Steve-here's some archived discussion including the esteemed Cabbie!
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,761207,761349#msg-761349From My post of a post in the thread:
Is there direct evidence that Brigham Young pushed the "button" to order the specific action? It doesn't appear so at this point.
But I think there is at least clear evidence that he knew exactly how his general instructions would potentially be carried out in the same way that "instructions" were issued to Hutu militiamen in Rwanda and in similar places around the world.
For a very compelling explanation of the evidence of Young's complicity please see Will Bagley's address here:
http://www.salamandersociety.com/interviews/willbagley/Bagley says, in part:
" . . . I also felt that if I was going to conclude that Brigham Young did this, and make an argument that he did, that I also better have pretty damn good evidence. But that's one thing I did not set out to do (in my book on the subject), to prove that Brigham Young ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre. First of all, I didn't think that it was even possible. And I still don't think, no, I'm sure that if I had a signed confession from Brigham Young, validated as being in his handwriting by Dean Jessee and every other Mormon expert on handwriting, witnessed by all twelve of the apostles, nobody would believe it. It wouldn't make any difference. So I recognized that it was foolish to try to build a polemic, to try to prove something. So what I realized was that no one's ever told this story very well.
This is an incredible story. It is an awful tale, but it is an American tragedy. First of all, it's an American crime, and it is an incredible epic story. So I thought, look, if I can tell this story accurately and fairly, tell what happened and when---and I believe chronology is a key to understanding history. I'm of the school of history that believes one damn thing happens after another, and that chance plays an enormous role in human history. And that if you want to track an event, look at the sequence of events. In many ways, chronology is the key to figuring out the basic parameters about Meadows.
Here's an example: The Fancher party doesn't get to Cedar City until Friday evening, September 4th. On Monday morning, September 7th, they are attacked by a large force of Mormons and Indians. And these Indians are allegedly assembled all the way from the Muddy River, which is 80-90 miles away from Mountain Meadows, all the way up to Cedar City, which is a span of 120 miles.
But guess what? You can't get pissed off on Friday night, and organize an orchestrated military attack on the Fancher train over the weekend! You simply can't get your people there to do it. So what does that tell you? It means that whoever ordered this event did it before the Fancher party got to southern Utah. It was ordered before they got there. Whatever they did in southern Utah was irrelevant. It didn't matter. Their fate had already been determined elsewhere."
Bagley believes Young ordered the murders, he says:
"Why do I believe this? I believe it because that's what Brigham Young said had happened. I want to read the quote. This was stated, I believe, on the 30th of May 1861. The week before, Brigham Young had gone through Mountain Meadows, and he had come to the site of the grave where after two years, the U. S. Army had arrived, and found the bones of these people still littered on the ground.
They found tresses of hair scattered about, found the clothing of women and children, and they gathered up the remains they could find, and they interred them in several different graves. At the site of the wagon siege, they put the bodies in the siege pits they'd dug to defend themselves, gave them a military burial, orienting them as they would fallen soldiers, and then raised a cairn above their grave. At the top, they put a verse from Romans, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."
Brigham Young showed up with an entourage of 120 people, riding in his carriage, rode up, looked at the monument with the inscription and said, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I have taken a little." And he raised his arm to the square, and as Dimmick Huntington told his granddaughter Juanita Brooks, "Within five minutes, not one rock was standing on another."
A week later, after preaching at John D. Lee's [?], "President Young said The company that was used up at Mountain Meadows were the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and connections of those that murdered the prophets. They merited their fate, and the only thing that ever troubled him was the lives of the women and children, but that under the circumstances, this could not be avoided."
This fish sticks from the head down.
SL Cabbie offers this perspective:
"John D. Lee notes that George A. Smith, whose journey to the southern settlements, began just after the doomed wagon train arrived in this valley, asked him cryptically if the Southern Utahans would make things "lively" for the emigrants.
Smith's extensive "smears" of the emigrants began on the trip south and included fabrications implying they'd been involved in the murders of Joseph and Hyrum, poisoned the running spring, etc. His presence is only "circumstantial," but it is entirely reasonable to believe he carried the order from Young via word-of-mouth.
Bagley and Bigler's "Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre" reproduces much of the surviving original source material, and I consider it essential for serious students of the subject.
http://www.amazon.com/Innocent-Blood-Essential-Narratives-Mountain/dp/0870623621For me, the critical issue is whether 50-80 priesthood holders would willingly participate in a cold-blooded slaughter without sanction from the leadership in Salt Lake. I don't believe they would."
I agree. Anyone wanting to see the actual text of George Albert Smith's highly inflammatory speech can see it here.
www.truthandgrace.com/1857GeorgeSmithSermon0913.htm
Note also that Bagley cites firsthand evidence that many "priesthood holders" who participated in the murders believed that they themselves would be killed if they didn't do it. Who believes that the mormon leaders who threatened death to worthy members just did this on their own? Not me.
Shades of Rwanda and Srebrenca indeed?!!
_____
Posted by: rodolfo
Date: November 07, 2013 03:36PM
Re: Cabbie: Your Area of Expertise--Did Brigham Young Order the MM Massacre?...
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2013 03:56PM by steve benson.