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- [00:01]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
- [00:26]
Professor Richard Leduc
Foreign hi. Welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Garrett Dirkmont and I'm joined by my friend Professor Richard Leduc.
- [00:38]
Unknown Speaker
Hello Garrett. In last week's podcast, when last we left you, we had dipped our toe into the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and we hadn't quite gotten to John Brown's raid of Harper's Ferry. We hadn't quite gotten there. We had just gotten to the point where Buchanan had called out Johnson's army and a fourth of the US Military was marching toward Utah as Utah didn't even know that Brigham Young was being replaced and or why the army was coming at all.
- [01:09]
Professor Richard Leduc
And this was all to try to place in context what occurs with the horrific violence at Mountain Meadows Massacre that you know that this, the, the Latter Day Saints are going to be stunned, afraid, upset. Brigham Young is going to, you know, say I haven't received any official notification that I've been replaced at all. He's literally reading this in the newspapers. Well, you can imagine reading things in the newspapers is not a way to get true content on Latter Day saints in the 19th century. In fact, let me rephrase that. Reading things in the newspapers is not a way to get true content on the Latter Day Saints ever. I mean, the reality is he doesn't even know what's going on. And you, you hear people reporting that this is going to be something that is violent. We give you an idea of some of the rhetoric that's being published that's coming from Congress. And this is coming from someone who once was an ally of the Latter Day Saints when he was in the, when he was in Illinois. So Stephen Douglas, who would actually run for president in 1860 against Abraham Lincoln, he's the primary Democratic candidate against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. He is probably the most prominent senator there is at this point. He was the one who formulated the Compromise of 1850. He is, is, is very respectable, but he has always been relatively kind disposed towards the Latter Day Saints, certainly when they were in Illin. But this is what he says to Congress when he addresses this. The territory of Utah was organized under one of the acts known as the Compromise Measures of 1850 on the supposition that the inhabitants were American citizens owing and acknowledging allegiance to the United States and consequently entitled to the benefits of self government while a territory and to admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original states so soon as they should number a requisite population. It was conclude conceded on all hands and by all parties that the peculiarities of their religious faith and ceremonies interposed no valid and constitutional objection to their reception into the Union in conformity with the federal Constitution so long as they were in all other respects entitled to admission. Hence the great political parties of the country endorsed and approved the Compromise measures of 1850, including act for organization of Utah Territory with the hope and in the confidence that the inhabitants would conform to the Constitution laws and prove themselves worthy, respectable and law abiding citizens. If we are permitted to place credence to the rumors and reports from that country. And it must be admitted that they have increased and strengthened and assured consistency and plausibility by each succeeding male. Seven years experience has disclosed a state of facts entirely different from that which was supposed to exist when Utah was organized. These rumors and reports would seem to justify the belief that the following facts are susceptible of proof. First, that 9/10 of the inhabitants are aliens by birth who have refused to become naturalized citizens or to take the oath of allegiance. That's a. The first starting point, again shocking in American history is going to be xenophobia.
- [04:45]
Unknown Speaker
Is he talking about how all these people are coming from other countries? Is that what he's referencing?
- [04:49]
Professor Richard Leduc
Absolutely. But if you believe that the population of Utah territory is 90% from another country that had never been naturalized, you've not done very good genealogical research. Which is exactly what I'm accusing Stephen Douglas here of not being up on his genealogy.
- [05:10]
Unknown Speaker
Those are harsh words.
- [05:11]
Professor Richard Leduc
He will meet me in the next life. Now he's very, very short, so he'll have to look up at me. But they just call him the little giant. That's why I said that. But at any rate, that first point kind of demonstrates this kind of. This xenophobic fear, Right? Oh, we know they're not Americans because they weren't even born here. Which isn't even a true assertion. Are there thousands of Latter Day Saints that were born in England and in other places and then migrated to the United States? Yes. That you have definitively proved that most of them have refused to become naturalized citizens of the United States. Seems like you might want a little bit more than it stands to reason. And that's certainly the reality. So that's his first point. Second point, that all the inhabitants whether they are native or alien born. So we don't know how many are alien born, although we're almost certain they're all alien born. But by the way, even the ones who aren't alien born who have refused sorry are known as Mormons. And they constitute the whole people of the territory are bound by horrid oaths and terrible penalties to recognize and maintain the authority of Brigham Young and the government of which he is at the head as paramount to that of the United States in civil as well as religious affairs. And that they will, in due time and under the pressure under the direction of their leaders, use all means in their power to subvert the government of the United States and to resist its authority. So they are claiming that the Latter Day Saints are all making oaths to fight against the United States. This is going to be a recurring claim. Third, that the Mormon government, with Brigham Young at its head, is now forming alliances with the Indian tribes of Utah and adjoining territories, stimulating the Indians to acts of violence and acts of hostility and organizing bands of his own followers under the name of Danites or destroying angels to prosecute a system of robbery and murder upon American citizens who support the authority of the United States and and denounce infamous and disgusting practices and institutions of the Mormon government. This is a long time reoccurring theme of anti mormonism in the 19th century. First, that the latter Day Saints are stimulating the Indians to acts of hostility. This is a trope in American culture going all the way back to the American Revolution and even beyond. Because Americans had a tendency to see Native Americans as savages, as people incapable of making rational decisions, and because they didn't want to admit their own faults all the way back to the British colonies whenever the Indians attacked, instead of saying, I wonder if the Indians attacked because we were stealing their land and lying to them about the treaties we made, the instead argument was, you know what it was those French who made them attack. I'll bet the French put them up to this. Well, what is that? It makes the Indians no longer rational beings, no longer people that are making their own decisions, instead makes them essentially these puppets of the far more intelligent Frenchman. Well, when the United States becomes independent, they continue to have policies which, you know, the Indian removal Act of 1830 isn't exactly pro Indian. The fact that it's forcibly removing the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole Indians from the, from the southeastern United States to the west of the Mississippi is not favored by Indian groups. So when there is resistance, instead of saying, well, The United States is being bigoted against the United. Against the Indians and breaking treaties that they signed with them. The argument is. I'll bet. You know what? It's the British. The British are putting the Seminoles up to fighting us in Florida instead of moving. It's those British. Now, look, the British are trying to sow dissension among Native American groups. The French were trying to sow dissension. But the reason why that claim is made is it makes the person you're attacking look terribly negative because nothing's worse than the Native Americans. But it also turns the Native Americans into these. It attempts to present them as irrational wild beings. I mean, almost like I turned the bulls towards them and yelled, yeah, and stampede followed kind of thing. Well, even in Missouri, this is what the primary claim of Thomas Marsh is going to be when the Latter Day Saints are driven out of Missouri at the point of the extermination order. Thomas Marsh, the great apostate, his affidavit is going to claim, oh, yeah, the Latter Day Saints are trying to make alliances with the Indians to attack the whole rest of the country. It is true that Latter Day Saints tend to have. And this look, this is a giant asterisk here, so please listen to what I'm saying. Latter Day Saint settlers and Native American settle. Native Americans living in Utah Territory have frequent conflicts with one another, just like white settlement all over the American West. But at least the official policy of Utah Territory under Brigham Young was to be as conciliatory as possible to the Native Americans. And so there isn't a concerted effort made to try to exterminate the Native American population. Now there is a war, the Walker War, the war between the Utes and Mormon settlers. And, you know, the Utes are reacting to Latter Day Saint attempts to end their slave trade of Indian. The Utes had a very lucrative empire that was in part built upon raiding Paiute and go shoot settlements and sometimes Shoshone settlements, capturing people and then selling them down into Taos, New Mexico and into. Into Mexico as slaves. Even though slavery was, you know, technically illegal in Mexico, there was a lot still going on in Mexico that that leads to tensions. Latter Day Saints settling on you traditional Ute lands lead detention, and of course, the tensions of two cultures colliding. So there is a limited and brief war between the Utes and. And the Latter Day Saints occupying Utah territory. But in general, the Latter Day Saints, you know, Brigham Young will say it's far cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them, that they want to make gifts to the Native Americans, they want to have better relations with the Native Americans. And of course, for the Latter Day Saints, they have a theology that states, unlike many Americans who see the Indians as essentially subhuman, Latter Day Saint theology sees the, the Native Americans as members of the lost tribes of Israel. Now they might. Now, I'm not saying that Latter Day Saints don't still have some of the same racist ideas that other 19th century Americans do in, you know, related to them. Of course they still do, but there is a difference. The difference is the Latter Day Saints see Native Americans as a vital part, at least generally a vital part of the time, ushering in the second coming of Christ. And your average American settler doesn't see that at all. They see them as literally nothing more than an impediment. So the very fact that the Latter Day Saints have a better relationship, again, in general, and you can point out all kinds of horrible interactions between Native Americans, Latter Day Saints, so please understand, I'm speaking generally, you know, this is not to go to your, you know, go to your next elders quorum meeting and state very definitively, you know, what else you want to know about the aftermath of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. There were never any fights between the Indians and Latter Day Saints. That's not true. But in general, they have better relations with them. And you actually see this played out as a criticism. Latter Day Saints, as they are increasingly criticized surrounding this Utah War is what, what this conflict is going to come to be called, that as they are criticized. One of the criticisms is that they have far too friendly relations with the Native Americans. In fact, one person criticizing the Mormons in the lead up to the American Civil War says that the Indians say all Mormons good men and all other whites bad men. This is obviously what the Mormons have taught them, right? So again, that is a, it is a, a caricature of what Native Americans think and believe that American government officials are putting up by way of criticizing Native Americans, treating them as if they don't have their own autonomy. But it's still a very powerful argument in the 19th century to say that someone is fraternizing with the Indians is an incredibly powerful argument in the mid 19th century. And it's your argument you see here leveled by Stephen Douglas. Oh, yeah, you notice how friendly they're even baptizing those Native Americans. They're letting them be elders in their church. In fact, they were, I mean, Walker, Chief walker of the Utes before the war is launched, is actually a Latter Day Saint elder, he's baptized into the church and he's given the Melchizedek priesthood and that's seen as not acceptable by mainstream America. Again, I am not saying Latter Day Saints themselves weren't racist and bigoted towards Native Americans. They lived in a culture of the United states in the 19th century where everyone was bigoted towards Native Americans. So I don't want to excuse their misbehaviors by saying that. But on the outside looking in, as far as the federal government and the critics of Mormonism were concerned, the Saints were not heavy handed enough against the Latter Day Saints in Utah Territory. They had far too friendly relations with them, which we, we know they would because you know, Mormons are deceptive and evil and, and by the way, Native Americans that you can see that whole kind of, that, that, that kind of this conspiracy element rather than dealing with the real things. Do Mormons love the American government? Well, you burned us out of like seven different places, denied our rights as citizens, refused to bring to justice the people who murdered the Smiths, drove a thousand people to be killed in Iowa, crossing the plains to get out of the states and then oppressively pass laws against them in Utah. I have no idea why they have oppressed problem with, with the American government. Same thing with the Native Americans. For some reason the Native Americans have anger towards us just because we took their land, slaughtered their buffalo and also drove them eventually into reservations where they could not possibly take care of themselves given how little land they had. But you know, but for some reason we can't even figure it out. And so is. It's an interesting thing that he's going to bring up, but it's a long standing thing. In fact, before the Mountain Meadows Massacre, I think one of the reasons why Brigham Young is relatively hesitant to even believe Latter Day Saints were involved in it is multiple reports would come out every year of Mormons dressing up as Indians and attacking wagon trains. Essentially any Indian attack that took place within hundreds of miles of Utah territory was, I'll bet the Mormons are the ones who put them up to that. Or maybe you know what was more my favorite one was one that came out of Iowa where an Iowa newspaper reported that a group of stragglers came into town who reported that they had been attacked by Mormons dressed up as Indians. They had all been slaughtered and then some of them had actually been eaten. So it was even cannibalization. A couple weeks later the same newspaper said we've been unable to Verify those reports, but they didn't print a retraction. Again, it's gonna be hard for you to believe that a paper would report something that ends up being false and then refuses to formally retract it. I mean, this is a different world. It's a 19th century. The 19th century. People, they just do and say whatever they want. Anyway. Let me go back to what Douglas had to say. He goes on this next point is. Is. Is huge in that what he thinks should happen. He says, I think it is the duty of the president, and I have no doubt it is his fixed purpose. Remember, Stephen Douglas is a Democrat. James Buchanan is a Democrat. So you essentially have the leader of the Democratic party, James Buchanan, and the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Stephen Douglas, speaking here. It is the duty of the president, I have no doubt is his fixed purpose to remove Brigham Young and all his followers from office and to fill their places with bold, able and true men and to cause a thorough and searching investigation and all the crimes and enormities which are alleged to have been perpetrated daily in that territory under the direction of Brigham Young and his confederates, and to use all the military force necessary to protect the officers and discharge of their duty and to enforce the laws of the land. And here he's interrupted again, as he had been multiple times in the speech, by applause from the chamber. When the. When the authentic evidence shall arrive, it shall establish the facts which are believed to exist, it will become the duty of Congress to apply the knife and to cut out this loathsome, disgusting ulcer. Again interrupted by applause. No temporizing policy, no halfway measure will answer. It has been supposed by those who have not thought deeply upon the subject, that an act of Congress prohibiting murder, robbery, polygamy and other crimes with appropriate penalties for those offenses, would afford adequate remedies for all the enormities complained of. Suppose such a law to be on the statute book, and I believe they have a criminal code providing the usual punishments of the entire catalog of crimes according to the usage of all civilized and Christian countries, with the exception of polygamy, which is practiced under the sanction of the Mormon church, but is neither prohibited nor authorized by the laws of the territory. Suppose I repeat that Congress should pass a law prescribing a criminal code and punishing polygamy, among other offenses. What effect would it have? What good would it do? Would you call on 23 grand jurymen with 23 wives each to find a bail of indictment against a poor, miserable wretch for having Only two wives. At this point, the off the person scribing rights. Cheers and laughter broke out in the among the group.
- [20:35]
Unknown Speaker
He's this good line.
- [20:36]
Professor Richard Leduc
It's a great line. I mean, in fact, we should probably rename the podcast to a Poor Miserable Wretch having Only Two Wives and that. I love it. Standard podcast hashtag. Anyway, would you rely upon 12 jurors with 12 wives each to convict the same loathsome wretch for having two wives? APPLAUSE CONTINUES Right, so he's going to go on and keep saying that, but you can see that language. We are going to apply the knife and cut out the loathsome ulcer that Mormonism is. If you were a Mormon reading that in Salt Lake in the newspaper, what would you think the army is coming to do and notice that they are being lumped in as a group? We are going to remove all Mormons from office. Was there a catalog of what Zerubbabel Snow did that was so wrong in his office? Was he cited for some kind of terrible thing where the. Was there some kind of an impeachment process because he had done something? No. People were going to be removed from office because they were Mormons. What were they going to be replaced with? True Christians, true Americans. What do both of those things imply? That if you're a Mormon, you're not really an American, and if you're a Mormon, you're certainly not a Christian, which is something we've covered before as well. At any rate, this. This leads to some real fear in Utah. Brigham Young takes the step of declaring martial law in Utah territory because he doesn't know what the army is coming to do and in fact prepares the Salt Lake area to. To set it on fire, to fire it and burn it to the ground, and they start moving massive amounts of the population to the south mountains rather than there in the Salt Lake Valley. If the army's coming to kill us, well, we're not just going to let them kill us. We'll just. We'll keep moving. If. If it really is coming to cut and you can actually read the letters of people in the army who are on their way out to Utah at the time, and they think they're going out to destroy the Mormons. So it's not a crazy, weird thing that Mormons themselves would believe that perhaps we are going to be killed mainly because they said we are coming out to kill you. Now, you might be wondering, why does all of this matter? Because this is what's going on. When the Mountain Meadows massacre takes place. The army is on its way. And one of the things that Brigham Young doesn't know how long this conflict's going to last. He, he doesn't want it to be violent, but he does if it is, you know, so one of the things he tells all of the citizens of Utah is that they're no longer allowed to sell their goods, their foodstuffs to all the various people traveling through. And, and Utah had really become this kind of, I mean, very important rest stop on the way to California or Oregon. It, it's about halfway there and before you have to go through the horrible, you know, Sierra Nevadas, if you're going to California. And so what it meant was once Utah became an established location, I didn't actually have to pack as much food or as many animals as I needed to get all the way to Sacramento. I only had to pack enough food as it took to get to Salt Lake. And then in Salt Lake, yes, food would be really expensive, but still cheaper than hauling it the whole way. It meant I could bring more of my own possessions or I could bring, I could make a more comfortable trip of it. So Utah, Salt Lake had really become this kind of resupply depot of settlers heading either to Oregon Territory or to California. And this group of Arkansas immigrants, they're often called the Baker Fancher Party. A lot of times they're just called the Fancher Party. Regardless, they come into Utah Territory right at the same time as Utahns believe a, A, an army. They've learned that an army is on its way there. And Brigham Young has issued a decree as governor to not trade with any more gentile, you know, wagon trains that are coming through because we need to save that, the wheat for ourselves. We can't be selling our horses to these wagon trains going through when we might need the horses to get away kind of thing. But you can see on the other side, if you're part of the wagon train, what an irritant this is. You've been saying for the past thousand miles, if we can only make it to Salt Lake, then we can get fresh food, we can get fresh horses, we can get fresh everything. And then we get there. And because some Mormon leader says not to sell stuff to us, we can't get it at all. So it is a hugely irritating thing. Now, irritation and murder aren't the same thing. If they were, every one of my students would have offed me already. So what, what happens next? Well, I'm not going to go into all the details. There's a great book Written by, by Richard Turley, who was the assistant church historian for so many years on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I recommend if you've got questions about it, please go get it and read it. If you want just kind of the tidbit details. There is the Gospel topics essay Peace and violence in 19th century. That's one of the gospel topics. You can read that. But there is a lot of garbage out there on the Mountain Meadows Massacre too. There are a lot of books written for the shock value of them that don't. That aren't written A by historians or B with following the the proper ideas of history. One of my favorite is there was a book that was written trying to place the Mountain Meadows Massacre in as negative a context and very similarly actually to, to John Krakauer's book trying to, to. To connect Latter Day Saint theology to the fact that the massacre occurred directly. This woman opened her book by saying, you know, that essentially some of the effect of it all happened in outside of a sleepy Utah town named Parowan, named for a mythical bloodthirsty Nephite warrior, something to that effect. The author assumed or was illiterate that Parowan was actually just a character from the Book of Mormon. And so by starting her book that way she made this direct connection. Ah, they named it after a bloodthirsty Nephite. And what did they become? Bloodthirsty.
- [27:57]
Unknown Speaker
So you bring this point up quite a bit. So the fact that she got that wrong, that doesn't have anything to do with the Mountain Metal Massacre. But why, why does such a small detail getting wrong like that? Why does that matter?
- [28:12]
Professor Richard Leduc
I think, look, everyone who's ever written anything ever has made a mistake. Sure. So mistakes are like, I've made mistakes in my writing. Usually they happen when things are being edited together and when you cut out a paragraph, but two paragraphs join and now you've got a sentence in there that used to be accurate and now it's not anymore because it's not there. It happens all the time. Happens in copy editing. I've had things changed in copy editing from being accurate to being inaccurate because the person wasn't sure what I meant by it. And you know, they, they thought it was just an easy fix. I'm like, no, it actually is this. That's. I know it doesn't look right. That's, that's my whole point. So, you know, the point isn't that, oh, no one ever makes a mistake. The point is the type of mistakes if you're going to build Your early introduction on the argument that of course it happened outside of a town named for a bloodthirsty Nephite warrior, then you probably better make sure that it's actually a bloodthirsty Nephite warrior and not nothing or, or do a Google search, which is the case at the time her book was published, because I did it myself the second I got her book. And you'll find out that Parowan from the town's website is a you name for little crooked stream or something like that.
- [29:42]
Unknown Speaker
Bloodthirsty crooked skirt.
- [29:44]
Professor Richard Leduc
Bloodthirsty crooked. The point is the event itself, the Mountain Meadows Massacre is already incredibly horrific. Trying to make it more horrific or placing it in a more negative context as a way of making a wider larger argument against religion in general, which is what Krakauer is trying to do or what this other author is trying to do is it's irresponsible. So what occurs? This wagon train, they are going south. They're taking the southern route to California. Well, they had been expecting to get these food stores and they weren't able to get them. They have multiple conflicts with local Latter Day Saint communities, especially in places like Cedar City. Outside of Cedar City, they, they actually, they graze the wagon trains. You know, oxen graze on grazing land that, that isn't owned by them because they're passing through. And when they, the residents of Cedar City try to charge them what you want to graze on their land, you got to pay for it. I mean this is where we graze our horses. They refuse to pay the bill. And so then they actually attempt to try to cite them for, you know, refusal to pay for the. There's there. It seems like a relatively petty thing, but it leads to these, it leads to some great animosities.
- [31:19]
Unknown Speaker
So, so I'm curious in terms of the, the timeline of when these, when these folks come into Utah territory. So Johnson's army occupies from, from May ish until July.
- [31:31]
Professor Richard Leduc
Well, Johnson's army is not yet in Utah. When, when these guys come in, they're not there. They're on their way. But it is, you know, it's a considerable feat to get that army organized and to march them all the way there. And in fact, so the speech I read you from, from Stephen Douglas, that was from June of 1857. Okay, so it would have been hitting the Utah papers sometime in July of 1857. Okay. So in the mid summer is when they are hearing how heated this rhetoric is and that there's an army in route that army actually isn't even going to make it in 1857. Okay. They'll have to winter in Wyoming, which is already. Yeah. How there's an army left in the, in the summertime, no one knows. But so that, that actually, that impending fear is what's driving some things. Got it. Now, it's hard to say exactly the reasons why there are conflicts between the wagon train and the local Latter Day Saint settlers because many of the things that we hear, many of the things that people say are things that we only have record of after the fact. By multiple accounts, members of the wagon train who are very irate that they cannot trade like they expected, are making negative statements about the faith. And. But these are all accounts that are after the fact. And one wonders whether or not they are things that people are saying in a way to try to justify the horrible murders that took place. So they'll say things like, you know, they were claiming that, you know, there was someone in the wagon train that was claiming that they actually had the gun that killed Joseph Smith at Carthage Jail. Well, that's a pretty big fighting word if you're actually saying that to a Latter Day Saint who, to them that's the most devastating thing that ever happened. But I don't know if that's what was actually being said. We do know that there was some controversy surrounding the, the sale of some cattle or, or at least some cattle that, that were purchased from the immigrant party. Right. So one thing you do is you'd sell your old cattle and there were some mysterious deaths that took place after that. One, you know, 14 year old boy, you know, is working on the hide of this cattle and he gets very sick very quickly and dies from it. Well, for Latter Day Saints, they saw this as the, this was poisoning and, and maybe they deliberately poisoned this, this boy for when in Turley's book, Turley and Walker, Ron Walker wrote this book explaining the details around all this. One of the things they suggest is, you know, the description of how this boy gets sick and dies and how they, the animals are sick and dying suggests that it's possible at least that the, what's going on is that they, they had contracted anthrax, which is naturally occurring anthrax, the deadly spores of it. Right. That that does naturally occur out in the West. So is it possible that that's actually what happened? Because it sounds like it could be anthrax poisoning. But so, so actually for about, you know, a couple of decades, well a decade and a half, people were just. Yep, that's the description, the poisoning was never anything. It was just absolutely. It was just anthrax. And then a friend of mine who's a geneticist got the needed permissions to exhume the body of this boy from the family descended relatives and did testing on his bones and on all the soil around him to see if there was any traces of anthrax which will remain in the soil forever, essentially, because this is where were talking about these spores, essentially, and there was no evidence of it. Now, that doesn't mean that he didn't die from anthrax poisoning, but it does mean that there's no evidence that he died from anthrax poisoning. And so it kind of makes that argument a little bit weaker. I don't know what really went on. I do know that there was an attempt to try to arrest several members of the wagon train for, for not paying their bills, essentially. What, what happens is that the John D. Lee, who is the Indian agent for Utah Territory and on very good relations with the Paiute Indians in the south, he is going to try to encourage the Paiute Indians to attack the wagon train as a means of trying to essentially chastise them for what they've, you know, what's going on. Also, again, according to later reports, and I don't know whether or not this is true, that's part of the problem. There's at least the claim by Mormons after the fact that members of the wagon train were saying that, you know, they were so irate about what happened that when they got to California, they were going to raise an army themselves from California to come back and invade because the other army is coming. At the very least, there's certainly this fear that that's the case. There's an initial confrontation in which Lee is in a gunfight with some of the members of the Fancher party and he realizes that they see him. And so now there's a much greater problem. Lee realizes that the Fancher party knows that he, a Mormon, was engaged with these Indians in an attempt to attack their wagon train. All of the thoughts and fears of people about Mormons enlisting Indians and attacking wagon trains are suddenly bearing out. And so what do we do? The, the, the Paiutes are allied with the, the Mormons in the area and probably felt like they didn't have a whole lot of choice themselves because the Mormons were their allies. The Mormons were pressuring them into attacking this wagon train. And then once they had that initial attack that was kind of a failure. You know, now what do you do? The wagon trains now all walled up in its, you know, circular formation. They're basically like this little fortress. They can't stay there forever. And the. The Indians are not powerful enough, even with some of the. The white help, to be able to. To overrun this wagon train. So.
- [38:41]
Unknown Speaker
So one of the problems isn't just that Lee is doing this independent. The idea is that someone else ordered the Code Red. Right?
- [38:49]
Professor Richard Leduc
Yes. And. And that's the problem. There's going to be a huge discussion in. In Cedar City where the person who is in charge happens to be a stake president. He's also one of the leaders of the Iron of Iron county, which is the county. And they don't know what to do because we've already had this armed confrontation with them. If they get out, they are going to go to California and say, the Mormons attacked us and put the Indians up to it, too. We need to go kill them. And there would just be even further reason for another army to come and attack them. And an army's already on the way to cut out this loathsome cancer. Right. So they had this huge debate about what to do and a writer's dispatch to Brigham Young to say, hey, got a few problems down here. And of course, unfortunately, they don't decide to tell Brigham Young everything that's going on. Hard to believe, but people in a position of power who have probably overstepped their bounds, not entirely willing to say everything that they've done. So they present it to Brigham Young. More like, hey, you know, the. The Indians are, like, attacking wagon trains down here. I mean, they don't say John D. Lee tried to. They don't. They don't say that. They essentially say that the Indians have been attacking some of the wagon trains and they want us to help them. What do we do? So they present Brigham Young with something that's not even true in the first place. Brigham Young's response is, look, the Indians are going to do whatever the Indians are going to do. But as for you, you should let all the immigrants pass in peace. That message is sent back, and unfortunately, it arrives after the settlers in southern Utah have already taken this very drastic decision. Decision. They decide, we can't let the immigrants stay there because the army's on the way. We can't let them go, because if we let them go, they're going to raise another army in California and tell everyone that Mormons were attacking them, which, in fact, some of them were. So that would have been honest, what we're going to do is we're going to eliminate them. Now. This is a horrific decision. And you wonder how it is that someone can come to that decision as a Latter Day Saint and yet multiple leaders. There were some people who said, let's wait to find out what Brigham Young says. And there were others like, we can't wait that long. You know, the Indians are going to turn on us if we don't help them, you know, finish this off and give them some of the spoils of this wagon train. We don't know when the army is going to get there. We can't wait for that. Probably something that's driving that we can't wait for. That is, if we do wait for Brigham Young, then that would mean he might find out more about what we've done without actually asking in the first place. And this is the tragedy. It actually takes place on September 11th. Again, if you want the all of the details on this, please read the book on it. Please read Turley and Walker's book, and it's very dense and there's a ton of sources in there. It's published by Oxford University Press. But you really should dive into it if you have lots of questions. Don't just do a Google search for this if you really want to know. Really put some time in to find out. At any rate, the, the Latter Day Saints approach the wagon train under a flag of truce, essentially, and say, we've negotiated with the Indians. They're going to let you come out. You know, they're, they're really mad because of, you know, they've already had a conflict here, but we've negotiated with them. If you all come out without your weapons, we will protect you. We'll take you back to Cedar City, we'll get this all worked out and then, and then you'll be on your way. So the men leave their arms, the women come out as well, and they come marching out, and at a predetermined time, a signal is made and the men of the Iron County Militia, who are the, you know, the county militia there, who are there to lead them out past this Native American, you know, conflict, or at least how they're portraying it, they turn and they kill the man next to them. And there is the, the attack of the Indians as well, which kills those other survivors. And 120 people are murdered. And it is, you know, by far the darkest day of Latter Day Saint history. Latter Day Saints believing Latter Day Saints ordered the murder of 120 men, women and children. There are around a dozen children who aren't killed because they're under the age of accountability, but it is, it is. It's a horrific slaughter. Now, the fact that members of our church, acting on their own accord, could do something horrific is not actually a surprise to anyone listening to this podcast. Every single person listening knows somebody who was a member who committed some kind of horrific crime. And because you're a member, you don't say, well, you know what, the reason why that bishop became a child molester was because he was a Mormon. You would say, I hate that person and I hope they go to jail forever. How dare they tarnish my faith like that. Right. You have this secondary anger towards them because of course the newspaper press is going to say, oh, yes, Mormon bishop. They're going to use that as a point of saying who they are. Well, there are many people who've attempted to tie Brigham Young and the church authorities themselves to this horrific massacre. Now, to the point where there will be people who will make this argument. I know that Brigham Young sent a letter saying that you should let all the immigrants pass in peace, but he probably also sent another letter saying, by the way, kill all of them. We just don't have that letter. But I'm pretty sure he must have sent that letter because Brigham Young must have have ordered it.
- [45:51]
Unknown Speaker
So you say that in a joking.
- [45:53]
Professor Richard Leduc
But that's what people say it is legitimately. What some, again, all of them non historians. There are people who people will call historians who don't actually have PhDs, right? Oh, I'm a historian because I play one on TV or I really, really, really like history. That's great. If you really, really like history, then you'll go get a degree in it. And that's really. I mean, I hate to sound like that guy, but there are things you learn in getting a PhD where you realize that arguments you would have made back when you were just a bachelor's degree holder are not actually credible arguments. I learned that with all kinds of things. You're probably listening to the podcast going, really? I haven't heard any of them yet. But the reality is there are all kinds of things that I once thought were a pretty good argument. And then I went to school and I was like, well, that was. I'm pretty embarrassed that I. I'm very embarrassed, actually, that I made that argument ever, because it's not a very good argument. And, and, and certainly that's. That's one of those. Is it possible that Brigham Young sent another letter telling him to kill everybody? I mean, is it Possible. Of course, literally anything is possible, but historians don't act on what is possible. To historians act upon what is most likely to have occurred. Brigham Young, we know, sends a letter saying, let the wagon trains pass in peace. So that means that what they want is what he is at least on record saying is to let them pass in peace. It's this attempt to try to make a wider argument that in fact even Brigham Young ordered this murder that is. Is problematic. Now, this gets pretty muddy for quite some time because all of these local leaders, they attempt to cover their tracks. Again, hard to believe that a leader in a position of power would attempt to try to cover their tracks when they've done something wrong. It's, again, it's a different world. But they tell Brigham Young, oh, man, you'll never believe it. The Indians just massacred everyone from that party. And, you know, it's stunning. It's huge. But even as reports start to filter in, oh, it was actually Mormons who were a part of that massacre. There's a reason why Brigham Young doesn't really believe those claims. For a decade, he has heard nothing but, oh, yeah, yeah, the Mormons are the ones committing this act. The more. And in every other case, it hadn't been true. Here was the case where it actually was true. And his trusted friends, these local leaders, people like John D. Lee, lied to him and said that it was all the Indians and we had nothing to do with it. And so that's what Brigham Young thought. Now, eventually, the leaders, two of the leaders of this John D. Lee and another, are going to be excommunicated for what they do. And John D. Lee is going to be executed for his role in. In orchestrating these murders. But there are very few people brought to justice for the amount of murders that were committed. Now, that was a lot longer than I wanted to spend on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but I feel that that.
- [49:11]
Unknown Speaker
Was actually important to. To really.
- [49:13]
Professor Richard Leduc
To really lay it out again. If you really want to know about it, please read the book. Not John Krakauer's book, but books by actual historians with actual degrees. Please read the. The Walker and Turley book on. On Mountain Meadows, Master.
- [49:28]
Unknown Speaker
Because what you're trying to point out here is that you can have. You can have something that is horrific and is not excusable while at the same time trying to help understand what's going on at the time that might even create.
- [49:40]
Professor Richard Leduc
Because.
- [49:40]
Unknown Speaker
Because the way that he would lay it out is that in a vacuum, they murdered these.
- [49:45]
Professor Richard Leduc
Well, because they belong to a Violent faith, right? A violent faith that has always put God ahead of others and that the Gentiles have to be killed. And that's exactly what the Lafferties did when they, even though they'd been excommunicated from that faith, but took the faith positions of that faith into their new faith that they created. And that's the reason why they killed. The two people that they killed and planned to kill more actually just were really bad at it. So they weren't able to kill everyone that they planned to. The argument is one that is, frankly, it's, it's very weak and one that anyone could, could easily invite. I don't care what side of the political spectrum you are on or what religion you happen to belong to. I assume that most of our listeners are Latter Day Saints. But the, the reality is we have a tendency to downplay the violence from someone who belongs to our group, whatever that group is. When it's someone from our group who performs it, we will say something like, well, they don't represent me. But when they come from an opposite group, a group that you're opposed to, suddenly that is exactly who those people are, right? So you have someone who is a, a right wing, you know, white supremacist who makes a violent assault against somebody. And you'll have people from the right side of the political spectrum say, that person doesn't represent me. I don't believe any of this stuff that that clown believes, right? You can be a conservative and not want to kill people, right? Someone on the left will respond to that like, oh, sure. Well, I'm just saying right wing ideology, Next thing you know, you're trying to kill people. Or you could flip that on its head. You know, if there's someone who is from the left side of the political spectrum and they kill people in the name of their political ideology, what happens? People on the right say, of course, that's what left wing ideology does try. Creates murders out of everybody. People on the left would say, look, that guy was crazy. We aren't saying to go shoot people, okay? That, because he did that doesn't mean that's what we believe. And that's really this kind of issue that you have here. The human tendency is always to unfairly judge a group by individuals that come from it. And it's really the antithesis of American democracy where all men are created equal. The idea is that everyone should only be judged individually for what they do. This is at the heart of what Dr. Martin Luther King's speech is, right? That that people would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Meaning it's possible that you could have poor character and it has nothing to do with whether you're white or black and getting outside of that judgment. But it doesn't make for as good a Hollywood movie because Mormons are weirdos. Mormons are easy to make fun of. As my professor, my doctoral advisor said after he read my dissertation, he said, you know, as I've shared this with several other people, the thought just keeps coming back to me that Mormons are really the only people that it's okay to openly hate. That it's just okay. And you can say it to just about anyone. You can say it to a Christian and it's okay to hate them. You can say it to an atheist and it's okay to hate them. You can say that you hate Mormons to just about anyone and they'll all, you know, tip of the cap and they're on their way, everything's fine. That sounds great. And, and so what's going on in this book which has turned into this movie is this attempt to connect the Latter Day Saint past and by the way, very shoddily researched latter day St. Paul past. Let me give you an idea of just how shoddy some of the research is. So when this book first came out, Richard Turley, who was the assistant church historian, he wrote response to it, a book review response which pointed out many of the errors. In fact, this response was so powerful that when Krakauer updated his book, he included an entire response to Turley in his updated book.
- [54:22]
Unknown Speaker
So the church actually has a release on, on the website and we'll put a link to the the newsroom release. It has three different responses from three different LDs and actual published historians as.
- [54:35]
Professor Richard Leduc
Opposed to hey, I climbed a mountain once, so I guess I'm an expert on Mormonism.
- [54:40]
Unknown Speaker
And so yeah, so the church actually has an official statement by these three.
- [54:44]
Professor Richard Leduc
People which you should probably listen to more than me.
- [54:46]
Unknown Speaker
Oh, 100% neither official and it's nor statement and it's specific to this, this book. And so, so it's interesting. So this book takes a fair amount of liberties. And then the limited series on that's on Hulu and fx, it takes even more because it creates a story around a made up person.
- [55:04]
Professor Richard Leduc
It creates a fake person who just so happens to be a Mormon who by the end of the series is going to go through his own faith crisis when he learns about the real buried bones of Mormon history. In fact, you said you were researching what the actor, how the actor got into his role.
- [55:22]
Unknown Speaker
So he tried to immerse himself in. He came out to Utah and he said that he immersed himself with ex Mormons, with Mormons, with future ex Mormons and with Mormon cops. And he tried to kind of understand and really dive into the FLDS faith specifically. That's kind of where he spent his time. And you know, in fairness to him, he's an actor. He's not historian. He's trying to understand a particular context, and he's going to people that, you know that have fallen away. My favorite was future ex Mormons. Those are, those are my.
- [55:56]
Professor Richard Leduc
So someone who told them they're on their way out, but just haven't figured out how to, what, call up the bishop's office and have my name removed yet.
- [56:04]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, they're going to FSY this summer.
- [56:06]
Professor Richard Leduc
But after that I want. Yeah, after that, after I get my.
- [56:08]
Unknown Speaker
Well, maybe they're going to. Maybe they're going to byu, so they.
- [56:11]
Professor Richard Leduc
Want to graduate first. Makes sense. It makes sense. But again, that's a, that's an odd place to start. I started with ex Mormons. Well, it seems like if you were going to be portraying a faithful Latter Day Saint police officer, that you'd start with faithful Latter Day Saints.
- [56:32]
Unknown Speaker
He does say, he does talk to Latter Day Saints.
- [56:34]
Professor Richard Leduc
Yeah, I talked to two groups opposed to the church and one that's in favor of it. That's how I got what I came up with. I mean, look, I mean, whatever he's going to do, he's operating on whatever the writers say anyway. But let me give you an example of some of the, Some of the errors that demonstrate just how little. Just how little Krakauer knew about Latter Day Saint history and theology before writing a book saying, I know so much about their theology that I know that it's a murderous theology. So again, that's the problem. This is not just being critical for being critical sake, he decided to write a book that wasn't just about how the Lafferties were a bunch of murderers. Because they were. He decided to write a book saying that because the Lafferties were murderers, Mormons are all susceptible to that kind of violence. Once you make that claim, then you don't get to be wrong about what Mormons believe, because you're the one claiming that you know the faith so well. You know that they're all going to become murderers. So maybe one of the things you could know is that the Laban in the Book of Mormon isn't the same as the Laban in the Bible. The dude legitimately talking about Laban and how Laban was murdered thinks that it's the same Laban from the Bible because he didn't even read the story of Laban in the Book of Mormon. He did so little actual research that he uses the story of Nephi killing Laban to prove how Mormons are murderers from the get go, but didn't read the three pages it would have taken for him to actually know that it's not the same Laban he found in a Bible commentary. And you know, Richard Turley calls him out on that. He also calls him out on a couple of other things. Here's an example of how you know that Krakauer, it doesn't know what he's talking about. One place in chapter seven, Turley points this out. Krakow refers to Mark E. Peterson and calls him a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Sorry, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as the LDS president. An obvious error. And you know, Krakauer responds to this. Elder Turley is correct. This is an obvious error. It escaped my notice. And that one of my copy editors, because they're calling Markey Peterson the President of the Church. For those of you running the song in your minds, he, you know, it wasn't, you know, you know, David McKay was followed by Marky Peterson. Okay, you already know that that's not there, right? He goes on to say, oh, it's a copy editing error. And then this is how he justifies it. Crossfield certainly knows that Peterson was never a president of the Church, as I do. President. Listen to this. So in his correction, in his response to the fact that he was so wrong that he didn't get that correct, this is how he responded. President is an honorific that is frequently bestowed on all of the LDS apostles. Literally. Any Latter Day Saint reading that sentence knows that that's not true. And you know how I know? I was just the other day having a conversation with someone about Elder Ballard, and the conversation arose about whether they should be calling him President Ballard or Elder Ballard because he's the acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, but not the President of the Quorum. He's just the acting president, which, of course you still call him President, by the way, if anyone's wondering or if I'm going to get an angry email. But we don't refer to President Suarez. We don't refer to President, you know, Renlund. So even in his attempt to show that what he had was an error. Like, oh, yeah, just. Yeah, just our copy editors just made a mistake. He then presented factually false information that all of the apostles are all called president, except they're not.
- [61:06]
Unknown Speaker
But why does that matter? It goes to the point, right? So why does it matter that he got that wrong?
- [61:10]
Professor Richard Leduc
It matters because even after he was called on the fact that he so shoddily presented the faith that he was wrong about who the president of the church was, his comeback was, yeah, I was wrong on that, but it wasn't that wrong. Because they call all the apostles president when they don't. Which is just a further demonstration that even with the time to think about it, even with knowing that he's being called out on it, his response didn't even take 10 seconds to ask. Literally any faithful member of the church. He could have called any CTRB class teacher. Right. You know, and said, hey, do you call all of the apostles president? And the guy would have been like, no, okay, and hang up. And that have been the end. It demonstrates just a complete abdication of the actual willingness to find the truth in that response. He was far more worried that he demonstrated how right he really was than actually being right. And the book is filled with things like that. Let me give you one more example here.
- [62:23]
Unknown Speaker
And by the way, as it relates to Laban, it's possible it's the same Laban. It's about a thousand year. Laban's. Rebecca's brother.
- [62:33]
Professor Richard Leduc
Yes.
- [62:34]
Unknown Speaker
So that's, you know, 1800 BC 1700 BC. So it's possible if he's 1100 years old. Makes sense how Nephi was able to kill him so easily.
- [62:46]
Professor Richard Leduc
Yeah. In fact, Krakauer refers to Laban as a scheming, filthy rich sheep magnate, exactly how he's described in the Book of Mormon. That's exactly. I mean, I mean, I guess he is a scheming, A great example of how falsely portraying what actually happens in history to prove your point changes the context in the way people receive things. So one of the things that Krakauer claims is that Rockwell, Porter Rockwell is accused of, and we talked about this. Porter, Rockwell is accused of attempting to murder former Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs. Again, this is all part of Krakauer's argument that, yeah, those Mormons are violent. Those Mormons, they do this. Those Mormons. Right. The whole point is Mormons are violent. Look, here's. Here's an example.
- [63:37]
Unknown Speaker
Boggs was minding his own business, reading his Sunday paper there.
- [63:40]
Professor Richard Leduc
He was eating a hot dog you know, and there's opera music playing in the background. And then, you know, the next thing you know, Rockwell rolls up. Here's an example of a stunningly inaccurate thing that was used to paint a more negative context, as if the Mormons were the ones in control of the legal system in America. Rockwell. This is quote, Rockwell had no difficulty eluding arrest. Neither he nor any. Any Latter, Latter Day Saint was ever brought to justice for the deed. Well, so that presupposes that a Latter Day Saint did the deed is the one who actually did it. But second of all, Porter Rockwell was unjustly arrested and held in prison for nine months without any trial. You know so little about it that you didn't even take the time to read one of the 700 biographies of Porter Rockwell that exists that would all talk about that. Why did you say. I mean, again. So the question is, why do you say something in a book? Again, this is not like it's an interview where he's saying it off the cuff. Why do you say something in a book that you don't even know whether or not it's true? Why didn't he find out? I mean, why not say nothing at all? Why not say, you know, and some people said that Porter Rockwell tried to kill Oburn Boggs and move on? Why do you have to go further and say, and he was never brought to justice and he was never put in jail. Why would you say it? Well, you say it because you're trying to create a false negative narrative. Now, maybe he didn't know that Porter. I mean, he says he didn't realize that Porter Rocco had been arrested. But if you don't know that, then I guess you don't know enough about the topic to be writing about it. So don't include that as evidence, because in order to include something as evidence, you probably need to know what it is you're talking about talking about. And in this, he demonstrates that he doesn't. I mean, there are some things that he will push back on. Turley. Turley's going to say that there is a. A poor argument that one of the reasons why Joseph is mobbed is because of improper relations with Mirinda Johnson in this attempt to try to say, oh, Joseph attempted some early plural marriage. Now, of course, Mirinda Johnson never says that at all. And she gives multiple affidavits in her life in which she talks about Joseph and how Joseph's a prophet. But the, the. The attempt is, again, to undermine this for the purposes of the, the movie, I think that one of the things that's really.
- [66:26]
Unknown Speaker
Limited series.
- [66:27]
Professor Richard Leduc
Limited series. Sorry. I think there's a couple of things. There's this attempt to. The wider attempt of the book to say that all Mormons have a tendency towards violence. If that were the case, then your assumption could be what? That Mormons would have a much higher rate of murders. Mormons would have a much higher rate of violent crimes of all types. Because if their religion is giving them license to be violent, then Mormons should have a license to. They should demonstrate their, their greater violent tendencies. But the other aspect of the film is the series is that, you know, as, as multiple reports have have stated, part of it will demonstrate some of the most sacred aspects of Latter Day Saint ritual and that is the temple service. That it will demonstrate parts of the initiatory and the washing and anointings that take place. That it will demonstrate part of the. The sacred covenants that are made in the temple. All of them, of course, completely out of context. All of them, of course, appearing completely bizarre to people in the outside world. And all of that fueling someone's desire to watch and to learn more about this crazy religion that led people to commit murders. Hopefully you don't have people in your life who have their faith shaken by the fact that these two crazy, excommunicated Mormons committed murders. I hope that, that, that, that you can examine yourself whether or not your own faith causes you to be much more violent. It's frankly kind of a haphazard argument that's made against other faith traditions all the time, that their very belief in God makes them irrational and therefore as irrational beings, they. They're willing to kill people? Well, would an atheist accept the argument if I said the fact that you don't believe in God and that you don't believe that there's any punishment for what you do means that you're more likely to commit a murder because there is no actual eternal punishment. Of course an atheist would say, well, that's not fair at all. And if I pointed out evidences of atheists who've committed murders, they would say, well, that might be what he did, but that doesn't mean that I would do the same thing. I have a moral compass even if I don't believe in God. And I think that's part of the reality that you need to come to. Just because a Methodist does something illegal doesn't mean that Methodism drives people to do things that are illegal. Just because someone who is Islamic does something illegal doesn't mean Islam drives people to do illegal things. Latter Day Saints have a very difficult history with the United States at times. Yes, practicing their religion in defiance of laws that were passed to make their religion illegal. But that's not the same thing as them wholesale perpetrating murders. One of the great questions to ask of people who say that, oh, yes, the Danites are running amok in Utah and killing every last person is why did Utah have a much lower murder rate than the surrounding territories around it? If in fact these murders are all taking place, it seems like they're not doing a very good job. So now you're not only arguing that Mormons are murderers, now they're not very effective murderers. I mean, the, the, the, the reality is there are absolutely Latter Day Saints who commit horrific crimes. In the case of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one that is so horrific that it is, like I said, the darkest day of Latter Day Saint history. But there is a very big difference between saying that the faith itself is illegitimate and that members of that faith have done things that are horrific. Members of every faith, every belief system, every political party, every group have done horrific things. And it is an unfair brush to use to paint so broadly that because any individual of any group has done something horrific, that all individuals of every part of that group are all going to do, or at least cheer on the same thing. It's not accurate, first of all, it's not honest, and it's also certainly not kind or Christian. So hopefully that, you know, cleared this up a little bit. I don't know that we'll spend more time on this, but maybe we'll revisit at some point in the future. But thank you so much for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast.
- [71:13]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmot. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com until next time.