Massacre at Mountain Meadows

On September 11, 1857 a wagon train of emigrants bound for California was wiped out by a group of Mormons, aided by Indians.  Of the 140 original travelers, only 20 survived, all children too young to bear tales.  The event was not sanctioned by the Mormon church but was the result of President Buchanan's decision to send federal troops to Utah and the bad feeling between Mormons and Gentiles...mostly of Young's making.

When Brigham Young heard that the troops were on their way and had reached the Mormons, he forbade his people to sell water, food or supplies to the Gentiles and fanatical preachers roused the people to hysteria.

Along came the Fancher wagon train, probably oblivious to the President's action, and certainly unaware of the Mormons feeling about their traveling through Utah.  Half of them were respectable settlers from Arkansas, the rest were a group of self-styled "Missouri Wildcats" who boasted of having been a part of the attack and murder of Joseph Smith...not a good combination.  When refused supplies they resorted to robbery and vandalism on Mormon property. They threatened to round up and lead an anti-Mormon army back from California. 

The Mormons of southwest Utah incited the local Indians to attack the wagon train as it camped in Mountain Meadows.  The campsite "forted up" and beat off the attack for 5 days until the ammunition began to run out.  They then accepted the Mormon promise of safe conduct.  They piled their weapons in the wagons and under the Mormons military protection began to walk away and start on their journey.  Hidden in nearby brush, the Mormons shot the unarmed men while the Indians killed the women and most of the children. 

Fearing the church and government reprisals (you think?), the Mormons blamed the massacre on the Indians and hushed up the whole matter.  Not until 1872 - 15 years later, when John D Ice, a participant was brought to trial, was the event even known about.  He faced a firing squad in 1877, by the way, on the very site of the massacre at Mountain Massacre.

Next time...The Ruin of James Marshall
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On this Day in Pioneer History: "On June 26, 1876, following Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s death the previous day in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Major Marcus Reno takes command of the surviving soldiers of the 7th Cavalry.

The Starving Time and Beyond

The first years in new Zion were a bitter trial.  Too few crops were harvested and too few houses were built for the 3600 followers who arrived during 1847-48.  The winter of 1848 became known as "the Starving Time".  Mormons shivered in rude huts and tents, eating "glue soup", a concoction of boiled ox hide in water.  Spring brought renewed efforts only to see those crops destroyed by insects again.  Food in the coming winter was not enough. 

Meanwhile, Congress rejected Young's plan for the State of Deseret in 1850.  They instead created the state of Utah and Young was appointed territorial governor.  On top of that, thousands of Gentiles came through Mormon territory on their way to California in 1848.  Mormons did trade food and livestock for tools, manufactured goods and desperately needed cash, thus creating an economic boom.  Mormons took blatant advantage of Gentiles though, charging as much as $20 a hundred weight of flour,  $200 for a mule. 

Back in Washington, new reactions against the Mormon's theocracy, economic practices, and tight control of the Utah territory were being filtered back from the West.  By 1857 a war was mounting against them again.  Brigham Young was relieved of his governorship that year and a Gentile was appointed in his place.  President Buchanan dispatched 2500 federal troops to Utah when Young vowed to fight. Eventually Young accepted the change, but departed Salt Lake City after a symbolic march and camped 44 miles southwest of the city. 

By 1860 more than 40,000 people lived in Utah, the majority of them Mormons.  In 1870 it as recorded that over  277 canals watered over 150,000 acres, making the desert bloom.  A visitor wrote "community of order, peacefulness and industry where every person from the humblest believer to the Bishop is engaged in manual labor, the colony is flourishing and progressive. "

Brigham Young's vision had become a reality - at least in part.

Next time...Massacre at Mountain Meadows
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On June 22, 1775, the Congress issues Continental Currency in the amount of $2 million bills of sale. 

This is the Place!

Spring of 1847 found Brigham Young with 143 men, 3 women, and 2 children, along with 73 wagons, moving across the Plains to settle in a new Zion.  Young followed the north bank of the Platte River rather than along the south side which was the Oregon Trail and full of "Gentiles" of which he wanted no contact with.  Wet weather made traveling miserable in April, but by May they were hunting buffalo - "sweet and tender like veal". 

Side Note:  The Mormons invented a "roadometer" with wooden cogs geared to a wagon wheel that recorded the miles covered on a journey!  The first odometer!

Spring found the travelers jovial and high-spirited, so much so that Young was forced to remind them that "joking, nonsense, profane language, trifling conversation and loud laughter do not belong to us.  Suppose the angels were witnessing the hoe down the other evening, listening to the haw haws, would they be ashamed?"  (Must have been a fun trip!?) 

Properly chastened , the Mormons reached Casper in modern day Wyoming where they built two ferries to cross the river.  Crossing was free if you were a Mormon, but expensive for all Gentiles. 
On June 27, they crossed the South Pass into the Rockies. 

In the Rockies they received advice from several mountain men, among them Jim Bridger who said that late spring frosts were a threat to agriculture around the Great Salt Lake.  He even said he'd give a $1000 for the first bushel of corn they grew.  Young was not deterred. 

On July 9, 1847 a scouting party got their first glimpse of Great Salt Lake.  Young was sick with mountain fever which had devastated the group, so it was 5 days until he got his first look.  Reportedly he said "This is the place.  The spirit of light rests upon me and hovers over the valley. I feel the saints will find protection and safety here"  They had found their new Zion.

Next time: Building a Religious Community
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On this Day in Pioneer History: "On June 15, 1840, Francis Parkman, one of the first serious historians to study the American West, arrives at Fort Laramie and prepares for a summer of research with the Sioux.

We've Got to Move!

Brigham Young was a shrewd Yankee pragmatist, had a genius for organization and was a competent handyman.  Born in Vermont in 1801, Young had only two months of schooling, but became a carpenter, glazier, and farmer, as well as a canny businessman.  Known for his tongue lashings, many a Mormon was fearful of his sarcasm as punishment for wrong doing.  In his private life, he was a kind, genial man who was fond of dancing, music and theater. 

In 1845, Young knew he had to relocate his people.  He had read Fremont's report referring to a place in the West - Great Salt Lake valley some 1600 miles west of Nauvoo, Illinois.  In February 1846, the first Mormon wagons left Nauvoo and crossed the Mississippi into Iowa in the dead of winter.  By September more than 250 families had left Illinois.

Strict discipline accompanied all the wagon trains going west because Young believed that survival depended on organization and discipline - a semi-military type of order.  Each small group of wagons reported to a "centurion" who was responsible for several detachments.  Bugle calls woke you in the morning and prayers, breakfast, even dressing had strict timetables. 

The plan was to winter on the west bank of the Mississippi River near where Omaha is today.  The first wagons would stop periodically to plow the fields and sow crops.  (in February???)  The wagons that followed behind would harvest those crops and then replant more crops.  16,000 Mormons thus worked their way across Missouri to the west bank of the river.   Despite their well thought out plans, that winter saw hunger, cold and disease.  By Spring, 700 were dead.

Next time...Onward to the West
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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 12 1876, Marcus Kellogg, a journalist traveling with Custer's 7th Calvary, files one of his last dispatches before being killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  The New York Herald later erected a monument to him over the supposed site of his grave on the battlefield.

The Last Days in Nauvoo - Part 3

When Joseph Smith entered the Carthage, Illinois jail in June of 1844, he said he had a premonition of doom.  For three days he and his brother Hyrum listened to the angry mob of anti-Mormons outside the jail.  Finally on the afternoon of June 27, the mob with painted black faces stormed the jail brandishing guns, killing Hyrum on the spot.  Smith seeing his brother fall to floor reportedly yelled, "O Lord, my God" as he was shot, falling through the window to the ground below.

Smith's martyrdom, however, could not heal the division in the church.  Soon after his was buried in a secret grave, Nauvoo's 20,000 Mormons blamed him and his advisors for the situation they found themselves in.  They denounced his alleged  practice of polygamy (which was never proved by the way) as the source of all the danger they found themselves in.  They looked at the rising anti-Mormon feeling that surrounded them in fear and trepidation.



No one knew who the next prophet would be to lead the church.  The "Senior Apostle", Brigham Young had competition.  Sidney Rigdon, one of the earliest members of the church and a close counselor of Smith, claimed a divine revelation had chosen him to be the next prophet.  A mass meeting was held on August 6, almost 2 months after Smith's death, and Rigdon was rejected. 



The new prophet would be Brigham Young, a plain spoken Vermont native who decided the church's survival depended  on abandoning Nauvoo.  Young proposed a modern day Exodus to the West but he didn't know where...yet. 






Next time...1400 miles to the West.
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On This Day in Pioneer History:  "On June 8, 1874, Apache Chief Cochise, one of the great leaders of the Apache Indians in their battles with the white man dies of probably stomach cancer on the Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona. 

It's My Town!

For years there had been rumors that Joseph Smith espoused polygamy in the church, and by the early 1840s everyone in the Nauvoo community believed that Smith and his inner circle had cast off monogamy on the basis of a "revelation from God".  Within his own community controversy raged over the sanction of polygamy and division was in the air.  Outside the community, tongues wagged with disapproval, and many with questionable morals of their own, expressed outrage at the desecration of the American family.

In 1844, despite (or to spite) the opinions of those around him, Smith announced his candidacy for the office of President of the United States.  (Can you imagine the media circus today?  Sure we can!)  In June a small group of dissenters published the Nauvoo Expositor which challenged the doctrine of polygamy, charged Smith with unethical financial practices and derided him for his aspirations for national leadership.

In response to the newspaper, the Nauvoo City Council ordered the press destroyed as a public nuisance.  Smith (the Mayor) sent the city marshal to do just that.  The newspaper's editors fled to the county seat of Carthage and spread the word of the violation of the freedom of the press. (Sounds familiar) Throughout Illinois, editors and speakers painted Smith as a tyrant, destroying the Constitution.  They cursed his followers as "libertines."  Mobs formed to demand the governor disperse the Mormons and arrest their leader. 

Smith placed Nauvoo under martial law and told his troops, "my sword is unsheathed in a determination that the people shall have rights."  Surrounding communities became fearful of their own safety, the Governor mobilized the states' militia and Smith prepared to flee to the West. 
In the end, however, he ordered his men to disarm and then surrendered, along with his brother Hyrum and five other church leaders, to the authorities in Carthage. 

Next time...The Conclusion of the Suffering of Zion
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On this Day in Pioneer History: "On June 5, 1922, the discoverer of Klondike gold, George W. Carmack, dies.  Carmack was the first to discover gold along the Klondike River in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1896.  He died at the age of 61 a wealthy man.

The Suffering of Zion - Part 1

In 1830, Joseph Smith and five followers founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near Palmyra, New York.  Smith had built the church from nothing, dispatched missionaries throughout America and into Europe and gathered thousands to worship God and build Zion in the New World.

In Nauvoo, Illinois on the banks of the Mississippi River, the church turned a swamp land into one of the state's most populous and prosperous cities of the 1830s.  The "Saints" as they called themselves created an ideal society where no one went hungry or barefoot, where no one was illiterate or a prisoner.  That success made them a target for outsiders who were called "Gentiles" by the church.  The church claimed God favored them over the non-Mormons.  They lived in communal type of groups and they were strongly anti-slavery.  All of these roused bitter hatred of the people they lived around them. 

In Missouri, they were tarred and feathered, threatened with castration and generally harassed.  In 1838 the governor of Missouri called out the militia against them asserting that "they must be treated like enemies and exterminated or driven out of the state."  The church went back to Illinois where Smith drafted a charter establishing an independent theocracy in Nauvoo.  On June 24, 1844, Smith conferred for the last time with followers - by nightfall he and six others had turned themselves over to authorities to avoid the local mob's threat of mass slaughter.  Smith's charges were treason.

Next time...Polygamy?

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Today in Pioneer History:  "On May 22, 1843, a massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the "Great Emigration," the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon.