountain Nose Massacre. So we have the Baker Fancher party. They're on their way out of Cedar City, as we've discussed. Isaac Hate gets this idea that we gotta do something to these people, whatever that may be. We can't be sure. He goes to John D. Lee and they begin. Honestly, I don't think it's inappropriate to call a secret combination kind of conspiracy with each other to do something to this wagon train. So tell us a little bit about when John de Lee steps in. He has relations with the Paiute Indians. This is how they kind of get involved. And some of the players leading up to this, as well as we should say, there are individuals out of Saint saying, no, we don't want to mess with these people. Let them go. Right. So it's not like a universal thing. Could you walk us through that a little bit? [00:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So here's kind of the essential figures you need to know. William Dame, who's in Parowan, which is north of Cedar City, is actually the overall commander of the Iron county militia. So William Daim, if they want to bring out the entire militia, which they eventually do, is the person that has to give his approval. So after they have the whole conflict in Cedar City, William Dayne sends instructions specifically to Cedar City to say, don't do anything. Isaac Haight, and this is a common narrative, is Isaac Haidt is usually the person who. They have a council meeting, they make the right decision. Then afterwards, Isaac Haight says, no, let's actually do this instead. So Isaac Cate and other leaders in Cedar City, they come up with a plan to attack the wagon train, but make it look like Native Americans carried it out. [00:22:38] Speaker D: This is John D. Lee's role. Right. [00:22:39] Speaker B: John D. Lee has relations with pirates. [00:22:41] Speaker A: John. [00:22:41] Speaker B: Up to this point, John D. Lee doesn't know the wagon train from Adam. He's had no dealings with them, but he is the missionary to the Native Americans. And this brings up one of the great questions. Jacob Hamlin was actually the overall. [00:22:55] Speaker D: He's the guy The Indian guy. [00:22:57] Speaker B: He's the guy who deals with all the Native Americans in this part. And he's in Salt Lake when all this is happening. [00:23:02] Speaker C: He's meeting with Brigham Young. [00:23:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So one of the big what ifs is, well, what would have happened if Jacob Hamlin had been there instead of John D. Lee, and how would he have responded? And again, it's all Monday morning quarterbacking. We don't know. John D. Lee and Isaac Haight basically formulate this plan where we're going to attack and steal their cattle, or we don't know exactly what the original was, but we're going to make it look like the Native Americans did it. So he recruits several Paiutes to go with him. This is. Well, what's the day? Okay, so we're putting it down. It's Friday that Isaac Hay gets word, don't do anything, and then decides, now, let's do something. It's on Sunday that they meet together again, and they basically present to the Cedar City Council this plan. And a lot of them object. And at that point, they decide, we need to get word from Brigham Young. Let's figure out what Brigham Young wants us to do. And they agree to send a messenger, James Haslam, to go to Salt Lake to meet with Brigham Young and get instructions from him. And this is another one of the big what ifs of the massacre is, unfortunately, things were already in motion. John Deeley was already on his way to Mountain Meadows when this meeting happens. And it seems like in the meeting Isaac hates, basically says, okay, we'll wait until we hear from Brigham Young, but he can't reach John D. Lee in time to stop what's going to happen. [00:24:23] Speaker C: Well, my reading of the situation is it seems like Isaac Haight is putting things in motion with John D. Lee, and then he's hoping to get approval from the council. He's taking action before they meet, and then he doesn't get the support he wants in the council. But then things are kind of already in motion, like you mentioned, and he's not able to, like, communicate to John D. Lee. I don't know. For me, Isaac Hay is like the biggest bad guy here because it seems to me like he's trying to, like, deflect blame in both directions by getting approval from others for what he's doing, but also making John D. Lee and the Paiutes do the dirty work. [00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:07] Speaker C: And he's. He's trying to orchestrate things that doesn't make it look like he's the one orchestrating things yeah. [00:25:17] Speaker B: And I mean, again, that's another dimension to the tragedy here, is that Isaac Haight and others involved felt like they could pin the blame for these actions on the Native Americans. Now, Native Americans do participate in the attacks, but they're not the ones that initiate the attacks. And that is the story that's told for years and years. I mean, as late as the mid 20th century, when Mount Meadows was brought up, people would say, well, wasn't that an Indian massacre? When. No, it was planned, it was instigated, and it was primarily carried out by white European Latter Day Saints. [00:25:50] Speaker C: Well, and yeah, I mean, the massacre part of it was done by white Latter Day Saints, primarily Latter Day Saints. [00:25:56] Speaker B: But. Okay, so the same day, James Haslam leaves John D. Lee. Again, the story here is fuzzy because it doesn't sound like he launches an attack. He's sneaking up on the wagon train. And he might have just been like, you know, doing reconnaissance, but apparently someone sees him from the wagon train and John Dee Lee panics. And as the guy is running back towards the wagon train, the guy who spots him, he fires and he kills the guy. And people from the wagon train see that happen. [00:26:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:27] Speaker B: And so immediately, John Dee Lee orders, you know, a full scale assault. They attack the wagon train. But the settlers are better armed and better, better organized than they think they're going to be. They circle the wagons and they settle in for a siege. Meanwhile, upriver, there's a couple stragglers from the wagon train who run into members of the Iron county militia. And they at first are friendly, but then the members of the Iron county militia who are with John D. Lee kill one of them. The other person escapes and gets into the wagon train. And so now the wagon train knows we're under siege, and it could be [00:27:02] Speaker D: Native Americans, but now they see there's white men, Mormons are. [00:27:05] Speaker B: They're being assisted by white men. And so from there it spirals and it gets worse and worse and worse. So the wagon train's under siege. John D. Lee sends word back to Cedar City to basically say, we made the attack, but it wasn't successful. I need more people if you really want me to end this. [00:27:23] Speaker C: And he communicates to Isaac Haight that we've been seen. Basically, they know it's not just a Paiute thing, it's us. Right. [00:27:33] Speaker B: Because let's center this in the timeline correctly. Right. So all of the stuff where the conflict was resolved through negotiation happened in December. This is in September, three months before that happens. So at this point, they're thinking very much as, okay, a third of the United States army is on its way. If they find out that we attacked a peaceful immigrant white wagon train, that is, we're dead. Right? And everything from there spirals into this sort of pathetic attempt to try and cover up the crimes that they've already committed. And it spirals until they've done the worst possible thing they could do, which is kill everybody in the wagon train. But here's a couple more data points. So Monday, the attack happens. Tuesday, the siege continues. On Wednesday, Isaac Haight realizes he's in over his head and he goes up to Parowan to meet with William Dame, who again is the overall commander of the Iron County Militia. They meet together with an entire council and the council is told that Indians attacked the wagon train. So what should we do? Should we assist them? Should we not? They basically, the council decides, well, let's see if we can help the wagon train go on their way in peace. And the council again, if you're counting here for the third time, makes the right decision. It's after that Isaac Haight takes William Dame aside privately and says, hey, the actual truth is we initiated the attack and we participated in it. And then he lies to William Dayne and essentially says, and most of them are dead already. All we have to do is send in the militia and kill everybody that can witness to this and the story's over. In fact, you could see him saying, we don't really have any choice at this point. [00:29:17] Speaker D: Yeah, you can imagine. [00:29:18] Speaker B: Unless we want to find ourselves at the end of a rope. And William Dame goes along with that. [00:29:23] Speaker C: This is why I say Isaac Haight, he's being very manipulative in all of these meetings. Like, as I read about this, I kind of wonder what's going through the heads of some of these council members. Cause they're like, indians attack. Like, well, why would we help them? Like, well, let's help the immigrants get out of there safely. Like, they've gotta be so confused about, like, what is his motive here that he is like, hey, should we help the Indians attack these people? Yeah, it's just so weird. But he's not being fully, like forthright even in this private meeting, right. With William Dame because he's trying to pull strings to get what he wants, basically. [00:30:00] Speaker B: And this is what's going to cause the COVID up afterwards is he lies to William Dame. But William Dame does agree to call out the entire Iron county militia. And so on Thursday, that's the day after Isaac Hate returns to Cedar City, he tells local leaders they send the entire Iron county militia with instructions to kill all the immigrants except for young children. Meanwhile, James Haslam, by Thursday, it's taken four days, makes it Salt Lake. He gets in the Salt Lake, he's exhausted. He immediately meets with Brigham Young. Brigham Young writes down an order where he says, let the immigrants go in peace. But then there's this ambiguous phrase in it which says, the Indians will do what they will. And so from Brigham Young's perspective, the army's invading. The only possible allies he has are the Native Americans. He doesn't want to set up a conflict between Latter Day Saints and America, [00:30:49] Speaker D: doesn't want a three way war here. [00:30:50] Speaker B: So he's basically, do what you can to assist them, but don't do anything to upset the Native Americans. Other people have read that to say, basically, oh, I'm okay, if the Native Americans wipe out this wagon train. If you're a Brigham Young hater, that's your reading of the letter. If you're a Brigham Young supporter, you would say, gosh, it's logical that faced with conflict, he doesn't want to infuriate the only people who might possibly help him if there's a military conflict. [00:31:14] Speaker D: But we maybe do want to point out that in those instructions to Haslam to send down to the council, it's clear, let the immigrant train. Let the wagon train pass in peace. Do not disturb them. I think in many ways this is exculpatory evidence to the claim. The accusation that Brigham Young was the mastermind behind the Mount Meadows Massacre, that he was the one controlling everybody and telling them what to do, and he gave the final order to go massacre these people. That just is not borne out by the evidence. I think it's also worth pointing out with this great research that Rick Turley and these guys have done so for many years as scholars wrestled with this, we only had Haslam's account of it, right? And we had maybe later copies of what this letter supposedly said. And there was the claim, well, how do we know that this wasn't after the matter of the fact, this wasn't cooked up to try to, you know, get Brigham Young off the hook? Rick Turley and his co authors were able to look at the original letter book, that these orders are being written out and it is sequential. It is an order. It's not a post facto, you know, cook up of an order. It's there in the original order from the original letter book. So it's clear this is a contemporary letter. These are the Instructions, yes, there is ambiguity for what are the Indians going to do? And how do you read that? But on that point, I think it's worth emphasizing. [00:32:28] Speaker C: And I do think, honestly, I can't stress enough how valuable just reading these books is to understanding what's going on, because they had access to original source material like that letterbook and stuff that up to that point no one had seen, at least as far as I understand it. And. And we're talking hundreds. Hundreds, maybe even over a thousand. I don't know exactly, but tons of primary sources. And a lot of that has now been made available through the Church History library. They've published some collections, like the legal collections were published in a two volume set. And there's the Andrew Jensen collection. But a lot of that's now totally open and accessible to people who want to. But this was kind of breaking ground with those primary sources. And it's not just that letter. Like, you read through these books and there's so much primary source material that just makes it really clear that, like, I feel like the best explanation of the data and the behavior of William Dane and Isaac Haight and all, like, really does not make a lot of sense. If there was. If Brigham Young was actually the mastermind. [00:33:32] Speaker B: They make the decision in Cedar City and Parowan on Wednesday and Thursday. Okay, let's finish this. They send out the Arin County Militia. If you go down and you can actually trace their path, the distances here are helpful too, because Mountain Meadows is about 30 miles away from Cedar City. It takes time for them to get there. There on Friday, the immigrants have been under siege for four days. They're desperate. John D. Lee approaches the immigrant wagon train under a flag of truce, and he basically tells them, I'm with the Iron County Militia. We've worked at a truce with the Native Americans. But you have to lay down your weapons and you have to come out of your defenses. And at this point, they're desperate enough. [00:34:11] Speaker D: They don't have water. They need medical supplies. [00:34:13] Speaker B: Wounded, they've got. Several of them have already been killed. Many of them are wounded. They agree to come out. And this is where it gets grisly [00:34:21] Speaker D: and gruesome and really dark, too. [00:34:23] Speaker B: I don't like to tell this story. [00:34:25] Speaker D: The false pretenses of John de Lee coming under a white flag, like that's real duplicity. [00:34:30] Speaker C: A false flag is. I mean, literally, right? [00:34:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So they separate the men from the women and children. Each man is assigned a militiaman next to his side, and the women march ahead. Basically, it's when the women go around the bend of this hill. And if you go to the site, you can kind of get a feel for the geography there that the order is given. Do your duty. That was the assigned. Every militiaman was like the signal. The signal. Every militiaman was asked to shoot in the head the man next to him. And then John D. Lee and Iron county militia and some Native Americans attacked the women and children and killed all of them. Them except for 17 children. [00:35:10] Speaker D: 17 little kids who were under the age of what, five or so who were too little, they think too little to. Again, it's so grisly in the grim logic, let's finish the job but spare the little kids. Come on. [00:35:20] Speaker B: Once it's that warped, that's part of what should make every person's studies this queasy is it's not a massacre in the sense that they were fighting and they decided to give no quarter and wipe out every person. It was deliberate and it was premeditated. [00:35:33] Speaker C: It was cold blooded murder. Yeah, absolutely. [00:35:35] Speaker B: There's no other way. [00:35:37] Speaker C: And I mean, you talk. I feel like I felt like I knew a lot or was relatively prepared when I first read Massacre at Mountain Meadows. But you get to the chapter that actually describes and gives the accounts, like quotes, the primary sources that describes what like. It is harrowing. It is harrowing. It is so awful. [00:35:56] Speaker B: The aftermath is pretty rough too. The children are taken to Rachel Hamlin's house. So Rachel is Jacob Hamlin's wife, and their home is at the northern end of Mountain Meadows. And she talks about children who were weeping because they'd seen their mother killed in front of them. [00:36:12] Speaker D: One little girl had her arm blown off. [00:36:14] Speaker B: She was 18 months old. Had her arm hanging on by just [00:36:17] Speaker D: a couple tendons or something. Yeah. [00:36:20] Speaker B: And Rachel's just basically asked to take care of all these screaming, inconsolate children. It's just awful. To add a couple other significant codas to it. Isaac Haight has not been to the massacre site. He's been doing all this by distance. And after the massacre happens, he and William Dame arrive at the massacre site. And this to me is one of the key evidences that Brigham Young did not order the massacre. [00:36:46] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:36:47] Speaker B: Is. The two of them have a huge blowup. [00:36:49] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [00:36:50] Speaker B: And there's men around that see this. And later on testify that this happens where William Dame basically sees the bodies, the extent of the condition that they're in. And he says, you told me that they were. Almost all these people have been freshly killed. You lied to me. And Isaac Haight, in front of everybody, says, you're just as deep in this now as I am. And basically what they're fearful of is what happens when Brigham Young finds out about this. It seems like if they were acting under orders from Brigham Young, they wouldn't have that conversation. [00:37:20] Speaker C: The account, as I understand it, is William Dayne says, I have to report this. And Isaac Haight is like, oh, and incriminate yourself. [00:37:27] Speaker D: You're gonna hang with us if you do. [00:37:29] Speaker C: Basically, you gave the. And that's when he's like, I had no idea it was this many people. [00:37:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, as a final sort of pathetic coda to the whole story is James Haslam, the guy who's Salt Lake, arrives in Cedar City on Sunday, so Monday to Thursday to go to Salt Lake, all the way back on Sunday. And he gets there and he hands instructions to Isaac Haight. And according to several people, Isaac Haight reads it in the street and weeps openly and then says, I would give a world if I had it to have abided by the decision of the council. But, alas, it is too late. And that's when I'm teaching this in class. That's one of the things I try and stress is, hey, sometimes it's frustrating in the church that we have to go through councils. [00:38:11] Speaker C: Things move slowly. [00:38:13] Speaker B: Sometimes you want to tear your hair out because of the bureaucracy that we face. But councils protect us from making stupid decisions. [00:38:21] Speaker C: And it's a very compelling image. Right. And I actually like your word pathetic, though, because it is pathetic. And instead of what gets me here is he realizes he made a catastrophic error. Instead of owning up to it and being accountable, though, he and William Dame and everybody else, they react to this by trying to cover things up. [00:38:48] Speaker B: And let me state of these two books here, by the way, this one, which came out in 2009, seven or eight, just covers the massacre. It's sort of abrupt that it ends immediately after the massacre. And at the time I was active in the historical community, and there were some people that were like, well, this is still sort of a cover up because you're only explaining what happened in the massacre. And what a lot of people want to attack the church with is the aftermath. What happened? Was there a cover up? I'm happy to say that this book, which came out in 2012. [00:39:19] Speaker D: Yeah, just two years ago. [00:39:20] Speaker B: Three years ago, covers very thoroughly the aftermath of Mountain Meadows, and in my mind, shows the follies of some of the church leadership in creating this tinderbox environment, but also demonstrates at least to me, that Brigham Young did not order the massacre and that it wasn't carried out at his orders. It was just this one bad thing after another. [00:39:46] Speaker C: Well, I think one of the things I felt like I noticed at least, is that I actually think there was some introspection on the part of Brigham Young. Right. In the wake of this. Like, for one thing, even with that tinderbox environment and all that fiery rhetoric as we talked about, there were still a lot of people who had cooler heads, that if they had been listened to, cooler heads still could have prevailed. Right. But I also think. I do feel like as Brigham Young came to understand more and more about what happened, I felt like he seemed to have some introspection about how he maybe contributed to this. [00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, let me add a little context here. So John D. Lee is Brigham Young's adopted son. He's sealed to Brigham Young. [00:40:27] Speaker D: Law of adoption. [00:40:28] Speaker B: Yeah, law of adoption. And John D. Lee, eventually, around the end of September, after all this has happened, goes to Salt Lake and reports to Brigham Young what happened. And the way John Deeley tells the story, he gives them the wrong dates, by the way. But he also just says the Native Americans carried out. [00:40:44] Speaker D: Depends it on the Paiutes. Right. [00:40:46] Speaker B: And that is. I mean, Brigham Young's in a crisis situation. This is his adopted son. He trusts him. But it also causes Brigham Young to realize, I think all this rhetoric about the Native Americans being the battle ax that we use against the army maybe caused this to happen. And he does meet with his military leaders, Daniel H. Wells, who's leading the Na' VI Legion, and says, let's pull back on this. This Native American strategy. Like, let's stop trying to stir them up. We can't have more stuff like this happen. It was the worst possible timing for it to happen. But that leads to a couple important data points. So Brigham Young is told it's a Native American massacre. Within months, people start. Details start coming up. People that participated in the massacre feel immense guilt. The army arrives in the Utah Territory. They send down a contingent to investigate the massacre site. Horrible, horrible scenes. [00:41:43] Speaker D: They find the bodies, and they describe [00:41:45] Speaker B: a lot of the bodies were buried in shallow graves and been disinterred by, you know, animals. And the army reburies them and creates this with a cross on it that says, vengeance is mine, which is where [00:41:56] Speaker C: we get the title of the second book comes from. [00:41:59] Speaker B: Eventually, Brigham Young does come to realize that he's been lied to and that John Deeley participated. And there is a really, really powerful moment in it where apparently Brigham Young would tour the southern settlements. About once a year, he stops in New Harmony and he talks to John D. Lee. And people hear him say, john D. Lee, do all the good you can in this life, for where God and Jesus Christ will. You will never come. Wow. And so he basically, like, you know, cooperates. But he's also dealing with the opposite side, too, is that the national press and the popular mind already doesn't like Latter Day Saints because they're weird. They practice plural marriage, and they pin this on the entire church. The subtleties of what happened and how it was local leaders that caused the massacre are completely lost on the American public. And so Brigham Young has to try and mitigate the damage there too, while he's participating in these investigations. And what becomes another tragedy is that rather than just trying to discern the truth of the investigations surrounding Mountain Meadows turn into a fishing expedition where they're trying to find a way to pin it on Brigham Young so that they can convict him. [00:43:12] Speaker C: Well, and you actually get the sense, at least in Vengeance is Mine, you get the sense that during that first trial, the prosecution was actually deliberately trying to get a hung jury for political reasons because they wanted. Because they had to. Like, they wanted a full non Mormon jury. Right. And they had to compromise on getting both Latter Day Saints and non Latter Day Saints in the jury. [00:43:32] Speaker A: And. [00:43:33] Speaker C: And so they wanted to get a hung jury so that they could, for political reasons, go back to Washington and say, look at how terrible. Like, they will not convict their murderous criminals and they won't let us execute justice. And so we need a new law that allows us to exclude Latter Day Saints from juries. And we need a bunch of funding and money to help us, you know, really, you know, crack down on all the crime and stuff going on and salt, like. And so it was like a political maneuver to deliberately get a hung jury there. [00:44:02] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's part of the tragedy too, is that not only are these people killed, but then their deaths are [00:44:07] Speaker D: used for political purposes. [00:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah, Kind of as a lever for people trying to get what they want. And that's sort of the tragedy in the second book, is to see how the story was distorted over time. And among Latter Day Saints going into the 20th century, it largely turns into, well, it was an Indian massacre. What do think you going to do among non Latter Day Saints, it turns into, Brigham Young ordered a massacre. [00:44:31] Speaker D: So one other thing we may want to talk about real quick here, Casey, is John D. Lee. And sort of the aftermath of what happens to him, you can read the book to get the full story, but. Right. He's the only guy who is successfully tried and convicted and executed for his role in Mountain Meadows. And people are probably familiar with his book. Well, posthumously, his book, Mormonism Unveiled the Confessions of John D. Lee. Right. This became a national bestseller. It's captured the imagination of many Americans on, again, those violent, fanatical Mormons. Right. And it's presented as if it's those John D. Lee's confessions. And people have just taken at face value his narrative that he presents in there of himself, which is that I was this poor, helpless scapegoat. I was just doing what Brigham Young wanted me to do. And evil Brigham Young let me to hang out to dry, let me for the wolves after I did his bidding for him. I was his faithful servant. And how bad is that? [00:45:27] Speaker C: Right. [00:45:28] Speaker D: And even some historians have taken sort of John D. Lee's version or his narrative at face value to say he was the unfortunate scapegoat of this whole thing. Right. Do we want to comment on that for just a few minutes? One thing that comes out of Vengeance is mine. Looking at the shorthand court transcripts versus the posthumously published by his lawyer that had financial incentives, Confessions of John D. Lee, you see a lot of discrepancy between that narrative, the scapegoat narrative, versus what actually happened. So what can you maybe tell us about that? [00:46:01] Speaker B: Well, I mean, was he a scapegoat or was he the perpetrator of the massacre? It's a little from column A and a little from column B. He is the only person executed for the massacre. And it's tough because the massacre is a community. Like you're Iron county militia member number 19, and you get brought to Mount Meadows and told to do something, you do it right. There were some that refused to participate. There were some that were haunted the rest of their life. But John D. Lee is the person who's there at the time. Every violent act is carried out, including the murder of the women and children. He's the number one person associated with that happening, that particular act. I asked Rick Turley once, how come John D. Lee was convicted and nobody else was. And I think his exact words were, because he would not shut up. Like, he had a big mouth and he talked to everybody about it. And John D. Lee is like, when you read the documents, he's almost effusive, like, you can't shut up about things. He goes back to New Harmony, you know, a couple days after the massacre and announces what he to a public congregation. [00:47:04] Speaker C: He was basically, before it circulated, that Brigham Young said, don't do it. He was being very, like, bragging about it, basically. [00:47:13] Speaker B: But a couple things people should know. Yes. There is a book that purports to be John Deeley's story that was written by his lawyer. John Deelee is financially wiped out by these trials. He has no way to defend himself, and his lawyer knows there's no way that he's gonna get rid of it. [00:47:27] Speaker D: He's paid. [00:47:28] Speaker B: Right. And the popular narrative in the American mind was Brigham Young is the mastermind and the source of all evil things that happen, happen in the Utah territory. So the narrative says that. But a couple years ago, the transcripts of the trial, which were written down in Pittman shorthand, were published. In fact, they're available for free. Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown have put up a website called notnowsbasker.com where you can go and look at all the transcripts for free. And what is clear is that nowhere in the trials under oath does John D. Lee ever say that Brigham Young ordered the massacre. And maybe even more impressive, John D. Lee is sentenced to be executed at the massacre site. So they take him from Beaver, Utah, where he's being held at a military installation, and they take him to Mount Meadows. And there's literally a photograph of John D. Lee sitting. [00:48:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I saw that. I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe we have this. [00:48:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And in those last final minutes, he is given the chance to pin the whole thing on Brigham Young. And he gets up and says, I don't think Brigham Young's a prophet anymore. [00:48:32] Speaker D: They do have a falling out, because, you know, he. Brigham Young, excommunicates John D. Lee when he finds out his involvement. And so he feels, you know, there is a playing out there. He feels betrayed. [00:48:40] Speaker C: Right. [00:48:41] Speaker D: Again, kind of a twisted. But, yeah. He will not kind of pin it all on Brigham. Even at the very end. [00:48:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, even when the guns are pointed at him and he's literally standing over his coffin that he's gonna fall into. He doesn't say Brigham Young, Daniel's. [00:48:55] Speaker C: And there's that whole. The whole wagon ride from Beaver to Mountain Meadows. He's with a clergyman. Not a Latter day saint clergyman, a Methodist, with the idea that, like, okay, any last confessions that you want to make, you've got this wagon ride to make it. And he also never says anything there. And the hope, I think, was that he would. During that ride, he would come clean about Brigham's involvement and he never does. [00:49:18] Speaker B: And I mean, there's been numerous things that book, I mean, even Mark Hoffman forgeries basically saying that Confessions of the John D. Lee confessed that Brigham Young planned it. But when we put together all the documents and create a viable timeline of events, listening to everybody that was involved, it just seems like Brigham Young was not aware of what was happening and that he acted to try and prevent it. So the most correct thing to say is Brigham Young created the. He helped create the environment that made it possible. But did he order the massacre? It just seems like not all the evidence we have. [00:49:49] Speaker D: And John D. Lee does bear responsibility as a direct participant. He's not the poor helpless scapegoat, right? [00:49:55] Speaker B: That. [00:49:56] Speaker C: Yeah, he's not that. Well, he is a scapegoat in the sense that like I was saying earlier, like I think Isaac Haight deliberately, like he tries to keep his hands clean. Right. And like we talked about, he's never actually participates in the massacre. He's kind of manipulating John D. Lee and puts him in this position where he's the one who becomes the sword, if you will. But John D. Lee is absolutely as far as like on the field of where the massacre happens, he is probably the most responsible and accountable individual there. [00:50:26] Speaker B: Yeah. John D. Lee is the on site commander who pulls the trigger and kills people. Isaac Cate is probably the person most responsible for planning and carrying it out. And Isaac Cate is also excommunicated from the church. He is readmitted into the church. But then a couple interesting things happen there too where after he was readmitted in the church, he went to the St. George Temple. And the people of the St. George Temple were like, how dare you even think you could come into this place building. And he's essentially ostracized by his own people, moves to Arizona and dies there. Sort of a pathetic, lonely death where his body stays in someone's basement for like three years. [00:51:04] Speaker C: Yeah, he's not even buried. [00:51:06] Speaker B: It's just sort of an awful story too. But the simple fact of the matter is that he didn't pull a trigger. He didn't kill anybody. But it was. He's the driver behind the whole thing. [00:51:14] Speaker C: And this is something I didn't know until I read this book, but William Dane Dame was actually arrested and he was going to be tried or well, they wanted to try him, but the problem with that was there was so little evidence of his involvement that they never could actually get a conviction. And they ultimately just had to let him go. Right. [00:51:35] Speaker B: You know, a fairly recent book that came out that talked about the plural marriage groups in Northern Mexico. Yeah, there was a terrible incident where, where two Suburbans full of their people were machine gunned and destroyed by a local cartel. And I'm reading through that book and the author is going through the history of Mormonism and she just states, Brigham Young ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre with no engagement with the sources and just states it as if it's fact. And this is like in a nationally published book. [00:52:06] Speaker D: It's a powerful narrative, it's a powerful myth. Janice Johnson, we can recommend her work on kind of the popular perception Mountain Mouse and, and that's even today, American Primeval. These are the things that's become still the mainstream kind of thing. [00:52:16] Speaker B: I mean, under the Banner of Heaven, like of course, Mountain Meadows Massacre, which I've read under the Banner of Heaven. The story that they're trying to cover, which is the Lafferties, has nothing to do with Mountain Meadows. But it's got to get it in there. It's a story to throw it in. Let me mention one more thing. A couple years ago, PBS did a three hour documentary on the church that was not entirely against us. We came out looking pretty good. But they spend a half hour of that time discussing Mountain Meadows and using it as the hey, case study. Latter Day Saints are inherently violent, therefore you should be scared of them and stuff like that. And American Primeval and Under the Banner of Heaven all add up eventually to where we get stuff like what happened in Michigan last year where a guy drives his truck into a Latter Day Saint chapel and sets it on fire because he thinks we're violent saints and [00:53:10] Speaker D: kills Latter Day Saint worshippers there in the process. [00:53:12] Speaker C: Well, and I think that that's one of the things I was thinking about as I was preparing for this and reading Vengeance is Mine. I read the massacre book a couple years ago and I read Vengeance is Mine just this week. But I feel like it does a disservice to the victims when we try to use this for polemical ends either way. Right, but it also does a disservice. I mean, like we were talking about at the beginning about how do you, how do we process this, how do we understand this, how do we take away from this and learn things when you try to make it about like religious fanaticism and try to paint the entire Latter Day Saint religion as violent and evil because of incidents like this. For one thing, I think if you're not a Latter Day Saint, that's a very Comforting thing to do because it's like, oh, it's those crazy religious fanatics who behave this way. And it's not really like this deeply embedded, you know, flaw in humanity itself that I might personally be subjected to under the right circumstances. And so it's this very, like, comforting thing, like, oh, I'm, you know, civilized people like me couldn't do that. Whereas I feel like you. You start reading the details and it's actually very harrowing to realize that. No, actually, like, otherwise seemingly decent people can get caught up in stuff like this. And it's precisely because of a painting of us versus them sort of of thing that by trying to pin this on the violent religious fanaticism of the church, you're actually just continuing to fuel the same sorts of things that ultimately led to violence here. Like you said, led to the violence in Michigan a couple or last year. [00:54:56] Speaker D: Just last year. [00:54:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Before we can commit violence, the human mind has to other someone. You have to get them to where you look at them and say, they would kill me or they're not even human. And unfortunately, the narrative surrounding Mountain Meadows and it's still going on today, I mean, in the 21st century, is this whole all Latter Day Saints are violent. It's the whole all Germans are Nazis mindset that causes problems. But I will say to my fellow Latter Day Saints, there's a danger too, of us othering other groups and saying things like, well, they had it coming. Let me give you an example. This is a quote from a mass alignment who is an apostle in the 19th century. And people are coming out and saying, well, you know, the Fancher Baker party had it coming. They killed Joseph Smith. He said this. If any Latter Day Saints suppose the kingdom is to be built up by shedding blood, they were mistaken. Though some that had great taste for shedding blood might have gratification. And then he said this. But they never would gain salvation by such a course. And then here's the golden quote that I take away from. He said the best way to avenge the blood of the prophets was to take a course to diminish the power of the devil. In other words, we never pay back blood that has been shed by people that we love by shedding more blood. He's saying, hey, the best way to avenge Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith and the victims of Hans Mill and all the victims of violence in our history is to take a course to avenge the past. That's why Michigan becomes such a beautiful story. Because after that violent attack that happened last Fall. And man, I felt the othering start to happen. The day after that attack on the Michigan chapel, we had a group of evangelical students come and they immediately started into their whole Anti Mormonism 101. And I felt myself getting angry and thinking stuff like this is the reason why Michigan happened. Meanwhile in Michigan, they're raising $300,000 for the family of the guy who carried out the massacre. Like they took a course to diminish the power of the devil instead of trying to shed more blood, thinking that that would make things equal. Mountain Meadows is fundamentally a story about how blood leads to blood leads to blood. And at some point someone has to stand up and stop and say, hey, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth means that everybody ends up blind and toothless. It just doesn't work. And it's fundamentally against the teachings of Jesus Christ. I want to read a statement by Henry B. Eyring. So in 2007, at the anniversary of the. It was the 150th anniversary of the Mount Meadows massacre, he went to Mount Meadows and he read this statement at the site in front of the monument. And I think it captures what the church feels about this. He said, the gospel of Jesus Christ that we espouse abhors the cold blooded killing of men, women and children. Indeed, it advocates peace and forgiveness. What was done at the Mountain Meadows long ago by members of our church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct. So that's a good model. Don't apologize. [00:58:00] Speaker D: Don't make excuses. [00:58:01] Speaker B: Don't make excuses. Here's what happened. Note it is contrary to what we teach. This was a group of people who went contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Then he says this. The responsibility for the massacre lies with the local leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the regents near Mountain Meadows, who also held civic and military military positions. And with members of the church acting under their direction, no doubt divine justice will impose appropriate punishment upon those responsible for the massacre. So again, it's kind of a great model for this idea of, hey, if we talk about history and we do it in an accurate way, it can help heal wounds faster than if we try and make justifications or cover up things like, let's be honest about what occurs and face the facts with clarity. This is turning into a cliche, right? But we don't think that the leaders or the members of the church are perfect. They can make mistakes. And on another level, this should be a warning to Latter Day Saints and all people of faith that religion has a vast potential to do good things. Like in my mind, all religions, not just the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, have been a force for good in the world, but man. It is also something where you can flip a switch and it becomes evil immediately. And if you're not in tune and in touch with the teachings of Jesus Christ, if you allow your fear and your hysteria to dehumanize people, religious people are capable of doing some pretty awful, awful stuff. And that's something that every religious person needs to keep in their mind continually. Is am I justifying a horrific act in the name of God? And if so, do I really understand what God wants of me and am I familiar with what he really teaches and stands for? [00:59:45] Speaker A: Very chilling. If you want to dive more into this harrowing episode in our history, these two books are where you want to go. Remember, you can study deeply and still believe boldly. We'll see you next time, [01:00:03] Speaker B: Sam.