I remember telling my grandmother once about adam-god doctrine. Deer in the headlights look. It amazes me how people can be sooo old and live through so many generations and be sooo tbm, always at some church meeting, playing with the girls in relief society (yawn) everyday, all day, and still not know any thing about the church.
There were likely an unknown number of apostates leaving Utah Territory with the Fancher-Baker train; they'd joined up with them seeking "safety in numbers," and there are stories of some who knew their killers. Blood atonement, most definitely...
As for "how history was taught on Planet Utah well into the 1970's," I have a copy of the textbook, "The Utah Story," written by General Authority Milton R. Hunter. It makes no mention of MMM.
Reading about the unearthing of the Massacre victims' remains in 1999 was what led to my researching the subject and becoming something of an "Internet Expert" on the matter. I knew next to nothing beyond the fact LDS sorts were embarrassed, and I once raised the issue in a teaching cohort paper, using it as a "example" of a "politically loaded issue" that could be problematic.
My teacher, a psych PhD who used to teach junior high history, wondered if I had "heard the story" of how, early in her career, she'd taught at a junior high (near the one I attended) and how explosive it was when a student brought in a report on the subject. I hadn't, but we did visit the massacre site in the early 70's as part of a science field trip.
Will Bagley is "tired to the subject," and really doesn't like having his career as a historian tied to MMM and "Blood of the Prophets," but it is a story that will never die.
And as the recent discovery--of the likely rock cairns that most of the victims were buried beneath--demonstrates, new information is still emerging.
Ewww! I just read about that in Wikipedia. I remember hearing of Haun's Mill, but never read about it. Horrible. Shooting little boys too. Well, rather like Mountain Meadows.
And none of the attackers were ever prosecuted. I seem to come across situations like that fairly often as I read about those times (mid-1800's), where the perpetrator is either not prosecuted, or is let go, or escapes. And I'm talking of Mormons as well as those who fought against Mormons.
The Courts and Law Enforcement must have been really poor back then??
I grew up on family stories of the Haun's Mill* massacre. Thomas McBride was the grandfather of my polygamous great grammies. My father would describe McBride holding up his hands in surrender only to have his fingers hacked off with a sharp blade as he cried out. Boys were shot dead by bad men, which frightened me when I was little. The devil got up a mob against the saints, etc.
As a Mormon kid growing up in the '50s I remember my Dad's bookshelf of mostly-Mormon books. One was Juanita Brook's seminal "The Mountain Meadows Massacre."
Having grown up on story after story of persecution of the poor, misunderstood, Mormons, I naturally assumed that it had to have been a massacre OF Mormons by anti-Mormon mobbers.
One day I picked up the book and started skimming through it. Imagine my shock when it gradually dawned on me that Mormons were the ones who committed the massacre.
baura Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Imagine my shock when it gradually dawned on me > that Mormons were the ones who committed the massacre.
That was the reaction of many TBMs when the book was first published. The Church would have liked to consider it anti-mormon, as they did with Brodie's book, but since it was a scholarly well documented account of what really happened, there wasn't a whole lot they could do about it. It really was the start of non-mythical mormon history telling.
Its my pet theory that to remain mormon...you simply have to know as little as possible about its founder and origins...besides all the bs since...most who stay are just grateful for the opportunity to remain ignorant...course i was never called to receive those stipends or signing bonuses...im sure that makes it tuffer to be honest about stuff
My uber-TBM wife would seem to prove your pet theory to be true. She simply has no interest or curiosity in hearing any reason or explanation from me for WHY her spouse of decades would leave our religion. Very frustrating.
In other words, the less one really knows about Mormonism, the easier it is to be a believer. The daughter of a well known former Institute of Religion director warned me to not study myself into disbelief as her father had done.
Perhaps that's the main reason they are sending out missionaries at the tender age of eighteen.
Well there was that one dude I recently read about in the Tanner book who sold supplies to the Fanchers and was beaten to death for his trouble.
So do you remember Cabbie that I told you how my g-grandfather wrote in his journal that he also sold salt and grain to the immigrants when they passed through Parowan?
I gotta wonder why he wasn't beaten to death but instead became a stake prez.
You don't think it might have been because he was the profit's nephew do ya?
>To reward Leany's hospitality, [William Leaney of Parowan] Dame sent Barney Carter to reprimand him, and Dame's enforcer tore a picket out of Laney's fence and hit him on the side of his head. As one neighbor said, 'The Man has never been of sound mind since." (footnoted)
Bagley, "Blood of the Prophets," p. 115
>Leany's mind was sound enough in 1883 to recall "the day the picket was broke on my head" and a number of deeds of blood and to denounce "mobing, robing, stealing, whoredom, murder, suicide, infanticide, lying, slander, and all wickedness and abominations in Utah's high places.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2015 12:48AM by SL Cabbie.
In all fairness, I was probably about 18 in seminary before I had even heard of the MMM. Even then no told me the "whole" story or even the main parts. I had to go to a big city library to see/read anything on it.