From NYT, via Mommy.
This article, for people interested in history of the Rocky Mountain West, is quite interesting, especially as it does a fly-by pot shot at the Utah Theocracy: After a debate between Utah state officials and church leaders - what has been called Utah's "unique church-state tango"...
A Utah Massacre and Mormon Memory
May 24, 2003
By SALLY DENTON
SANTA FE, N.M.
As families tramp all over the country this summer,
visiting historic sites, there's one spot - Mountain
Meadows in southwestern Utah - that won't be on many
itineraries.
Mountain Meadows, a two-hour drive from one of the state's
popular tourist destinations, Zion National Park, is the
site of what the historian Geoffrey Ward has called "the
most hideous example of the human cost exacted by religious
fanaticism in American history until 9/11." And while it
might not be a major tourist destination, for a century and
a half the massacre at Mountain Meadows has been the focus
of passionate debate among Mormons and the people of Utah.
It is a debate that cuts to the core of the basic tenets of
Mormonism. This, the darkest stain on the history of the
religion, is a bitter reality and challenging predicament
for a modern Mormon Church struggling to shed its extremist
history.
On Sept. 11, 1857, in a meadow in southwestern Utah, a
militia of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
or Mormons, attacked a wagon train of Arkansas families
bound for California. After a five-day siege, the militia
persuaded the families to surrender under a flag of truce
and a pledge of safe passage. Then, in the worst butchery
of white pioneers by other white pioneers in the entire
colonization of America, approximately 140 men, women and
children were slaughtered. Only 17 children under the age
of 8 - the age of innocence in the Mormon faith - were
spared.
After the massacre, the church first claimed that local
Paiute Indians were responsible, but as evidence of Mormon
involvement mounted, it placed the sole blame for the
killings on John D. Lee, a militia member and a Mormon
zealot who was also the adopted son of the prophet Brigham
Young. After nearly two decades, as part of a deal for
statehood, Lee was executed by a firing squad in 1877. The
church has been reluctant to assume responsibility -
labelling Lee a renegade - but several historians,
including some who are Mormon, believe that church leaders,
though never prosecuted, ordered the massacre.
Now, 146 years later, Lee's descendants and the victims'
relatives have been pressing the Mormon Church for an
apology. The move for some official church acknowledgment
began in the late 1980's, when a group of Lee descendants,
including a former United States secretary of the interior,
Stewart Udall, began working to clear their ancestor's
name. In 1990, descendants of victims and perpetrators
began urging the Mormon Church to accept responsibility for
the massacre and to rebuild a crumbling landmark
established at the site by United States Army troops in
1859.
The current church president, Gordon B. Hinckley - himself
a prophet who says he receives divine revelations - took a
personal interest in the episode, and in 1998 he agreed to
restore the landmark where at least some of the bodies were
buried. But even that concession turned controversial when,
in August 1999, a church contractor's backhoe accidentally
unearthed the bones of 29 victims. After a debate between
Utah state officials and church leaders - what has been
called Utah's "unique church-state tango" - about state
laws requiring unearthed bones to be forensically examined
for cause of death, the church had the remains quickly
reburied without any extensive examination that might have
drawn new attention to the brutality of the murders.
A month later, on Sept. 10, 1999, when descendants of the
perpetrators and the victims gathered to dedicate a
church-financed monument in what they hoped would be a
"healing" service, both sides were disappointed by Mr.
Hinckley's remarks. He continued to hedge on the issue of
church responsibility, even adding a legal disclaimer many
found offensive. "That which we have done here must never
be construed as an acknowledgment of the part of the church
of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful day,"
he said. This was thought by many to be an effort to avoid
wrongful-death lawsuits. But the church's reluctance to
apologize is more complicated.
At a time when religions around the world are acknowledging
and atoning for past sins, the massacre has left the Mormon
Church in a quandary. Roman Catholics have apologized for
their silence during the Holocaust, United Methodists for
their massacre of American Indians during the Civil War,
Southern Baptists for their support of slavery, and
Lutherans for Martin Luther's anti-Jewish remarks. But
unlike the leaders of other religions, who are believed to
be guided by the hand of God, Mormon prophets are
considered extensions of him.
To acknowledge complicity on the part of church leaders
runs the risk of calling into question Brigham Young's
divinity and the Mormon belief that they are God's chosen
people. "If good Mormons committed the massacre," wrote a
Mormon writer, Levi Peterson, "if prayerful leaders ordered
it, if apostles and a prophet knew about it and later
sacrificed John D. Lee, then the sainthood of even the
modern church seems tainted."
Believing they were doing God's work in ridding the world
of "infidels," evangelical Mormon zealots committed one of
the greatest civilian atrocities on American soil. Without
a sustained attempt at accountability and atonement, the
church will not escape the hovering shadow of that horrible
crime.
Sally Denton is the author of the forthcoming "American
Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadow, September 1857."
This article, for people interested in history of the Rocky Mountain West, is quite interesting, especially as it does a fly-by pot shot at the Utah Theocracy: After a debate between Utah state officials and church leaders - what has been called Utah's "unique church-state tango"...
A Utah Massacre and Mormon Memory
May 24, 2003
By SALLY DENTON
SANTA FE, N.M.
As families tramp all over the country this summer,
visiting historic sites, there's one spot - Mountain
Meadows in southwestern Utah - that won't be on many
itineraries.
Mountain Meadows, a two-hour drive from one of the state's
popular tourist destinations, Zion National Park, is the
site of what the historian Geoffrey Ward has called "the
most hideous example of the human cost exacted by religious
fanaticism in American history until 9/11." And while it
might not be a major tourist destination, for a century and
a half the massacre at Mountain Meadows has been the focus
of passionate debate among Mormons and the people of Utah.
It is a debate that cuts to the core of the basic tenets of
Mormonism. This, the darkest stain on the history of the
religion, is a bitter reality and challenging predicament
for a modern Mormon Church struggling to shed its extremist
history.
On Sept. 11, 1857, in a meadow in southwestern Utah, a
militia of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
or Mormons, attacked a wagon train of Arkansas families
bound for California. After a five-day siege, the militia
persuaded the families to surrender under a flag of truce
and a pledge of safe passage. Then, in the worst butchery
of white pioneers by other white pioneers in the entire
colonization of America, approximately 140 men, women and
children were slaughtered. Only 17 children under the age
of 8 - the age of innocence in the Mormon faith - were
spared.
After the massacre, the church first claimed that local
Paiute Indians were responsible, but as evidence of Mormon
involvement mounted, it placed the sole blame for the
killings on John D. Lee, a militia member and a Mormon
zealot who was also the adopted son of the prophet Brigham
Young. After nearly two decades, as part of a deal for
statehood, Lee was executed by a firing squad in 1877. The
church has been reluctant to assume responsibility -
labelling Lee a renegade - but several historians,
including some who are Mormon, believe that church leaders,
though never prosecuted, ordered the massacre.
Now, 146 years later, Lee's descendants and the victims'
relatives have been pressing the Mormon Church for an
apology. The move for some official church acknowledgment
began in the late 1980's, when a group of Lee descendants,
including a former United States secretary of the interior,
Stewart Udall, began working to clear their ancestor's
name. In 1990, descendants of victims and perpetrators
began urging the Mormon Church to accept responsibility for
the massacre and to rebuild a crumbling landmark
established at the site by United States Army troops in
1859.
The current church president, Gordon B. Hinckley - himself
a prophet who says he receives divine revelations - took a
personal interest in the episode, and in 1998 he agreed to
restore the landmark where at least some of the bodies were
buried. But even that concession turned controversial when,
in August 1999, a church contractor's backhoe accidentally
unearthed the bones of 29 victims. After a debate between
Utah state officials and church leaders - what has been
called Utah's "unique church-state tango" - about state
laws requiring unearthed bones to be forensically examined
for cause of death, the church had the remains quickly
reburied without any extensive examination that might have
drawn new attention to the brutality of the murders.
A month later, on Sept. 10, 1999, when descendants of the
perpetrators and the victims gathered to dedicate a
church-financed monument in what they hoped would be a
"healing" service, both sides were disappointed by Mr.
Hinckley's remarks. He continued to hedge on the issue of
church responsibility, even adding a legal disclaimer many
found offensive. "That which we have done here must never
be construed as an acknowledgment of the part of the church
of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful day,"
he said. This was thought by many to be an effort to avoid
wrongful-death lawsuits. But the church's reluctance to
apologize is more complicated.
At a time when religions around the world are acknowledging
and atoning for past sins, the massacre has left the Mormon
Church in a quandary. Roman Catholics have apologized for
their silence during the Holocaust, United Methodists for
their massacre of American Indians during the Civil War,
Southern Baptists for their support of slavery, and
Lutherans for Martin Luther's anti-Jewish remarks. But
unlike the leaders of other religions, who are believed to
be guided by the hand of God, Mormon prophets are
considered extensions of him.
To acknowledge complicity on the part of church leaders
runs the risk of calling into question Brigham Young's
divinity and the Mormon belief that they are God's chosen
people. "If good Mormons committed the massacre," wrote a
Mormon writer, Levi Peterson, "if prayerful leaders ordered
it, if apostles and a prophet knew about it and later
sacrificed John D. Lee, then the sainthood of even the
modern church seems tainted."
Believing they were doing God's work in ridding the world
of "infidels," evangelical Mormon zealots committed one of
the greatest civilian atrocities on American soil. Without
a sustained attempt at accountability and atonement, the
church will not escape the hovering shadow of that horrible
crime.
Sally Denton is the author of the forthcoming "American
Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadow, September 1857."
