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Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows

A FAIR Analysis of: American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, a work by author: Sally Denton

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Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, a work by author Sally Denton

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• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 1: Palmyra, 1823"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 2: Kirtland/Far West, 1831"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 3: Nauvoo, 1840"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter Four: Winter Quarters—Council Bluffs, 1846"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 5: Salt Lake City, August 24, 1849"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 6: Sevier River, October 26, 1853"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 7: Harrison, March 29, 1857"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 8: Deseret, August 3, 1857"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 9"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 10: Mountain Meadows, September 7-11, 1857"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 11: Deseret, September 12, 1857"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 12: Camp Scott, November 16, 1857"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 13: Cedar City, April 7, 1859"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 14: Mountain Meadows, May 25, 1861"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 15: Mountain Meadows, March 23, 1877"
• Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 16: Mountain Meadows Aftermath"

This is an index of claims made in this work with links to corresponding responses within FairMormon Answers. An effort has been made to provide the author's original sources where possible.

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 1: Palmyra, 1823"

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• Response to claim: 3 - Joseph Smith is claimed to have been visited by a "spirit" named Moroni
• Response to claim: 4 - Joseph made "excited proclamations to the public" regarding his First Vision
• Response to claim: 4 - The author claims that Joseph experienced "hundreds of mythical persecutions" throughout his life
• Response to claim: 4 - Joseph is claimed to have spent his leisure time leading a band of treasure diggers
• Response to claim: 4 - Joseph is claimed to have been "apprenticed" with a man who was described as "a peripatetic magician, conjurer and fortuneteller"
• Response to claim: 5 - The "autumnal equinox and a new moon" were considered to be "an excellent time to commence new projects"
• Response to claim: 5 - Joseph's family is claimed to have had a "nonconforming contempt for organized religion"
• Response to claim: 6 - Lucy Smith is claimed to have "abandoned traditional Protestantism" in favor of "mysticism and miracles"
• Response to claim: 7 - Joseph is claimed to have "detested the plow as only a farmer's son can"
• Response to claim: 7 - Joseph is claimed to have told stories about the Mound Builders
• Response to claim: 7 - Joseph entertained his family with tales of the ancient inhabitants of the area
• Response to claim: 8 - The author claims that Emma was warned not to touch the plates because she would suffer "instant death if her eyes fell upon them"
• Response to claim: 8 - Laman and Lemuel, were evil sinners, causing God to curse them and all of their descendants with a red skin
• Response to claim: 9 - The author claims that the Book of Mormon was rooted in "the conviction that all believers were on the road to Godhood"
• Response to claim: 9 - The author claims that Joseph Smith's "evangelical socialism" was a precursor to "Marxian communism"
• Response to claim: 10 - The author describes the LDS view of God as "a corporeal being residing on a planet orbiting a star called Kolob and sexually active with a Heavenly Mother and other wives"

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 2: Kirtland/Far West, 1831"

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• Response to claim: 12 - Joseph Smith was "infected with the virus" of land speculation
• Response to claim: 13 - It is claimed that Joseph stated that Independence Missouri was the site of the Garden of Eden and that the location of Far West was where Cain killed Abel
• Response to claim: 14 - Joseph became a "swaggering general in his Army of Israel" and that "drilling and pageantry were quite suddenly pervasive aspects of a once-pacific Kirtland existence"
• Response to claim: 14 - In Kirtland, Joseph "then initiated the secret rituals that would further repel their conventional Christian neighbors"
• Response to claim: 14 - The name of the Church was changed to the "Church of Latter-day Saints" in 1834
• Response to claim: 14 - Emma is claimed to have driven "the girl" Fanny Alger out of her house
• Response to claim: 15 - Joseph issued his prophecy regarding the Civil War after visiting New York and hearing about how
• President Jackson should deal with "a rebellious South Carolina"
• Response to claim: 15 - Failure of the bank in Kirtland caused Joseph to leave Kirtland in the middle of the night
• Response to claim: 16 - Joseph "organized a secret group of loyalists" called the Danites
• Response to claim: 16 - The Danites introduced "blood atonement" in order to "save" people by slitting their throats
• Response to claim: 20 - Joseph claimed to be a "second Mohammad" in a speech in Far West

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 3: Nauvoo, 1840"

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• Response to claim: 23 - "Having suffered beatings and tarrings at the hands of Mormon baiters years earlier, and having faced impending death at various junctures, Smith sensed rightly that events in Nauvoo would be the grand finale of his life"
• Response to claim: 23 - Building a spired marble temple took precedence over everything else
• Response to claim: 24 - The Council of Fifty was "a group of princes" who would rule the "Mormon empire"
• Response to claim: 25 - Joseph had himself ordained "king" during the time that he was running for President
• Response to claim: 25 - Joseph had a "narcissistic" "theme of deceiving self and others"
• Response to claim: 26 - "Nauvoo, unlike Kirtland, had become the sanctuary for strange ceremonials and shrouded rites many members found increasingly alien and offensive"
• Response to claim: 26- A "Mormon historian" claims that celestial marriage "allowed the most ordinary backwoodsman to become a god and rule over worlds of his own creation with as many wives as his righteousness could sustain"
• Response to claim: 26 - Joseph "plunged into new sealings to married women, sisters, and very young girls"
• Response to claim: 27 - The founders of the Nauvoo Expositor were "men who knew too much"
• Response to claim: 27 - "Smith ordered the Nauvoo Legion to storm the newspaper, destroy the press, and burn all extant issues"
• Response to claim: 27 - The author claims that "the constitutional defenders of the First Amendment" called for Joseph Smith's arrest after the destruction of the Expositor
• Response to claim: 28 - Joseph sent orders to the Nauvoo Legion from Carthage Jail to come and free him
• Response to claim: 28 - The author claims that "lore had it" that Joseph gave the Masonic distress signal "before calling out: 'Oh Lord my God. Is there no help for the widow's son?"
• Response to claim: 29 - The author claims that Joseph's death was "second in importance only to that of Jesus Christ"
• Response to claim: 29 - Allen J. Stout's journal says that he will avenge Joseph's blood to the fourth generation
• Response to claim: 29 - D. Michael Quinn said that Joseph "failed to clarify for the highest leadership of the church the precise method of succession God intended"
• Response to claim: 30 - Sidney Rigdon is claimed to have "recently apostatized over Smith's attempted seduction of his daughter in to a polygamous marriage"
• Response to claim: 31 - Sidney Rigdon, "Knowing he could not compete with Smith as a seer..."
• Response to claim: 32 - The temple is claimed to have "placed under the most sacred obligations to avenge the blood of the Prophet, whenever an opportunity offered, and to teach their children to do the same"
• Response to claim: 32 - The "entire Mormon people" became "sworn and avowed enemies of the American nation"
• Response to claim: 36 - The author claims that Brigham "disposed of his rivals." Stanley P. Hirshson is quoted as claiming that Nauvoo became a "police state"
• Response to claim: 36 - The author claims that John D. Lee was "an integral component in the new power structure" after Joseph's death
• Response to claim: 37 - The author claims that Emma and other Smith relatives returned to Far West and founded the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
• Response to claim: 37 - The author claims that Joseph wanted people to receive their endowments for the "Mormon road to heaven"
• Response to claim: 37 - LDS missionaries to England "capitalized on the intolerable social and economic conditions" in order to gain converts
• Response to claim: 38 - Quoting D. Michael Quinn, the author notes that Brigham said that women "have no right to meddle in the affairs of the Kingdom of God"
• Response to claim: 38 - The author claims that Brigham "commended his police for nearly beating to death an apostate within the walls of the temple"
• Response to claim: 38-39 - The author mentions "the pending indictment of two leaders of the Church on counterfeiting charges..."
• Response to claim: 39 - The author claims that "thousands of armed Mormons and Gentiles faced off" in Nauvoo

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter Four: Winter Quarters—Council Bluffs, 1846"

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• Response to claim: 42 - The author blames Col. Thomas Kane for helping to cover up the Massacre
• Response to claim: 53 - The author claims that John D. Lee was sent by Brigham to intercept the payroll from the Mormon battalion in order to consecrate it to the Church
• Response to claim: 54 - he author claims that Brigham declared "his own death and resurrection"
• Response to claim: 55 - The author claims that Brigham "overcame resistance" from the Council of the Twelve and "finalized his own ascendancy" in order to be "elevated to a deity"
• Response to claim: 59 - The author claims that Brigham Young "gave an ominous warning to all who had come. From this point forward, anyone who refused to live the laws about to be set forth was free to leave"

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 5: Salt Lake City, August 24, 1849"

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• Response to claim: 67 - The author notes that several new federal officials fled the Utah Territory because they felt threatened
• Response to claim: 68-69 - Blood atonement
• Response to claim: 69 - The author claims that apostasy and adultery were punishable by beheading
• Response to claim: 70 - Brigham said that Adam was God and was a polygamist
• Response to claim: 73 - Brigham is said to have threatened to "unsheathe" his bowie knife against the Gladdenites

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 6: Sevier River, October 26, 1853"

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• Response to claim: 79 - Brigham's fortification of villages against attack by the Indians was a reversal of Book of Mormon prophecies regarding the Lamanites
• Response to claim: 90 - The author claims that Latter-day Saint elders were "in the habit of confiscating at will younger wives of less ranking members of the church"
• Response to claim: 90 - In the Gunnison death, the Mormons are claimed to have defamed the victims while blaming the Indians

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 7: Harrison, March 29, 1857"

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• Response to claim: 103 - The Fancher wagon train appeared to be "marked" from the time that they arrived at Salt Lake City

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 8: Deseret, August 3, 1857"

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• Response to claim: 104 - Deaths in the handcart companies caused "most Salt Lake Mormons" to lay the blame "squarely at Young's feet"
• Response to claim: 105 - The book discusses the "Mormon Reformation"
• Response to claim: 105 - The author claims that Brigham said that "all backsliders should be 'hewn down'"
• Response to claim: 105 - A list of thirteen questions was "conceived by Young and expanded by Grant"
• Response to claim: 106 - Blood atonement
• Response to claim: 106 - The author claims that "those who dared to flee Zion were hunted down and killed"
• Response to claim: 106 - The killing of William R. Parrish, "an elderly Mormon in high standing"
• Response to claim: 106 - Castration of a man by Bishop Warren Snow who was "engaged to a woman Snow wanted to take for a plural wife"
• Response to claim: 106 - The author claims that the "bloody regime…ended with" Jedediah "Grant's sudden death, on December 1, 1856"
• Response to claim: 108 - Surveyor General David Burr "fled for his life"
• Response to claim: 110-112 - It is claimed that Parley P. Pratt was killed because he married Elenore McLean when she was not divorced from her husband
• Response to claim: 112-113 - In Brigham's speech on July 24, 1857, he said that "This American Continent will be Zion..."
• Response to claim: 115 - The author claims that "Indian" massacres that occurred in Utah Territory were actually carried out by "white-faced Indians who used Mormon slang"
• Response to claim: 115 - Brigham instructed the people to "hoard their grain" and not sell to any gentiles
• Response to claim: 120 - The author claims that "it seem most likely that" Charles "Rich advised the Fancher train to take the Southern Trail"
• Response to claim: 121 - Will Bagley claims that "all information about the emigrants' conduct came from men involved in their murder or cover-up"

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 9: The Southern Trail, August 8-September 4, 1857"

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 10: Mountain Meadows, September 7-11, 1857"

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• Response to claim: 129 - Will Bagley claimed that Mountain Meadows was known among the Mormons as "a preferred location for the quiet execution of unpleasant tasks"
• Response to claim: 131 - The author claims that "numerous apostates" were traveling with the Fancher Train by the time it reached Mountain Meadows
• Response to claim: 133- The author claims that William Bateman, who had weeks earlier been "threatened with excommunication for apostasy," was given a chance to redeem himself by "carrying out church orders at Mountain Meadows"
• Response to claim: 135 -"The recommendation of the many apostates in the camp would never be known, or whether they considered their fellow Mormons capable of such cold-blooded treachery"
• Response to claim: 136a - The author claims that Joseph Smith "had his first vision in 1820" and then three years later reported that he was "surrounded by 'a pillar of light' during a visitation from the angel Moroni"
• Response to claim: 136b - The author claims that Brigham Young called his enemies "Christians" and that the Latter-day Saints left Nauvoo, Illinois because they "had been unable to live in peace with their neighbors"
• Response to claim: 136g - Did Brigham order the rock cairn memorial at the scene of the massacre dismantled?
• Response to claim: 137 - The author claims that the "Mormon apostate refugees" were "blood atoned"
• Response to claim: 141 - "Neither that tally nor any later count would include the Mormon "backouts" murdered that day"
• Response to claim: 141 - John D. Lee claimed that Brigham Young advised them to claim that the massacre was performed by Indians alone
• Response to claim: 142 - The "scheme to blame the atrocity on the Indians" is claimed to have been conceived and crafted "with the characteristic meticulousness for which Brigham Young was famous"

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 11: Deseret, September 12, 1857"

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• Response to claim: 152 - The event was referred to as the "blood feast of the Danites"
• Response to claim: 152 - It is claimed that it is "inconceivable that a crime of this magnitude could have occurred" without being directly ordered by Brigham Young
• Response to claim: 153 - The author claims that the murderers reported that a "divine revelation from Brigham Young" was read aloud which commanded them to attack the "cursed gentiles"
• Response to claim: 154-155 - Helen Brockett "was told by her grandmother that her great-grandfather J.J. Davidson had been ordered by Brigham Young to go south to participate in the slaughter"
• Response to claim: 156 - The author claims that the Church invented the myth of "poisoned springs"
• Response to claim: 158 - It is claimed that on September 1, 1857, Brigham enlisted the support of the Indians "against the wagon train"
• Response to claim: 159 - The author claims that Indians were not involved with the massacre; it was all Mormons

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 12: Camp Scott, November 16, 1857"

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• Response to claim: 165 - Brigham Young had "seen to it that Van Vliet heard nothing of Mountain Meadows"
• Response to claim: 165 - Brigham did not preach the sermon at the church meeting attended by Van Vliet because he was "too furious to conduct the service"
• Response to claim: 165 - Brigham made an "oblique but unrecognized reference to the massacre at Mountain Meadows" to Van Vliet"
• Response to claim: 167 - "any man who defied Young's orders would be put to death"
• Response to claim: 172 - "droves of Saints leaving California for Utah" and "a matching number leaving Utah of a crisis of conscience spurred by the events of Mountain Meadows"
• Response to claim: 172 - Ann Eliza Young claims that she "knew instinctively, as did many others, that something was being hidden from the mass of the people"
• Response to claim: 173 - It is claimed that Brigham Young instructed John D. Lee to write a letter laying the blame for the massacre on the Indians
• Response to claim: 173 - Brigham is claimed to have told Chief Walker's successor Arapeen to "help himself to what he wanted" of the "spoils of the slaughter"
• Response to claim: 176, 180 = Colonel Thomas Kane is portrayed as arrogant, effeminate, a hypochondriac, and with delusions of fame
• Response to claim: 186 - Prior to the massacre, George A. Smith is claimed to "have carried orders to Cedar City leaders to incite their people to avenge the blood of the prophets"
• Response to claim: 186 - George A. Smith was "sent south not to learn the truth, but to devise an explanation for church leaders could provide to external enemies..."

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 13: Cedar City, April 7, 1859"

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• Response to claim: 190 - According to "historian Polly Aird," the Parrish and Potter murders committed during the Mormon reformation were "the best documented case of killing for the sin of apostasy" and "involved the entire church reporting line from Brigham Young down"
• Response to claim: 190 - The author mentions the "execution-style killing of six California emigrants"
• Response to claim: 190 - The author mentions that "castration and murder of another apostate"
• Response to claim: 190 - The author mentions "blood atonement killings by Danite Porter Rockwell"
• Response to claim: 193 - The author claims that there was a "burgeoning traffic of apostates now fleeing Zion" because of the Mountain Meadows affair and that this was "the largest emigration up to that time, overshadowing even the California gold rush of 1852"
• Response to claim: 200 - Paiute chiefs said that they were not there at the beginning of the massacre and only became involved "under written orders from Brigham Young"

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 14: Mountain Meadows, May 25, 1861"

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• Response to claim: 209 - Brigham's trip south in May 1861 was "to insure the southern Utahns understood the need for silence on the subject of Mountain Meadows"
• Response to claim: 210 - Brigham is said to have ordered the cross and cairn at Mountain Meadows torn down
• Response to claim: 215 - The "entire blame of the massacre was shifted to" John D. Lee's shoulders
• Response to claim: 215 - The author claims that Lee was "regaling" his family with "the divinity of Smith and their one true religion"
• Response to claim: 216 - Former bishop Klingensmith is said to have claimed that the militia was "called out for the purpose of committing acts of hostility" against the emigrants

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 15: Mountain Meadows, March 23, 1877"

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• Response to claim: 222 - The author claims that a "Jack Mormon" is one "who is not devout but not apostate"
• Response to claim: 224 - The "Mormon euphemism for blood-atoning murders" was to be "put away"
• Response to claim: 227 - John D. Lee denied that Brigham Young ordered the massacre because he believed that Brigham "would protect him from harm"
• Response to claim: 228 - Young fully realized that the Mountain Meadows Massacre would continue to plague him until someone was held accountable for the crime
• Response to claim: 230 - John D. Lee chose to be shot rather than beheaded as "a clear signal to the faithful that he rejected a spiritual need to atone for any sins"
• Response to claim: 233 - Before he is executed, Lee makes a statement against Brigham Young, saying that "I do not agree with him. I believe he is leading the people astray..."

Response to claims made in American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, "Chapter 16: Mountain Meadows Aftermath"

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• Response to claim: 237 - Lee's biography, published by his lawyer after his death, claimed that the Church ordered the massacre
• Response to claim: 238 - Lee's book Mormonism Unveiled or Life & Confession of John D. Lee "has generally been determined valid and credible by later scholars of the event, though some have believed Bishop embellished it"
• Response to claim: 238 - Lee predicted that Brigham would die within six months of Lee's death if Lee were not guilty. Brigham died six months after Lee
• Response to claim: 293 - The author claims special insight into the LDS psyche

Reviews of this work

Robert D. Crockett, "The Denton Debacle: Review of Sally Denton. American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857"

Robert D. Crockett,  The FARMS Review, (2004)

Sally Denton's American Massacre is the "Native Americans didn't do it" version of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 near Cedar City, Utah. The massacre has recently attracted much attention with the refurbishing of the memorial at Mountain Meadows and the publication or republication of three other widely acclaimed books: Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets, which I have reviewed earlier;1 Jon Krakauer's bestseller Under the Banner of Heaven; and William Wise's Massacre at Mountain Meadows.2

Denton's polished writing style is more readable than Bagley's. That is about the best one can say of this work, though, because Denton's pursuit of Native American political correctness fails her when she gets into the tough issue of culpability beyond the direct participants. In an area that demands a thorough knowledge of the relevant literature, Denton is deficient. She also relies heavily on secondary sources, many of which are suspect because of their own failure to adequately document primary sources. Her work, therefore, is largely a reinterpretation of old sources rather than a treatment of new sources and material. Her suggestion that she is an insider to the Latter-day Saint psyche (p. 293) proves unconvincing because she makes mistakes that careful historians of Mormon Americana do not.

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