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- [00:06]
Scott Woodward
The Mountain Meadows Massacre, easily the darkest and most violent episode in our church's history, happened on September 11, 1857, when a group of Latter Day Saints, aided by some Paiute Native Americans, participated in the wholesale slaughter of around 120 men, women and children belonging to a wagon train of emigrants from Arkansas en route to California. This atrocity occurred against the backdrop of the 1857 Utah War, when the feelings of Latter Day Saints were already set on edge. As federal U.S. troops marched toward Utah with unknown intentions, church leaders used defiant rhetoric and counseled the Saints, who had been victims of government sanctioned violence before, to conserve their resources and be ready for anything. It was in this unfortunate atmosphere of hysteria that those in the Arkansas wagon train found themselves as they passed through Utah. So by the time these immigrants purportedly said and did offensive things towards some Latter Day Saints, the stage had already been tragically set for the highly irrational and totally unjustified violent response they received in return. Today on Church History Matters, we walk through the details of how this atrocity unfolded under the direction of local Latter Day Saint leaders and think about what possible lessons we in the present might glean from this darkest hour of our history. I'm Scott Woodward and my co host is Casey Griffiths. And today, Casey and I dive into our sixth episode in this series on peace and violence in Latter Day Saint history. Now, let's get into it.
- [01:46]
Casey Griffiths
Hello, Casey.
- [01:47]
Hello. Once again, Scott. How are you?
- [01:50]
I'm doing good. We are.
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You took a deep breath. You were like, well, okay, we're talking.
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About some pretty heavy stuff today, Casey. That was the deep breath.
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We are, we are. And I mean, we got to talk about it, right?
- [02:09]
Yeah, we do.
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It's essential for us to discuss this, especially if we're examining peace and violence in Latter Day Saint history. Yeah, we just can't get around September 11, 1857.
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It's crazy that it was on September 11, which will always forever be emblazoned in the minds of all Americans as a day of tragedy. And so too is it a day of tragedy in Latter Day Saint history. Just back in 1857.
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Yeah.
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Today we're talking about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Part one.
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Yeah. And when we say part one, we're going to follow kind of the same methodology that Rick Turley and Glenn Leonard and Ron Walker and Barbara Jones Brown followed, which is today we're going to describe the events of the massacre, and next time we'll talk about the aftermath. So don't think we're selling you short, but there's A lot to talk about here and we had to find. Find a reasonable way to break it up.
- [03:00]
So this fits into our series as we've been talking about three different categories of violence that Saints have experienced or have inflicted on others. Let me just review those real quick. So the three part model I think you came up with, Casey, which is really good. I think category one is when violence is just inflicted on the Saints, that we are victims. And we have looked at examples like the violence inflicted on Joseph and Sidney in Hiram, Ohio, things like the 1833 expulsion of the saints in Jackson County, Mississipp, Missouri. Two good examples of Category 1. Category 2 is when the Saints fight Back, where we give as good as we got, where it's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, if you will. Or at least in the defensive position of the bullies picking on you. So you swing back and you start hitting, you'll want to keep hitting until the bully stops. And so category two, probably the best example of that in our history has been the 1838 Mormon War in Northern Missouri. We talked a whole episode about that as well, where we were also sacking neighboring towns and we were burning their general store and things like that, trying to cut the legs out from under the enemy so that we could hamper their supplies so they would stop attacking us, et cetera, et cetera. So Category three is what we're talking about today. And definitely the most heavy example in our history is the Mountain Meadows Massacre. We've been talking about this all series long. We've been saying the phrase Mountain Meadows Massacre. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. It's Category three, and today, Kasey is that day. Really, there's no easy way to. To say it, but the shortest expression of the facts are probably these, that on September 11, 1857, members of the Iron County Militia, assisted by Paiute Indians, took the lives of around 120 men, women and children. And I think it goes without saying this is the darkest day in the history of the Church. We're not going to try to justify what happened at Mountain Meadows, but we do want to explore the events that led to it. So that leads to the burning question of today, which is, what were the factors that led to the Mountain Meadows Massacre?
- [05:11]
Now, another question that we might ask is, why talk about this now? It's deeply unpleasant, but one of the reasons why we're bringing this up now is that there's been some excellent recent historical scholarship on The Mountain Meadows Massacre, that's really shed a lot of light on the subject. And this has happened in several phases. For instance, 2008 church historians Richard Turley, who we're going to talk to in a couple weeks about this, Glenn Leonard and Ron Walker published a book called Massacre at Mountain Meadows through Oxford University Press. And this was by a mile, the best book on the subject. They were given full cooperation by the church. They were given full access to church resources. They had a robust research team which included people like Barbara Jones Brown, who's going to help author the second volume. And they just scoured archives throughout the United States for any records linked to the massacre. And I had the opportunity to talk with Ron Walker while he was still alive. He's passed away. But he just basically said that the leadership of the church came to them and said, there's been so much myth and rumor surrounding this. Yeah, we feel like sunshine is the best disinfectant, even if it makes us look bad. Let's just get everything out there and publish it and make the story known in the most accurate way possible. So they were kind of given an opportunity to tell the story with complete freedom. And not only did they publish their book, they publish a book a few years after that includes the primary source documents that are now all available. In fact, there is a website called mountainmeadowsmaster.com that you can go and look at for free. And it has a lot of the primary source documents documents. There also has a pretty good write up by Rick Turley on the basics of the massacre. That's not too long to read. We leaned pretty heavily on that when we were preparing our material for this podcast. And we also leaned on other resources like Mormoner, which is their Friends of Us. They're associated with the B.H. roberts Foundation. They did a great write up on Mountain Meadows. Yes, that we highly recommend. If you want to explore further, go take a look at and we'll put.
- [07:14]
Links in the description to both of those resources. And they're both free, they're both online.
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Yeah.
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And honestly, for most, most people, most Latter Day Saints, the information you can find there is probably going to be sufficient. But if you really want to do a deep, deep dive and see everything, we would recommend you dig deep into that Massacre at Mountain Meadows book with Turley and Leonard and Walker, for sure. Tell us about the follow up book.
- [07:37]
I guess I'm the sort of person that just likes to read about massacre Scott. But when Massacre at Mountain Meadows came out in 2008, like I bought it and devoured it right away. Read it several times since. But it also just stops. Like the massacre happens and they don't do much aftermath. And I was like, guys, I need you to deal with this.
- [07:56]
So give me some closure here.
- [07:58]
Yeah, we need some closure, right? So in 2023, Glenn Leonard's retired Ron Walker passed away, but Richard Turley is still active and doing wonderful things. Rick Turley recruited one of their research assistants, Barbara Jones Brown, and he and her published a second volume titled Vengeance is Mine. The Mountain Meadows Massacre and its afterma. I mentioned this, but Rick and Barbara are going to join us in a couple episodes and go over some of the research, which is groundbreaking, by the way. They were able to go back in most cases to the original court transcripts of people like John D. Lee and William Dame, and even get the Pitman shorthand that it was originally transcribed in translated. And so they're working off completely original sources. They had the same deal where they had a ton of support from the church and open access to archives. They tell the story of the aftermath of Mountain Meadows. So the first book just says, here's what happens. The second book deals with the aftermath of the massacre and who was brought to justice for it and what we know and don't know. So we're going to follow the same pattern I mentioned earlier, where we're going to just use today to describe what happened at the massacre. Here's the basic facts that we know, and then in the next episode, we'll cover the aftermath. Now, before we proceed, maybe we ought to give a little audience warning. Scott, what do you think?
- [09:14]
Yeah. What we're about to talk about is deeply unpleasant, to say the least. And we aren't going to go into graphic detail about what happened at the Mountain Meadows, but just the subject itself is ugly, Daisy. Right. But again, we feel like we need to explore it because our series purpose is to answer the question of whether the faith of Latter Day Saints and religion in general is inherently violent. So I guess listener discretion is advised.
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Yeah.
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Set the scene for us.
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Okay.
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How should we enter into this topic?
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So the Mountain Meadows Massacre, again, we're not offering justifications for why it happened, but we do feel the need to contextualize it.
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Yes.
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And the Mountain Meadows Massacre takes place against the backdrop of hysteria that surrounded the approach of Johnston's army during the so called Utah War.
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Yeah. Which is what we talked about last episode. Right?
- [10:17]
Yeah. So James Buchanan calls out a huge army, a significant part of the American army at this time, which wasn't big. This is pre Civil War. And sends them to Utah to replace Brigham Young as governor. He doesn't send a telegram explaining that they're coming. He doesn't try to do an investigation before he sends the army. He doesn't explain that the army's there just to remove Brigham Young. He just sends the army. And this causes, quite understandably, widespread panic throughout the Utah territory. Brigham Young and other church leaders have to scramble and come up with some kind of plan to slow down the army or buy time to negotiate. And eventually, through the heroic efforts we detailed of people like Thomas Kane and Alfred Cumming, the war is resolved peacefully without Johnston's army fighting anybody or any bloodshed. But the hysteria leading up to the war is a primary contributor to what happens in Mountain Meadows. And I remember a couple years ago, Scott, PBS did a documentary called the Mormons. They spent a half hour talking about Mountain Meadows. And in that, several church leaders among them, I remember Jeffrey R. Holland, who's from St. George, who, you know, grew up in the midst of all this historiography, sort of said, yeah, the rhetoric of church leaders leading up to the Utah war probably contributed to the environment that created Mountain Meadows. And that's one thing that we've kind.
- [11:38]
Of got to deal with and understandably. Right. Because everyone's on high alert.
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Yeah.
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When you got an army marching toward your state, going to do who knows what, and you are the double victims of the Missouri expulsion, and now you've been expelled from Illinois and now you've got another army coming at us like, this isn't our first rodeo. And so that the high alert nature of the Saints and the rhetoric of some of the leaders is somewhat understandable in that context.
- [12:06]
And I mean, for all the traumatic experiences the Saints had already gone through, this was different. This wasn't like Missouri rabble. This wasn't a mob. This was the United States Army. Some historians have referred to this as America's first Civil war. And knowing that, that it seemed like the whole nation was aligning against them, the rhetoric here was a little bit more apocalyptic. Plus the time span where there's these several months where the army's crossing the plains and they're approaching the Utah Territory increases the hysteria. In addition, there's other events like Parley P. Pratt, who's a beloved apostle by the Saints, is murdered in Arkansas, which just so happens to be where the wagon train that slaughtered comes from. All of this just creates this really tense environment that contextualizes what's happening. Now. We should be clear that different versions of the atrocity have circulated for decades until now. A lot of times, blame is tried to be assigned to different groups and individuals. The massacre really haunts the public image of Latter Day Saints and raises disturbing questions that still trouble the descendants. I mean, I grew up in central Utah. Most of my family's from southern Utah, around the area where the massacre took place. And there's still just a lot of guilt and discussion, like, ooh, maybe they got what was coming to them. Or, no, this is not justified discussions that surround it. But the questions we're trying to ask is how did this take place? And what factors led to the senseless slaughter of so many people? How were the perpetrators, the majority of whom lived exemplary lives before and after the massacre, convinced to take part in this heinous act? Yeah, With a lot of these questions still unanswered, and we can't claim that we know for sure the answers to all these questions. We're just going to try and present the facts as we know them moving forward.
- [14:02]
Yeah. So let's say what we know about the wagon train itself. Okay, so the. Okay, so the name of the attacked wagon train was the Fancher Baker Party. This party consisted primarily of families from Arkansas, as you mentioned, who had banded together to journey to California. California was the goal. And the Fancher wagon train arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in the summer of 1857, just as tensions over Johnston's army reached a peak. Very unfortunate timing here. And as the train then took a southward route through Utah territory, a number of unfortunate incidents contributed to the animosity between the Fancher party and Latter Day Saint settlers. So, for instance, emergency restrictions were placed on the sale of goods to westward immigrants, which did little to quell resentment between the Fancher party and the Latter Day Saints. There was an allegation that the Fancher party deliberately poisoned a dead cow, which led to the death of an Indian near Corn Creek, present day Kanash. And that heightened negative feelings toward this group. While the exact cause of the Indian's death is actually still unknown, scholars have pointed to an outbreak of anthrax, by the way, like a dead deadly virus that was found in westward wagon trains in the summer of 1857. So not likely that the Fancher party actually did that, but very interesting.
- [15:26]
And that particular incident led to accusations that the Fancher party was some kind of fifth column of the army, or that they were poisoning water sources, or that they had poisoned the carcass of a cow. Again, modern science and some of the research done for the two books that we mentioned earlier points towards an anthrax outbreak, but it did result in the death of a little boy near Fillmore who was trying to remove the hide of the animal, accidentally scratches his face, gets like a little black mark there, and then dies the next day. And then another woman who had associated with the animal became sick, too. So that raised tempers as well. But, yeah, again, we still don't have the exact facts surrounding what happened there. Just that it seems like things got more and more tense the further south these immigrants went.
- [16:18]
The fact that they are outsiders coming through their territory at this very precarious time already made them suspect. And then when you have little boy and Fillmore dying and there's these accusations of them poisoning things, it's not good. And intentions escalated further the more south the immigrants traveled. In fact, it reached a boiling point over at a stop in Cedar City. Tempers flared when local mill operators demanded a full cow in return for grinding this, this party's grain, which was an exorbitant price at that time. And so that caused defense on the other side. Now the Fancher party starts railing against the Mormon businessmen, and they start to threaten to join the approaching army and return to Cedar City to exact their revenge. Now, when the captain of the Fancher party heard that rhetoric, he reprimanded them immediately. However, that didn't cause the tensions that are now starting to build between the Mormons and the Fancher Party to go down much at all. In fact, according to one account, the worst thing that was said is that an immigrant actually boasted to the Latter Day Saints that they had helped to kill Joseph Smith and other Mormons at Nauvoo and Missouri and that they would kill some more yet. Close quote. Okay, that's the wrong thing to say in the midst of all of this. Now, we are not going to try to justify anything the Latter Day Saints did in retaliation, but, man, that's not wise to talk like that in the midst of this heightened circumstance.
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Yeah, and we should point out that one disadvantage we have at reconstructing the story is that we've got one side of the story. Obviously, all the immigrants, except for those little children, are killed. And so we don't know their side of the provocations that took place.
- [18:02]
Yeah, good point.
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There's been a lot of back and forth about, well, did this actually happen or did this happen? It seems it's clear that something happened at Corn Creek and something happened in Cedar City. Like, there's multiple accounts that the immigrants got angry and surrounded Isaac Hate's house. He's the stake president. But a lot of this is lost in kind of the recriminations over who caused the massacre or was it justified? And we're working off incomplete information here.
- [18:29]
And that's really important to point out. Yeah. So according to the information we have, that was kind of the most serious provocation by this Fancher Baker party from Cedar City. Then the Fancher party moves onto Mountain Meadows, which was a well known stop on the California Trail. And Isaac Haight, who you just mentioned was, he's a stake president, but he's also the mayor of Cedar City, and he's also head of the militia in that area. And so he actually orders the local militia to go and find the immigrants and chasten them for their words. What they said, apparently, about Joseph Smith. Some suggest that Hate here encouraged the militia to take the cattle of the Fancher party as a recompense for threats against the local populace. Their threats that they would return with Johnston's army and kill some more Mormons. Hate's request was actually rejected by William Dame, who's the commander of the local militia and a stake president in nearby Parowan. And so we have kind of two different views from two different militia leaders, two different stake presidents, about what they ought to do.
- [19:32]
So just to put things in context, Haight is the leader in Cedar City. William Dame is up in Parowan, but William Dame has overall commander of the Iron county militia. So Hate's trying to send stuff through this. And if you want to visualize this in your mind, the Fancher party is basically traveling down the I15 corridor. But then they take a detour to go over to Mountain Meadows, about 30 miles away from Cedar City, which was a popular place for groups to rest before they had to go through this really tough stretch of land around where Las Vegas is and through the Mojave Desert before they go down into Southern California, which was their final destination. And so there's Isaac Haight, who seems to be the primary mover behind the events of the massacre. There's William Dame, who is eventually involved, but initially says no. And then there's another person involved who's the primary person associated with the massacre today, named John D. Lee. Yeah, John D. Lee lives in a settlement south of Cedar City named New Harmony, and he has a specific call to teach the American Indians to teach Native Americans, specifically the Paiutes here. And so the plan that they hatched basically, was that John D. Lee would take a group of Paiute Indians and assist them. And there's some controversy over this. Like, was their plan to steal their cattle and maybe kill some of the men in retribution or to wipe out the entire wagon train to begin with? The story was told various ways by various participants within them.
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But what's clear is that the plan is to take some Paiu Indians and. And do some harm.
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Yeah, yeah. They're up to no good. I guess you'd say they're up to no good. So the best possible scenario is they were going to steal their cattle.
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Okay.
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The worst possible scenario is that they were going to massacre the immigrants. Depending on who you talk to, some historians think the plan was to wipe them out from the beginning. Some think this was a cattle raid that went sideways when John D. Lee killed a member of the party and was seen doing it. So they knew that Latter Day Saints were assisting them. Sources show that at first the Paiutes were really reluctant to take part in a planned attack. But Lee has a good relationship with them and he convinces them that the immigrants were aligned with enemy troops. And again, one of the strategies in the Utah War was that if the Latter Day Saints didn't have sufficient numbers to defeat the army, that the Indians would come to their aid, that Latter Day Saints and the Indians would unite together, and that's how they would repel the American army that's coming to attack them.
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John Deeley is saying that if you don't help us now, then the incoming army is probably going to kill you along with the Mormon settlers. If these guys have their way.
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Yeah, yeah. But important thing to recognize is that the attack didn't take place at the instigation of the Paiutes.
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Right.
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The Paiutes were recruited to be part of the plan. And the main movers here are Isaac Haight and John D. Lee, who for some reason want payback, even though John D. Lee hasn't even been involved in the story. So when all was in place, Isaac Haight presents a plan to a council of local leaders. He tells them what he's planning to do. And the cold blooded nature of this planned attack sets off a sharp debate immediately.
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Yeah.
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The council asks Haight if he had gotten Brigham Young's permission on this matter. Like, if you talk to Brigham Young and Haight says, no, I haven't. And then Haight agreed, as a compromise to send a messenger to Salt Lake to seek counsel from senior church leaders. And so this messenger's name is James Haslam, and he's one of the few kind of heroic figures in the entire Story, But James Haslam takes off to travel to Salt Lake, but this is on horseback. He's going as fast as he can to try and get to Salt Lake to find out what Brigham Young has to say. But at this point, the council has rejected the plan. William Dame has said, don't do anything, but Isaac Haight is still pressing on, and he and John D. Lee just basically decide they're going to go ahead anyway. And John Deedley is already on his way to Mountain Meadows where they know the immigrants are encamped.
- [23:38]
Yeah. And part of the council, that Dame, when he denies the request to dispatch a part of the militia and go down there and do trouble to that immigrant party. One of the things he said, which I think, oh, I wish we would have just stuck with this council, but he said, do not notice their threats. He said, words are but wind. They injure no one. But if the immigrants commit acts of violence against the citizens, inform me immediately. But if it's just words, if they're just making threats, like, don't notice that.
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Yeah, sticks and stones.
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Sticks and stones. Yeah, this, this. That would have been, man, if they could have just stopped there. But for some reason, hate pushes the issue, and John D. Lee is all on board. And now the Paiutes are saying, okay, if this is going to help protect us from future attacks, then let's do something. Right.
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Yeah.
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Super unfortunate what is unfolding now.
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And again, I think another point to emphasize is the council makes the right decision. Yeah, let's don't do anything rash. Let's talk to Brigham Young. Let's bring in people that weren't directly involved, but events are already in motion. It's Monday morning, September 7, 1857, just before James Haslam leaves Cedar City to go and consult with Brigham Young, that John D. Lee and a group of Paiutes attack the wagon train. There's all kinds of descriptions of this. In the early hours, John D. Lee is sneaking up on the encampment, and a man sees him, and John D. Lee fires at him as he's running back to the encampment and kills him as he stumbles into it. So all the other immigrants see a Latter Day Saint kill a member of their party, and then the whole attack begins. That's when all heck breaks loose, basically.
- [25:26]
And then events worsen when two Cedar City militiamen fired on two riders in the Fancher party who were outside the defensive corral of the encampment. One rider actually escaped and informed the immigrants of seeing Mormon white men in the attacks. Not Just Indians. Let me quote a little bit from Richard Turley about what happened here. And again, this is from mountain meadows massacre.com Turley wrote, The conspirators were now caught in their web of deception. The conspirators being hate and John D. Lee and the Paiutes here, their attack on the immigrants had faltered. Their military commander would soon know they had blatantly disobeyed his orders. A less than forthcoming dispatch to Brigham Young was on its way to Salt Lake City. A witness of white involvement had now shared the news within the immigrant corral. So if the surviving immigrants were freed and continued on to California, word would quickly spread that Mormons had been involved in the attack. An army was already approaching the territory. And if news of their role in the attack got out, the conspirators believed it would result in retaliatory military action that would threaten their lives and the lives of their people. In addition, other California bound immigrant trains were expected to arrive at Cedar City and then the Mountain Meadows any day now. Close quote. So what were they to do now? Yeah, so it seems like things are escalating. I like how Rick Turley is saying that they're getting caught in the web of their own deception here.
- [26:53]
It just spirals until it gets worse and worse and worse to the point to where they make that decision, that horrible decision that they make. And I should note, there's another wagon train, like we said, behind them in Beaver that's already having problems with Native Americans attacking it and harassing them. But they're coming down the road. The immigrants are better armed and more capable than they assume them to be. So the immigrants circle the wagons and dig in for a siege. From Monday until Friday, which is when the full massacre takes place, they're under siege. And these are men, women and children. Again, they're surrounded. And so with all of this that's gone wrong, what are they supposed to do? So the council's held in Parwan and there's rioters going back and forth between, between Mountain Meadows and Cedar City informing Isaac Haight of what's happening. Isaac Haight goes up to Parowen and meets with William Dame. Dame is told part of the story. He's told that it's an Indian attack, that Indians are attacking them. Should we intervene or should we assist? And at Dame's council that he holds, he makes the decision. The council, I should say, makes the decision to send help to the immigrants and help them, you know, get out of the situation they're in, continue on their way in peace.
- [28:06]
Wait, wait, wait, wait. So Dame is saying, let's send help not to the Latter Day Saints to help finish them off, but let's send help to the immigrants, so let them continue on their way in peace.
- [28:18]
Yeah. But Dame is under the impression that it's just the Paiutes that are attacking the Fancher party. He doesn't know that any Latter Day Saints are involved. In fact, what happens after this council is what's known as the Tanbark Council, just because it takes place near a pile of wood by William Dame's house, where Haight and one of Haight's counselors in the Cedar City Stake presidency takes Dame aside privately and tells him that Latter Day Saints were involved in the attack. And most likely the immigrants know that they were involved in the attack. They also exaggerate a little bit. They tell Dame that most of the immigrants are already dead and just basically say, okay, if we don't finish this, word's gonna get out that we participated. That will cause huge problems for us with the army that's coming, maybe with Brigham Young and other church leaders. If we just silence the remaining survivors, then it's not gonna be a problem.
- [29:17]
Oh, man.
- [29:18]
And unfortunately, under that kind of duress, William Dame does consent. He says, okay, let's go and finish this.
- [29:25]
Oh, my word.
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So awful, right?
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Yeah. I like the way that Rick Turley writes about this on the website. He said this information caused Dame, now isolated from the tempering consensus of his council, to rethink his earlier decision. And tragically, he gave in. And when the conversation ended, hate left feeling he had permission to use the militia.
- [29:50]
Yeah, yeah. Gather as many militiamen as possible and go to the site. And if you're keeping track of all the players, this is the day when this council takes place that James Haslam, the writer who's been sent to meet with Brigham Young, makes it to Salt Lake City.
- [30:06]
So that is September, what, 9th, 10th.
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This would be September 10th.
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September 10th.
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Thursday. The first act takes place on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Siege Thursday is when they make this decision of, we're going to end this. And James Haslam gets to Salt Lake, where he has a brief meeting with Brigham Young. Brigham Young immediately writes a letter and says, get back there as fast as you can. And James Haslam starts on his way back.
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But it turns out it was not fast enough.
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Not fast enough. Because the next day, this is the day. This is the darkest day in the history of the church. Friday, September 11, 1856.
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Tell us what happened on that day.
- [30:42]
Okay. So with the plan in place, John D. Lee approaches the immigrant train under a flag of truce. And remember, the immigrants have been under siege for four days. They've barely been able to get water. They're probably running low on food and supplies. Some of them are dead, many are wounded. He convinces the immigrants, who are somewhat skeptical, that the militia was coming to intercede to end the attacks and that the militia would escort them to safety. But the immigrants had to lay down their weapons as a show of faith to the Paiutes that they weren't going to fight back.
- [31:16]
Oh, man. So they're disarming them. And this sounds eerily like what happened to Latter day Saints in 1833 in Jackson County. That's what they told us to do, is give up our arms. It happened in Nauvoo just before the martyrdom. We were told to give up our weapons to ensure no retaliation. Now, this group of Latter Day Saints was doing, or was about to do to this group of immigrants what had been done to us in Missouri and Illinois, just on a more bloody scale.
- [31:44]
Yeah. So the immigrants reluctantly agree to leave their corral. They split up the men and the women and the children and the wounded. So women, children and wounded leave first and are taken out of the corral. Then the men are taken out of the corral, each with an escort from the militia. They walk roughly a mile away from where the siege was taking place, and a pre arranged signal is given. When that happened, the instructions to the militiamen were that they were to turn and kill the immigrant nearest to them. Them. Most of the immigrants are killed right away. Just kill the men next to you. At the same time, militia assisted by Paiutes attack the women and children and kill all of them. The whole thing's over in just a matter of minutes. Within a few minutes, all of the Fancher party have been killed, save 17 children who were just deemed too young to indict the militia for the atrocity.
- [32:42]
These are the children who couldn't speak. Right. They were too young to speak. And so, yeah, they were deemed not a threat.
- [32:49]
Yeah. And the children are taken to Rachel Hamlin. Jacob Hamlin, who is another missionary assigned specifically to the Indians, has a ranch at the northern end of Mountain Meadows. He's gone to Salt Lake when all this happens. Or the situation might have been different if Hamlet had been there. But his wife, Rachel, Hamlet is there, and the 17 children are brought to her basically so that she can take care of them.
- [33:11]
All of this is just so heartbreaking.
- [33:14]
Yeah.
- [33:14]
I mean, one of the most painful parts of this story, too, is that the messenger that was sent to Brigham Young actually returns to Cedar City two days after the massacre. And he carries this letter from President Young in his hands, which read in part, quote, in regard to immigration trains passing through our settlements, we must not interfere with them until they are first notified to keep away. You must not meddle with them. Let them go in peace. When Hate received that message, the record says he broke into sobs, repeating the words, too late. Too late.
- [34:05]
In the months and years that followed, there was a whole blame game that took place. Again. This all happens while Johnston's army is on the plains approaching Utah.
- [34:14]
Yeah.
- [34:15]
And they haven't negotiated a settlement yet. Initially, John D. Lee goes to Salt Lake by the end of the month of September and tells Brigham Young that it was just an Indian massacre.
- [34:25]
Blames the whole thing on the Paiutes.
- [34:27]
Blames the whole thing on the Paiutes. Other historians later on come up with this theory that Brigham Young ordered the massacre, that it was part of his strategy in the Utah War.
- [34:36]
What historians are we talking about?
- [34:38]
Well, I mean, the main historians associated with this are Juanita Brooks, who we're going to talk a little bit more about in depth. Juanita Brooks was the first historian to kind of deal with it. She's from southern Utah. She grows up in St. George. She comes to the conclusion that Brigham Young did not order the massacre, but some of his rhetoric may have set the scene for the massacre. Brigham Young uses very strong rhetoric to basically say, we're not going to leave our homes. We'll fight if we have to, and that that may have contributed to it. The next historian to come along is Will Bagley. Will Bagley writes a book called Blood of the Prophets that's published in the early 21st century. Bagley thinks that Brigham Young is responsible.
- [35:15]
What kind of evidence does Bagley use to try to support a Brigham Young order of the massacre?
- [35:21]
Well, part of it is when you read the letter of the Brigham Young sent in full, there is some ambiguity. Bagley also sort of made sort of a bigger argument of just there's nothing going on in the Utah territory that Brigham Young doesn't know about, which I think is maybe overreaching a little bit.
- [35:37]
Sure.
- [35:38]
Bagley also directly cites the death of Parley P. Pratt as being a motivating factor. Remember, Parley P. Pratt's murdered in Arkansas. He's murdered by the jealous husband of one of his plural wives. One of Parley's wives was in an abusive relationship that she Fled. But the husband had hung onto the children, and she went back to the husband to try and see if she could get custody for her children. And unfortunately, in this whole debacle, the husband pursued Parley P. Pratt and her to Arkansas, where he murdered Parley P. Pratt in Arkansas. No justice for Parley P. Pratt's murder. And Bagley makes the argument that the fact that the immigrants were from Arkansas may have led Brigham Young to say, well, it's time to pay back what happened.
- [36:22]
But that's total conjecture on Bagley's part. There's no evidence whatsoever that that's actually a fact.
- [36:28]
Yeah. And, I mean, Bagley's probably the most important historian to say that he thinks Brigham Young is responsible.
- [36:34]
Yeah.
- [36:34]
When Massacre at Mountain Meadows is published, they kind of come to the same conclusion that Juanita Brooks does, which is that Brigham Young didn't order the massacre, but that his rhetoric contributed to the hysteria that caused the massacre, essentially. But there's evidence also, like I said, that works in Brigham's favor. For instance, we have accounts of the people who committed the massacre arguing back and forth over how are we going to tell Brigham Young, which seems like something that they wouldn't have done if they were acting under orders from Brigham Young.
- [37:05]
And for John D. Lee to report to Brigham Young and say it was the Indians who did it.
- [37:09]
Yeah.
- [37:10]
Why would he lie to Brigham if Brigham was behind it? Right. Yeah.
- [37:13]
Yeah. John D. Lee and Brigham Young have a close relationship. John D. Lee is sort of an adoptive son to Brigham Young during this time. The other thing is that there's other wagon trains in the Utah Territory. Brigham Young orders them to be protected. Once he finds out what's happened. Brigham Young had this general policy early on in the Utah War of sort of encouraging Native Americans to harass wagon trains and steal their cattle as a way of demonstrating to the United States, hey, this is what happens when we aren't here to mediate on your behalf. When he finds out what happened at Mountain Meadows, which, again, Brigham Young was initially told it was an Indian attack, he immediately ceases that policy, too, which makes it seem like if it was deliberate, he wouldn't have. He would have seen it as a success of the policy. But he almost immediately orders, okay, we're not going to do that anymore. Stop it. This has gotten out of control.
- [38:04]
It's interesting, you know, after Lee reported to Young that it was just the Paiutes, and then Brigham Young found out later that John D. Lee had lied. In fact, there's this account when militiaman Nephi Johnson was brought before Brigham. He recalled, quote, while I was relating it to him, to Brigham, he walked the floor and was deeply impressed by the statement and several times said, why did Lee lie to me? Why did Lee lie to me? Close quote. And Lee is actually later indicted for the crime, and he's the only one that will be executed for this. But before his death, Lee will write a salacious memoir actually accusing Brigham Young of involvement in the massacre. And so he. He brings some extra wrinkles to that tangled mess. And when historians Ron Walker and Richard Turley and Glenn Leonard published their book in 2008, they set aside Lee's memoir almost completely due to his inconsistencies and what they called the cumulative effect of other sources contradicting it, close quote. So that. So that's interesting, right? That Lee lies to him, but then later turns and says that the Brigham was involved. But because of the tangle of contradictions in his own accounts, his memoir, most historians today will discount that memoir almost completely.
- [39:20]
Yeah, and there's some wrinkles to that story, too. For instance, Lee is almost completely broke when he's put on trial for this. Most of his family leaves him and abandons him because of his role in the massacre. He's got legal fees to pay for, and he's associated with an attorney named William W. Bishop. When Ron Walker and Rick Turley and Glenn Leonard and Barbara Jones Brown looked at the court transcripts, this is what they're able to translate from Pittman shorthand. And not just copies of the transcripts or newspaper copies. They find that what Lee had said in court, under oath, almost completely confronted, contradicts everything that's in Mormonism unveiled. The book that Lee wrote, his memoir. Yeah. And actually, when Lee is executed, and we'll describe this scene in our next episode, Lee openly says that Brigham Young didn't order the massacre. And so when they say the cumulative effect of other sources contradicted it, it seems like what happened was. Is William Bishop, who is sort of the ghost writer for Lee's memoir, saw that what the public wanted was proof that Brigham Young had ordered the attack, and he sort of sensationalized it in that sense.
- [40:30]
Let's move to another question here. So tell us a little bit about thoughts on, you know, what could have prevented the massacre, Casey, what were some of the crucial moments that maybe could have prevented this?
- [40:40]
Well, what we see at the massacre is this pattern where they kept going before councils and councils made the right decision. But after the council meeting had met, individuals overthrew the Council. So you've got that first council that meets with William Dame. William Dame says, don't do anything. Just leave it alone.
- [41:02]
Yeah.
- [41:02]
Isaac Haight meets with a council in Cedar City. The council says, let's get word from President Young before we do this. Unfortunately, before that council meeting, Isaac Haight had already sent John D. Lee and his militia and the Paiutes to harass them. And that spirals down into what happens. This council that we're talking about is the one that sends James Haslam to ride all the way to Salt Lake City, but he doesn't make it back before the massacre's over. So second council, like we mentioned, is in Parowan. This is after the attack has taken place.
- [41:36]
The first attack. Right. The one where they killed some people.
- [41:39]
The one where they killed some people. And after several days of siege, so the immigrants are pinned down, the council again makes the right decision. Now, the council was lied to. They were told that it was an Indian attack, but the council basically says, well, let's assist them.
- [41:54]
Assist them, meaning the immigrants, not the patriots.
- [41:57]
Yeah, let's go and end this and see if we can negotiate between the Indians and the settlers, which they were told that was what was happening. However, this decision was also ignored when Isaac Haight meets with William Dame after the council in what's known as the Tanbar Council. He tells Dame that the immigrants knew that Paiutes were being assisted by Latter Day Saints. And that's when Dame makes the decision to kill the wagon train so that none of them are implicated in what occurs.
- [42:23]
Don't you think this is a good example of the phrase in section 121, verse 37, when Joseph wrote about people covering their sins. Right. This is a pretty gross example of that. We've killed some people. Those people are going to go to California and tell others that we were involved. They're going to come back in retaliation. So what we need to do is kill all of them, Anyone who can talk. This is a classic example of covering our sins with a greater sin. This is David sending Uriah out onto the front line to die to cover his sin of, you know, impregnating Bathsheba, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, this is one sin leading to greater sin. It feels like here.
- [43:01]
Yeah.
- [43:02]
In the name of self protection. Because if they get to California, you know, they're going to come back and retaliate. So the best thing to do is to kill all of them, man.
- [43:11]
Yeah. And again, there's that undertaking to cover your sins that the COVID up is worse than the initial crime. But there's also this idea that councils keep us from making dumb decisions. When the council met together, cooler heads prevailed, and somebody said, wait a minute, what are we doing? And it stopped. But afterwards, it's always one person, usually Isaac hates, who sort of said, no, actually, let's do this. So there's a third council decision, and that is the one that involves Brigham Young. So by Thursday, three days ride, James Haslam has made it to Salt Lake City, where he meets with Brigham Young. And again, James Haslam doesn't know that the attack has commenced. He leaves the day that Lee first attacks the wagon train. So there might not have been the urgency that was merited in this situation. There's still plenty of urgency because there's an impending threat of attack. But Haslam doesn't know that the attack has actually occurred when he reports to Brigham Young. As far as Brigham Young knows, there's just this threat of attack. There's this idea of maybe we do attack them. So Brigham Young writes a letter back. And we quoted the letter in part, but I want to read the letter in full because a lot of people that accuse Brigham Young of ordering the massacre parse the words of this letter and say, oh, he was secretly telling them in code to carry out the massacre, which I don't think is true. And even if he did, this is well after the attack has already occurred. Like Brigham Young, unfortunately doesn't play a big role in this because of the way the timing is laid out. So here's what Brigham Young writes. Elder Isaac C. Haight, dear brother, your note of the seventh is to hand Captain Van Vliet, acting commissaries here, having come in advance of the army to procure necessities for them. This part of the story we told last week. But Van Vliet was the quartermaster for the army, and he had come ahead of the army to secure supplies. And this was the first indication that the army wasn't just coming to attack, that they're sending this guy ahead to say, we need to requisition supplies, which immediately diffuses the situation. Communication helps here, right?
- [45:13]
Yeah.
- [45:14]
And then Brigham Young continues. We do not expect that any part of the army will be able to reach here this fall. So Brigham's language is diffusing the situation. Okay. It's not as bad as we thought it was going to be. Then he continues, there's only about 850 now coming, and they are now at or near Laramie. That's Laramie, Wyoming. A few of their freight trains are this side of that place, the advance of which are now on Green River. They will not be able to come much, if any further on account of their poor stock. They cannot get here this season without our helping them. So you see that the Lord has answered our prayers and again averted the blow designed for our heads. So. So all of this seems to be de Escalatory language. Seems like the army's not going to get here. We're not in immediate danger. Don't do anything stupid, basically, is what Brigham Young's saying. Then he addresses their situation directly. He says this in regard to immigration trains passing through our settlements. We must not interfere with them until they are first notified to keep away. You must not meddle with them. The Indians we expect, will do as they please, but you should try and preserve good feelings with them. And again, this is where historians sometimes try to parse Brigham Young's words, where he says, the Indians will do as they please as a way of saying, I'm fine if the Indians massacre the immigrants. I think that's a stretch.
- [46:36]
That's not fair.
- [46:36]
Yeah, yeah.
- [46:38]
That's people inferring and reading in way, way more here than is justified 100%.
- [46:44]
And the other confusing thing is when he says, the Indians we expect will do as they please, but you should try and preserve good feelings with them. That probably is a reference to the Indians. Brigham Young saying, we may have to fight. We want the Indians to be our allies, so don't do anything to upset the Indians. But it's also possible that he's still referencing the wagon train, like, don't do anything to upset them, because that could make the Indians more upset to begin with and lead to the likelihood of bloodshed. I just think that. But again, unless you're kind of citing some kind of conspiracy, it doesn't seem like there's anything in this letter that suggests Brigham Young had hostile intent towards the Fancher party.
- [47:20]
I agree.
- [47:21]
Then he says this. There are no other trains going south that I know of. If those who are there will leave, let them go in peace. And again, this was where he was confused. There were other wagon trains, but wagon trains often met together, split up, combined, separated into smaller groups. That might be the result of this. He said, while we should be alert, on hand and always ready, we should also possess ourselves in patience, preserving ourselves and property, ever remembering that God rules. He has overruled for our deliverance this once again, and he will always do so if we live our religion and be united in Our faith and good works. All is well with us. May the Lord bless you and all saints forever. I remain, as ever, your brother in the Gospel of Christ, Brigham Young. That's the whole letter. And again, I think people that say Brigham Young was complicit in the massacre don't read through this letter slowly or carefully, or look at the timeline as to when the letter was written. And the letter's not difficult to access. You can find it on the Church History Library site. Again, the date, the time, the story from James Haslam and everybody else is verified. I think we can pretty safely say that Brigham Young didn't order the massacre. Yeah, that doesn't make this any less terrible, but at the very least, it allows us to say it seems like the local leaders of the church made the decision and not the general leaders of the church, which I don't know.
- [48:45]
Does that make it a lot better? No, but it does make it better. It makes it better for me.
- [48:50]
It makes it better for me. It makes it better for me because it just seems like the evidence fits this whole. It spiraled out of control after the local leaders made a dumb decision. And by the way, we might be being unfair here, too. Like the local leaders, the councils made the right decision. It was Isaac Haight. It was John D. Lee. It was William Dame. It was individuals who ignored what the council said. In fact, according to one account, when James Haslam makes it back to Cedar City, which is Sunday after the massacre, massacre takes place on Friday. Haslam gets back to Cedar City. He gives this letter to Isaac Haight. And Isaac Haight weeps like a child, repeating over and over again, too late, too late. And Haight later says, I would give a world if I had it, if we had abided by the decision of the council. But alas, it is too late. So.
- [49:44]
Oh, that's so painful.
- [49:46]
Three different types. You could say maybe four. Counting his initial meeting with William Dame, a council meets together and they make the right decision. But the first decision to ignore the council's choice spirals further and further from one bad decision to another until the greatest crime ever committed by Latter Day Saints is carried out.
- [50:17]
As we kind of wrap this up, then, Casey, what do we want to say is the legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre?
- [50:24]
Well, I mean, it's still ongoing, right? Yeah, it's a black mark on the church. I tell my students, you're not responsible for this, but you might be discriminated against because of it. It's cited again and again and again as examples of Latter Day Saints being violent. John Krakauer cites it in his book as an example of the inherent violence of the Latter Day Saints. But let's just talk about the individual trauma that happens, because even people that survived the massacre are traumatized throughout the rest of their life. For instance, we mentioned Juanita Brooks. Juanita Brooks, who, by the way, was Jeffrey R. Holland's English teacher when he was growing up in St. George. She's just this little lady who teaches English and does history. Before she was married, her name was Juanita Levitt. And this old man in the community named Nephi Johnson approaches her and says, hey, little English teacher, I wonder if you'd be willing to record a story for me? And she kind of politely says, yeah, but she never quite gets around to it. And then a few years later, she gets word that Nephi Johnson's health has taken a turn for the worse. And so she hops on her horse and she rides from St. George to Mesquite, where Nephi Johnson is, and gets there in time to be told that he's delirious. And she hears him on his deathbed shout, blood, blood, blood, before he passes away. And that sort of affects her enough that she starts doing the work to put together all of the sources for the massacre and tell the story. It's not that the Mountain Meadows Massacre had been whitewashed. I mean, it was a national sensation, especially when John Deeley was put on trial and all these people wanted to indict Brigham Young. And this is proof that the church is awful. But Juanita brooks, in the 30s and 40s, the 1930s and 40s, starts putting the story together. She starts the path that we're down today to the good work that Rick Turley and Glenn Leonard and Barbara Jones Brown and Ron Walker did to tell the story to light and to describe what happened. There's been other attempts at reconciliation. Like today, there's a monument at Mountain Meadows, one that's up on a hill that overlooks the monument, one that's down in the place where the siege took place. And the church pays to preserve the monument where the siege took place. In fact, on the 150th anniversary of the massacre, Henry B. Eyring went to the site of the massacre and at the monument gave a speech. Let's look at that a little bit.
- [52:50]
Yeah, let me read President Eyring's words. I think very appropriate, 100% the right thing to have said. He offers these words at the dedication of the monument, quote, the responsibility for the massacre lies with local leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the regions near Mountain Meadows, who also held civic and military positions, and with members of the church acting under their direction, no doubt divine justice will impose appropriate punishment upon those responsible for the massacre. Then he says. The gospel of Jesus Christ that we espouse abhors the cold blooded killing of men, women and children. Indeed, it advocates peace and forgiveness. What was done at Mountain Meadows long ago by members of our church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct. We cannot change what happened, but we can remember and honor those who were killed. And that was given on September 11, actually 2007, at the 150th anniversary. I think that's just a perfect way to state it. We do not advocate for violence. What happened there is inexcusable and a gross departure from the teachings of our Savior, who we try to follow. I mean, the church has officially apologized for the suffering that has been caused. They've acknowledged that the Paiute people had been unjustly blamed for the massacre. And I think for us today, Kasey, knowing this history, I think we have a responsibility to redouble our commitment to be true disciples of Christ and to follow the gospel of peace. That's the takeaway for me.
- [54:37]
Yeah, the takeaway for me is I teach this in a class called Foundations of the Restoration. I start by telling my class this is not a foundational event. So maybe it doesn't fit the paradigm of the class, which is we're trying to figure out why we do what we do, what's the foundational events that have led us to where we are. This isn't foundational. It took place among a small group of Latter Day Saints under extreme conditions. But it is instructive. It does show that Latter Day Saints are susceptible to the same kind of fear and paranoia and hysteria that can lead people to do awful, horrendous acts. And we need to understand and know that we're not immune to that. Growing up in southern Utah, my grandma's house is just a couple blocks away from where they held John D. Lee's house. You know, less than a mile up the road are the remnants of Fort Cameron, which was a military installation built in southern Utah because of Mount Meadows, where John Deeley was held until his execution. And I remember my family members kind of tiptoeing around this and talking about how it was unpleasant or we don't like to talk about it. But I do think that that attitude that Turley and Walker and Leonard took to say, basically like, let's get this out in the open. It happens. We need to understand why it happened so that it never happens again. Even if it's difficult history to learn, we need to learn from it so that it never, ever, ever happens again. We just can't allow things to spiral like they did at Mountain Meadows. We've got to follow the counsel of the spirit and sometimes just the counsel of councils that steers us away from our own personal paranoia, fear and hysteria.
- [56:25]
We need to know this history so that we never repeat it.
- [56:29]
Well said, well said.
- [56:30]
Awesome.
- [56:31]
So that was part one. Next week, Part two where we're going to talk about the aftermath. We'll go a little bit more into what we know and what we don't know and try to explain why things played out the way that they did with regards to Mountain Meadows. So no, this is a tough one. Thanks for hanging in there with us and we hope that that you'll take away from this the lessons of peace that are so important for us to learn.
- [56:57]
Scott Woodward
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. In our next episode, we explore the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, including Brigham Young's reaction when he first learned of the massacre, who was brought to justice for the massacre, and what the eventual fate was of those who instigated and participated in the massacre. If you're enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by.
- [57:21]
Casey Griffiths
Telling your friends about it or by.
- [57:23]
Scott Woodward
Taking a moment to subscribe, rate, review and comment on the podcast that makes us easier to find. Today's episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galetti with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a non profit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter Day Saints Scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your Gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org where everything is available for free because of the generous.
- [57:56]
Casey Griffiths
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- [57:58]
Scott Woodward
That's right, all of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible.
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Casey Griffiths
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Scott Woodward
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Casey Griffiths
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- [58:24]
Scott Woodward
Please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.