The Mountain Meadows Massacre

Author : Ronald W. Walker,Richard E. Turley,Glen M. Leonard
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2011-02-09
Category : History
ISBN : 0199830975

Get Book

Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Ronald W. Walker,Richard E. Turley,Glen M. Leonard Pdf

On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter. Massacre at Mountain Meadows offers the most thoroughly researched account of the massacre ever written. Drawn from documents previously not available to scholars and a careful re-reading of traditional sources, this gripping narrative offers fascinating new insight into why Mormons settlers in isolated southern Utah deceived the emigrant party with a promise of safety and then killed the adults and all but seventeen of the youngest children. The book sheds light on factors contributing to the tragic event, including the war hysteria that overcame the Mormons after President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a supposed rebellion, the suspicion and conflicts that polarized the perpetrators and victims, and the reminders of attacks on Mormons in earlier settlements in Missouri and Illinois. It also analyzes the influence of Brigham Young's rhetoric and military strategy during the infamous "Utah War" and the role of local Mormon militia leaders in enticing Paiute Indians to join in the attack. Throughout the book, the authors paint finely drawn portraits of the key players in the drama, their backgrounds, personalities, and roles in the unfolding story of misunderstanding, misinformation, indecision, and personal vendettas. The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands as one of the darkest events in Mormon history. Neither a whitewash nor an expos?, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides the clearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history.

Author : Juanita Brooks
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2012-09-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780806185385

Get Book

The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Juanita Brooks Pdf

In the Fall of 1857, some 120 California-bound emigrants were killed in lonely Mountain Meadows in southern Utah; only eighteen young children were spared. The men on the ground after the bloody deed took an oath that they would never mention the event again, either in public or in private. The leaders of the Mormon church also counseled silence. The first report, soon after the massacre, described it as an Indian onslaught at which a few white men were present, only one of whom, John D. Lee, was actually named. With admirable scholarship, Mrs. Brooks has traced the background of conflict, analyzed the emotional climate at the time, pointed up the social and military organization in Utah, and revealed the forces which culminated in the great tragedy at Mountain Meadows. The result is a near-classic treatment which neither smears nor clears the participants as individuals. It portrays an atmosphere of war hysteria, whipped up by recitals of past persecutions and the vision of an approaching "army" coming to drive the Mormons from their homes.

Author : Will Bagley
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 556 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2012-09-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780806186849

Get Book

Blood of the Prophets by Will Bagley Pdf

The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the thirty-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians. Based on extensive investigation of the events surrounding the murder of over 120 men, women, and children, and drawing from a wealth of primary sources, Bagley explains how the murders occurred, reveals the involvement of territorial governor Brigham Young, and explores the subsequent suppression and distortion of events related to the massacre by the Mormon Church and others.

Author : Sally Denton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2007-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307424723

Get Book

American Massacre by Sally Denton Pdf

In September 1857, a wagon train passing through Utah laden with gold was attacked. Approximately 140 people were slaughtered; only 17 children under the age of eight were spared. This incident in an open field called Mountain Meadows has ever since been the focus of passionate debate: Is it possible that official Mormon dignitaries were responsible for the massacre? In her riveting book, Sally Denton makes a fiercely convincing argument that they were. The author–herself of Mormon descent–first traces the extraordinary emergence of the Mormons and the little-known nineteenth-century intrigues and tensions between their leaders and the U.S. government, fueled by the Mormons’ zealotry and exclusionary practices. We see how by 1857 they were unique as a religious group in ruling an entire American territory, Utah, and commanding their own exclusive government and army. Denton makes clear that in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the church began placing the blame on a discredited Mormon, John D. Lee, and on various Native Americans. She cites contemporaneous records and newly discovered documents to support her argument that, in fact, the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, bore significant responsibility–that Young, impelled by the church’s financial crises, facing increasingly intense scrutiny and condemnation by the federal government, incited the crime by both word and deed. Finally, Denton explains how the rapidly expanding and enormously rich Mormon church of today still struggles to absolve itself of responsibility for what may well be an act of religious fanaticism unparalleled in the annals of American history. American Massacre is totally absorbing in its narrative as it brings to life a tragic moment in our history.

Author : Richard E. Turley (Jr.),Ronald Warren Walker
Publisher : Brigham Young University Studies
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : STANFORD:36105132224770

Get Book

Mountain Meadows Massacre by Richard E. Turley (Jr.),Ronald Warren Walker Pdf

Presents two newly discovered collections of documents relating to the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Author : Richard E. Turley (Jr.),Janiece L. Johnson,LaJean Purcell Carruth
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Massacres
ISBN : 0806155736

Get Book

Mountain Meadows Massacre by Richard E. Turley (Jr.),Janiece L. Johnson,LaJean Purcell Carruth Pdf

Historians have long debated the circumstances surrounding the massacre, one of the most disturbing and controversial events in American history, and painful questions linger to this day. Based on the highest curatorial standards, this invaluable collection allows readers the opportunity to form their own conclusions about the forces that lay behind this dark moment in western U.S. history.

Author : Richard E. Turley,Barbara Jones Brown
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 521 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2023-04-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780197675694

Get Book

Vengeance Is Mine by Richard E. Turley,Barbara Jones Brown Pdf

The long-awaited follow-up to the groundbreaking Massacre at Mountain Meadows Published in 2008, Massacre at Mountain Meadows was a bombshell of a book, revealing the story of one of the grimmest episodes in Latter-day Saint history, when settlers in southwestern Utah slaughtered more than 100 members of a California-bound wagon train in 1857. In this much-anticipated sequel, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown examine the aftermath of this atrocity. Vengeance Is Mine documents southern Utah leaders' attempts to cover up their crime by silencing witnesses and spreading lies. Investigations by both governmental and church bodies were stymied by stonewalling and political wrangling. While nine men were eventually indicted, five were captured and only one, John D. Lee, was executed. The book examines the maneuvering of the defense and prosecution in Lee's two trials, the second ending in Lee's conviction. Turley and Brown explore the fraught relationship between Lee and church president Brigham Young, and assess what role, if any, Young played in the cover-up. And they trace the fates of the other perpetrators, including the harrowing end of Nephi Johnson, who screamed "Blood! Blood! Blood!" in his delirium as he was dying, more than sixty years after the massacre. Turley and Brown also tell the story of the massacre's few survivors: seventeen children who witnessed the slaughter and eventually returned to Arkansas, where the ill-fated wagon train originated. Vengeance Is Mine brings the hitherto untold story of this shameful episode in Mormon and Utah history to its dramatic conclusion.

Author : Shannon A. Novak
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015076156580

Get Book

House of Mourning by Shannon A. Novak Pdf

"On September 11, 1857 some 120 men, women, and children from the Arkansas hills were murdered in the remote desert valley of Mountain Meadows, Utah. This notorious massacre was, in fact, a mass execution: the victims were bludgeoned to death or shot at point-blank range. The perpetrators were local Mormon militiamen whose motives have been fiercely debated for 150 years." "In House of Mourning, Shannon A. Novak goes beyond the question of motive to the question of loss." "By integrating archival records and oral histories with the first analysis of skeletal remains from the massacre site, Novak offers a detailed and sensitive portrait of the victims as individuals, family members, cultural beings, and living bodies." "The history of the massacre has often been treated as a morality tale whose chief purpose was to vilify (or to glorify) some collective body. Resisting this tendency to oversimplify the past, Novak explores Mountain Meadows as a busy and dangerous intersection of cultural and material forces in antebellum America, House of Mourning is a bold experiment in a new kind of history, the biocultural analysis of complex events."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : John G. Turner
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 511 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2012-09-25
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780674067318

Get Book

Brigham Young by John G. Turner Pdf

Brigham Young was a rough-hewn New York craftsman whose impoverished life was electrified by the Mormon faith. Turner provides a fully realized portrait of this spiritual prophet, viewed by followers as a protector and by opponents as a heretic. His pioneering faith made a deep imprint on tens of thousands of lives in the American Mountain West.

Author : Anna Jean Backus
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : STANFORD:36105018283064

Get Book

Mountain Meadows Witness by Anna Jean Backus Pdf

Philip Klingensmith (b. 1815) was born in Pennsylvania to Philip Klingensmith and Mary Anderson. His ancestors were German Lutherans who settled in Pennsylvania in the late 1600s. Philip eventually moved to ohio where he married Hannah Creemar (1826-1891). They became members of the LDS Church and settled in Nauvoo, later moving to Utah. In Utah the Klingensmith family eventually settled in Cedar City where he was called as the bishop. In 1857 the Mormons received news of the approaching army and what became known as the Utah War started. In the fall of that year, the Mountain Meadows Massacre ocurred, wherein a non-Mormon wagon train was attacked and destroyed by Indians and Mormon militiamen. Philip Klingensmith was involved and later went with other men, including John D. Lee who was eventually tried and executed for his part in the tragedy. Philip gained the enmity of members of the Church by leaving the Church and turning state's evidence against Lee. Philip was married to three wives and was the father of twenty-four children. He and a number of his family eventually settled in south-eastern Nevada and southern Utah.

Author : Leonard Griffiths
Publisher : Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
Page : 541 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2020-05-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781098016012

Get Book

The First 9 11 in America by Leonard Griffiths Pdf

How did the beautiful, peaceful mountain meadows of the Utah Territory become the killing fields of The First 9/11 in America? The leaders of the Mormon church knew and so did these men: John D. Lee, George W. Adair, Jr., William C. Stewart, Nephi Johnson, Ira Hatch, Samuel Jukes, Jacob Hamblin, William H. Dame, Elliott Wilden, David W. Tullis, Daniel Hammer Wells, and dozens more. All of these men knew! But the Arkansas and Missouri members of the Baker-Fancher wagon train did not know until it was too late!

Author : Jon Krakauer
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2004-06-08
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9781400078998

Get Book

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer Pdf

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Author : Burr Fancher
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Mountain Meadows Massacre, Utah, 1857
ISBN : 1592992153

Get Book

Captain Alexander Fancher by Burr Fancher Pdf

This book chronicles the life of Captain Alexander Fancher as a Tennessee infant, Illinois teenager, Missouri hog man, Arkansas cattle drover, and leader of the ill-fated Mountain Meadows wagon train. Alexander Fancher started his third overland trek in 1857 with some 140 family members, 900 cattle, over 20 wagons, four carriages, many horses, and gold to establish a ranch in California. That trip ended with $100,000 worth of property stolen, 121 men, women, and children killed, and 17 orphaned children. After an exciting life, 45-year-old Captain Alexander Fancher was robbed and killed by religious fanatics on September 11, 1857.

Author : William Wise
Publisher : Dissertation.com
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Massacres
ISBN : 0595092586

Get Book

Massacre at Mountain Meadows by William Wise Pdf

Professor Stanley Hirshon’s New York Times review said, “Massacre at Mountain Meadows must rank as one of the half dozen boldest and most important books ever written on the Mormons. As an eloquent, moving document, it stands virtually alone…As a study of human motives and man’s brutality, in the name of God, to other men, it is frightening.”

Author : Josiah Francis Gibbs
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 64 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 1910
Category : Americana
ISBN : STANFORD:36105010451826

Get Book

The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Josiah Francis Gibbs Pdf