Mountain Meadows: Not Yet Gone | Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy

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After more than thirty years as a historian and after writing dozens of book reviews, I confess that this one has been the most difficult response that I have ever had to write. Perhaps it is because of the horrific event that the book describes. I am troubled also because my friends and colleagues divide vehemently in continuing and acrimonious historical debate. Nor is the struggle over this distant event confined to academic circles. The Mountain Meadows Massacre, after almost a century and a half, remains hotly contested ground in a state still bloodied by religious warfare. 

The facts are well known. The crime occurred on September 11, 1857, in southwestern Utah not far from Cedar City. Mormon militia units and their Paiute Indian allies had besieged an emigrant train destined for California and composed of men, women, and children primarily from Arkansas. With John D. Lee in the lead, the settlers were lured from their improvised wagon fortifications under a flag of truce and a promise of safe conduct. Unarmed and vulnerable, more than 120 emigrants were then brutally slaughtered at close quarters and their property dispersed to the murderers. Only children too young to expose the guilty were spared. What is not, and may never be, fully understood is why this happened and who was responsible. 

The massacre drew extensive contemporary newspaper coverage and much attention from historians. Juanita Brooks published her landmark work The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) in 1950, and Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets: Brigham, Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press) appeared in 2002. Scores of journal articles focused on the massacre or the larger context in which it occurred. If this research has added much to our understanding, there has long been the sense that the collections of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contain materials that would shed light on the event and its perpetrators. Much may have been lost or destroyed. Missing data are the lot of historians. But the perception and the reality of restrictions on the use of such documents have fostered conspiracy theories not only about historical actors, but modern authorities. The massacre at Mountain Meadows bequeaths a bitter legacy, not only because of the horrific nature of the event, but also because the crime remains unpunished. 

Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard, associated with Brigham Young University and the History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offer Massacre at Mountain Meadows, an interpretation that benefits greatly from unrestricted access to a large body of materials owned by the Mormon Church. The authors found ward and militia records valuable sources for reconstructing events. Also important, they discovered in the Mormon Church’s First Presidency’s archives the full body of work collected by assistant Church historian Andrew Jenson who, with official approval, interviewed in 1892 the massacre’s surviving persons of interest. 

The book weaves a complex plot. It argues that “both victims and perpetrators were decent but imperfect people whose paths crossed in a moment of history that resulted in a terrible tragedy” (xiii). The year 1857 in Utah was a moment rife with fear and portending conflict. Building up the kingdom of God had proven a frustrating and difficult task. Bad weather, insect plagues, and poor crops brought near-famine and tested settlers’ faith. Dissenters and apostates weakened the ranks and brought “sermons like peals of thunder” (26) demanding reformation and a cleansing of sin. Gangs of zealots enforced such preaching and intimidated the wavering to firm up commitment. Meanwhile, the persecution that recently dogged Mormons in Missouri and Illinois darkly colored their perceptions of outsiders and made them intolerant of any slight. 

Into this setting of tension and uncertainty came news that President James Buchanan had sent a U.S. Army expedition to bring the Saints to heel, arrest their leaders, and impose martial law on Utah. With visions of the last days ever present in their minds, Mormons and their leaders prepared for war, spinning scenarios of armed resistance and scorched earth to resist the forces of Babylon. Not only would the Saints stockpile weapons, ammunition, and food, but they would also encourage their Native American allies to fulfill prophecy and join in holy war against their common enemy. 

As the U.S. Army approached and Mormons prepared for the end of time, the Arkansas emigrant train traveled south through Utah on its way to California. Out of supplies and pressing their cattle onto nearby grasslands, they repeatedly generated friction with Mormon settlers. The seeming wealth of the travelers also chafed Mormon sensibilities and brought a covetousness that exacerbated the tensions. 

These Saints had already been primed for confrontation firsthand by Brigham Young’s emissary George A. Smith, an apostle. As a latter-day Paul Revere, Smith went circuit-riding through the small towns of southern Utah and delivered “war sermons” (53) calling the rank and file to arms against the coming army invasion. In the rush to war, who could distinguish between the American emigrants and the forces marching on the Mormon kingdom? The makings of tragedy were now assembled: The “other” had been demonized and dehumanized, authorities had trumpeted the causes of war and conspiracy, local leaders pressed for obedience and were not denied, peers demanded conformity, and small sparks of personal conflict had found ready tinder in isolated and economically deprived southern Utah. Once action commenced, the human and unforeseen dictated events. The tragedy had been spun, write the authors, in a “complex web of fear, misunderstanding, and retribution” (128). 

Massacre at Mountain Meadows is an important addition to the literature on one of the most significant events in Utah history. The authors’ research has brought to light key sources that persuasively answer questions about the how, who, what, and when of the massacre. John D. Lee may have been the only person executed for his role in the tragedy, but the authors do not hesitate to name his co-conspirators. President Young and George Smith were guilty of warmongering and setting a policy of wartime alliance with the Paiutes, but they were not accomplices before the fact. 

The authors have also done an excellent job in recreating the religious, military, political, and economic context of the events of September 11, 1857, and placing Utah at that period in a broad national frame. The book, in addition, offers a detailed timeline and scenario of events both at the site of the tragedy, in local councils, and in the office of Brigham Young. With a sturdy and clear prose style, the authors have made this history accessible to a large audience. The book’s short chapters act to accelerate the momentum of a gripping narrative. 

If excellent in its detail work, however, the book does suffer from conceptual weaknesses. The authors maintain that they presented their information “by narrating it, largely foregoing topical or critical analysis” (xii). They also insist on the notion of “letting the events speak for themselves” (xv). But, of course, historians are not passive in telling their tales. They make judgments and offer interpretations based upon evidence and logic. Even textbooks, which appear to be mere compendiums of facts, are value-laden in regard to the information that their authors deem valuable and necessary to include and exclude. The prior commitments of the authors of this volume are, inevitably, apparent in some places: The first chapters of Massacre at Mountain Meadows 

read like a defense brief for the Saints, their church, and their leader. The authors present character witnesses for everyone except, tellingly, John D. Lee. George A. Smith is unaware of the consequences of his acts. Local leaders Isaac Haight and William Dame are portrayed as honorable men caught in circumstances beyond their control. Later chapters prove far more balanced in assigning responsibility and offering realistic appraisals of perpetrators. Occasionally, some interpretive comments are jarring. Federal officials in Utah territory are likened to “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags,” (23) with the authors seemingly unaware that such terms deny the complexity of the northern migration to the South after the Civil War and denigrate southerners who supported black rights and the Union while opposing secession and treason. Nor can federal authority be derided as simply “colonial rule” (28). When interpretation is offered, it is neither fully explained nor nuanced. Thus the authors rely on Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience to authority, but handle the interpretation in just two short paragraphs and cite as references two newspaper articles and none of his studies. 

While the authors have considered the literature on violence, group psychology, and conspiracy thinking, it was surprising that they missed a book that relates directly to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Christopher Brown’s work, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, Harper, 1992), tells of the German militiamen who formed killing squads in Poland in Adolf Hitler’s “final solution” against European Jews during World War II. In age and marital status they resembled the Mormon militiamen at Mountain Meadows. After forcing Jewish men, women, and children from their homes, the Germans marched them to killing pits. The killing was at close quarters and personal with each soldier assigned a Jew to walk the final yards. The commander gave his militiamen a choice; they could participate and kill, or refuse and step out of the ranks. One in five Germans refused to kill. They were not subject to disciplinary action. This raises critical questions about authority, obedience, personal values, and conscience. While Walker, Turley, and Leonard note individuals who opposed the planning and execution of Mountain Meadows, they do not slow the narrative to consider the meaning of such resistance. Why did these Mormon individuals oppose their leaders and peers? And why did not one in five of the murderers of Mountain Meadows step out of the ranks? 

Massacre at Mountain Meadows takes the reader to September 13, 1857, with a brief epilogue that covers the execution of John D. Lee twenty years later. As the authors note, their book considers the crime and is but the “first half of the story” (xii). A second installment, concerning the punishment, will be necessary to extend our understanding of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its continuing resonance. Even such an unthinkable crime might have, with time, lost its emotional power. What has ensured that Mountain Meadows remains bloody ground is the perception that punishment was not swift and that some got away with murder. 

Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard. Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 430 pp. Notes, illustrations, appendices, index. Hardback: $29.95; ISBN: 0-195-160-347