Saints Mountain Meadows Massacre Part 2

Mormonism 101, a book by Mormonism Research Ministries, Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson, has helped many who want to understand what separates Mormonism from the Christian faith. Mormonism 101 is available at your favorite Christian bookstore or online at mrm.org. Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. So glad you could be with us for this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM.

We continue looking at the book Saints, No Unhallowed Hand. This is the second edition of four books, two of which have yet to be released, but this covers the years 1846 to 1893. In yesterday's show, we were talking about the tensions that were increasing between the United States government and Brigham Young, who is the territorial governor in the Salt Lake Valley. And there have been some threats made by the United States government that is going to prompt President Buchanan to send a number of troops out to Utah to quench what he believes to be a rebellion of the Latter-day Saints.

And this is going to cause a number of chain reactions leading to what is known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Now, in yesterday's show, we talked about the death of Parley Pratt, who was a Mormon apostle. He was killed by a man named Hector MacLean. Parley Pratt had taken Hector MacLean's wife, Eleanor, to be one of his plural wives. And as you can imagine, that did not set very well with Hector.

Hector eventually hunted Parley down and brutally killed him, according to page 248 of the book. We're going to come up to the time of the 10th anniversary of the Saints' arrival in the Salt Lake Valley. So the date now is July 24th, 1857.

What happens on that date, Eric? And it's found on page 250 of the book Saints. The Smoot family joined Brigham Young and 2,000 other saints for a picnic at a mountain lake east of Salt Lake City. Brass bands from various settlements played as the Saints spent the morning fishing, dancing, and visiting with each other. American flags flew from the tops of two tall trees.

Throughout the morning, Saints fired cannons, watched the territorial militia drill, and heard speeches. So this is Abraham O. Smoot. And around noon, it says in the next paragraph that Smoot and Orem Porter Rockwell ride into camp interrupting the festivities. Now, we should mention that the mountain lake east of Salt Lake City, it's talking about Silver Lake. It's about 11 or so miles up the canyon. So this is not something that's close to downtown Salt Lake City.

If you're going to go to Silver Lake at this time, you want to go to Silver Lake because it is quite a ride. Abraham Smoot was, I should mention, the second Salt Lake City mayor. He was also a slave owner. And Orem Porter Rockwell.

Now, Orem Porter Rockwell has a colorful history as well. He could either be known as the bodyguard of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, or he could be known as their assassin. It says that around noon, Abraham Smoot and Porter Rockwell rode into camp interrupting the festivities. Abraham had just returned from a church business trip to the eastern United States.

And on the way, it says, he had seen freight wagons traveling west to supply an army of 1,500 troops. The president, that would be James Buchanan, was now officially sending to Utah with a new governor. The government had also stopped mail service to Utah Territory, effectively cutting off communication between the Saints and the East. Now, Eric, let me ask you, let's put ourselves in the situation of the Latter Day Saints, okay? If you saw this contingency of troops going west towards the Salt Lake Valley, and you know there's hostilities and tension between Brigham Young and the United States government in Washington, D.C., you can sense that probably no good is going to come out of this. So, I can't really blame the Latter Day Saints for what we read about in the next paragraph. I think that they were fully justified in preparing because communication has basically been cut off. They don't know what's really going on.

We don't have the internet or cell phones at that time. And there's a lot of question marks as far as what's going to happen. Remember, folks, we talked about yesterday how a lot of officials that were sent from Washington, D.C. to Utah felt that they were treated badly by the Latter Day Saints, went back to Washington, D.C. relating some of the stories. And I have no doubt that some of them probably embellished these stories to make the situation look worse than it really was. So, you can understand the tension here.

But what does the next paragraph on page 251 say? The next day, Brigham and the Saints traveled back to the city to prepare for invasion. On August 1st, Daniel Wells, the commander of the territorial militia, ordered his officers to get every community ready for war. The Saints needed to stockpile provisions letting nothing go to waste.

He forbade them from selling grain and other goods to wagon trains going to California. If the army laid siege to the valleys, the Saints would need every ounce of their supplies to survive. And it goes on on page 252 and says, While the Saints in and around Salt Lake City prepared for invasion, George A. Smith visited the territory's southern settlements to warn them about the coming army.

On August 8th, he arrived in Perawan, a town he had helped to establish six years earlier. The Saints there loved and trusted him. So, we have the Saints being told by Daniel Wells in Salt Lake City that they better prepare for war. He forbids them from selling grain and other goods to wagon trains going to California. The problem is there is a wagon train that is heading west.

It's led by two men, John Baker and Alexander Fancher. It's a pretty wealthy wagon train. There is a lot of cattle on this train as well as a very expensive horse. And they are now traveling west towards Salt Lake City. In other words, this wagon train is going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But notice what's going on here. They are going to need supplies in order to cross the desert after they leave Salt Lake. But the word has been put out by Daniel Wells and also George A. Smith, who is a Mormon apostle, who is being sent down south to Perawan.

Perawan is a town located north of Cedar City. Now, there are a number of books that deal with this subject of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and three of them that I would highly recommend if you want to do some more in-depth research on this subject would be the book called Massacre at Mountain Meadows, written by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glenn M. Leonard. So this is going to give you a very Mormon view of what took place at the Mountain Meadows in 1857. And when you say very Mormon view, you're talking about what the church leadership wants you to think about this historical event.

Correct. And so it's going to be very sympathetic to the LDS Church. And of course, the job of these three historians, I'm sure, was to try and protect Brigham Young as much as possible. But then there's another book that came out years ago. It was written by Juanita Brooks called The Mountain Meadows Massacre, an excellent book.

However, Juanita Brooks did not have a lot of the information that is available today. And that leads to the third book I would recommend, Blood of the Prophets, Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. It was written by a man named Will Bagley. Will Bagley does not hide the fact that he thinks that Brigham Young gave the order for the massacre at Mountain Meadows in September of 1857.

And he has a lot of good evidence in here. But he mentions in his book Blood of the Prophets on page 84, because it ties in with what Eric just read on page 252 of the book Saints, when it speaks of George A. Smith. Bagley says Smith carried letters from Brigham Young to his bishops, quoting, Save your ammunition, keep your guns and pistols in order, and prepare yourselves in all things, particularly by living your religion, for that which may hereafter come to pass, end quote. Bagley says the prophet directed stake president Isaac Haight at Cedar City, quoting, Save all grain, nor let a kernel go to waste or be sold to our enemies, and those who persist in selling grain to the Gentiles, or suffer their stock to trample it into the earth, I wish you to note as such. So George A. Smith is basically giving a message from Brigham Young saying, Do not sell anything to our perceived enemies. If you see someone doing that, note who they are.

You're going to squeal on them. Now remember, this is during that time of the Mormon Reformation. They've just gone through these fiery sermons talking about complete obedience to the laws of Mormonism.

And this has been ingrained in their heads for the past several months. So you can see when they get an order like this, that probably the Mormons are going to follow it. But yet, Bagley notes on page 111 of his book, he says, Despite George A. Smith's orders not to sell the immigrants anything, a Mrs. Morgan traded a cheese for a bed quilt with the Fancher party.

She and her husband were later cut off from the church. He goes on to say that Robert Kershaw testified, The immigrants camped not far from town, where lawman Seth Dodge prevented people from trading with them. The company may have spent the next day a Sunday at this camp. Some say a Missourian who had been jailed at Beaver, now Beaver is another town in central Utah, a Missourian who had been jailed at Beaver for some alleged offense, joined the party and, quote, urged them to hurry beyond the power of the Mormons, end quote. So you can see the danger that is going to start ensuing when it comes to anybody going through the territory of Utah on their way to California. Or you could even say from California going east, but I don't think that there were probably a lot of wagon trains going east.

They were probably mainly going west at this particular time. The Baker Fancher party is going to be going into this area at a very bad time. They are going to run into this resistance, which is going to cause them to go south where George A. Smith was with this message of not selling any goods to immigrants. And they are going to want to trade with the locals in order to get enough supplies to cross the desert into California.

Bill, I think we need to ask the question. I understand why they would not want to give away their supplies, but what is the Christian standard? What is the Christian response when people are in need and they need these supplies to be able to get where they need to go and to cut them off from being able to get those supplies?

I'm not sure that was the right thing for them to do. Well, and I would think you probably would have a point under most circumstances, but I guess because Brigham Young is telling them we're going to be invaded by an army from the east, we're going to need supplies for our own survival, I'm sure they probably looked at it as, well, I have to take care of myself. I have to take care of my family. I've been given orders by my prophet to do so, and so I'm going to follow the dictates of the prophet. In tomorrow's show, we're going to talk about what happened when the immigrants arrived in Cedar City. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.