Criticism of Mormonism/Books/American Massacre/Chapter 10

Response to claims made in Chapter 10: "Mountain Meadows, September 7-11, 1857"


Chapter 9
A work by author: Sally Denton
 Chapter 11

129

Claim
Will Bagley claimed that Mountain Meadows was known among the Mormons as "a preferred location for the quiet execution of unpleasant tasks."

Author's source(s)

Response

  •  Quotes another author's opinion as if it were fact
  • Bagley's errors, negative reviews, and bias are discussed on the page dedicated to his book. It becomes obvious that the author of this work simply relies on Bagley's interpretation, and provides no independent evaluation of the evidence.


131

Claim
The author claims that "numerous apostates" were traveling with the Fancher Train by the time it reached Mountain Meadows.

Author's source(s)

  • No source provided.

Response

  • This claim is repeated frequently until the source is revealed later. See below.


133

Claim
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." According to "Prophet Heber Kimball," Bateman was placed "in the front ranks" to be put "to the test."

Author's source(s)

Response

  •  The author's claim is false: The author is making a huge assumption here. Heber says,

Some who have been apostates for years past are beginning to come back to us; and, inasmuch as they did not stand and be valiant for the truth, we are now going to place them in the front ranks, and put them to the test.

  • This has nothing to do with William Bateman, and nothing to do with Mountain Meadows.


135

Claim
 Author's quote: 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.

Author's source(s)

  • No source provided.

Response

  • The author again mentions the numerous "apostates" that she believes were part of the Fancher party, yet she provides no evidence of this.


136a

Claim
(Photo caption) 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."

Author's source(s)

  • No source provided (unsurprisingly).

Response

  •  Absurd claim: The author appears to have never even studied any of the sources that she used. Any Latter-day Saint knows that the "pillar of light" is associated with Joseph's First Vision.


136b

Claim
(Photo caption) 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."

Author's source(s)

  • No source provided.

Response

  • Brigham also regarded himself and the Latter-day Saints as Christians.
  •  History unclear or in error: The Saints left Nauvoo because they were under threat of armed assault. There would have been no peace, but it was not the LDS who threatened the peace.


136g

Claim
(Photo caption) Did Brigham order the rock cairn memorial at the scene of the massacre dismantled?

Author's source(s)

  • No source provided

Response


137

Claim
The author claims that the "Mormon apostate refugees" were "blood atoned."

Author's source(s)

  • Anna Jean Backus, Mountain Meadows Witness: The Life and Times of Bishop Philip Klingensmith (Arthur H. Clark Co, 1996), 136.

Response

  • The author finally provides a source for her comments about "Mormon apostates" being part of the Fancher party.
  • Backus' book was noted by at least two reviews to suffer from a key flaw. As one review put it, the
survivor recollections used as source material is a serious flaw in the book. Sarah Baker [one witness] was 3 when the massacre claimed her parents. Trial testimony showed that participants in the crime had been ordered never to speak of it, even among themselves. Surviving children were parceled out to Mormon families. The two Baker girls went to John D. Lee's home. What opportunity was there to learn anything of the massacre?
Baker's own statement that her information came from reading and from discussion with contemporaries only confirms that she had no special knowledge. One would expect a child to be traumatized by the massacre and incapable of adequately understanding what was happening around her. [1]
  • Reports of apostates joining the wagon train did not appear until many years after the Massacre. [2] For the author to be persuasive on this point, more information (e.g., identity of the supposed murdered apostates) is needed.


141

Claim
 Author's quote: Neither that tally nor any later count would include the Mormon "backouts" murdered that day.

Author's source(s)

  • No source provided  [ATTENTION!]?

Response

  • Yet another reference to Mormon "apostates" being part of the Fancher party, which is based on dubious evidence.
  • Since no later counts (even those made by those hostile to the Church) mention the supposed apostates, this is probably good evidence that such apostate victims never existed.


141

Claim
John D. Lee claimed that Brigham Young advised them to claim that the massacre was performed by Indians alone.

Author's source(s)

  • Lee, 251.

Response


142

Claim
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."

Author's source(s)

  • Author's opinion.

Response

  • Leaders in southern Utah were already planning to blame the Massacre on Indians before Brigham Young had even heard of it. After an initial skirmish with the party, one of the immigrants was killed and another wounded. "A witness of white involvement had now shared the news within the emigrant corral. If the surviving emigrants were freed and continued on to California, word would quickly spread that Mormons had been involved in the attack....Despite plans to pin the massacre on the Paiutes—and persistent subsequent efforts to do so—Nephi Johnson later maintained that his fellow militiamen did most of the killing." [3]
  • Jacob Hamblin testified that he told Brigham the facts soon after the massacre. Hamblin reported that Brigham said that "as soon as we can get a court of justice, we will ferret this thing out, but till then don't say anything about it." Hamblin said that Lee's trial was "the first time I ever felt that any good would come of it [telling the story]. I kept it to myself until it was called for in the proper place." [4]


Notes


  1. ↑ Harold Schindler, "'Mountain Meadows' Account Lacks Substantiation (review of Mountain Meadows Witness: The Life and Times of Bishop Philip Klingensmith by Anna Jean Backus)," Salt Lake Tribune (17 March 1996). See similar remarks in Lawrence Coates, "review of Anna Jean Backus "Mountain Meadows Witness: The Life and Times of Bishop Philip Klingensmith," Brigham Young University Studies 36 no. 4 (1996–97), 225–. off-site
  2. ↑ Turley, Walker and Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 109-110.
  3. ↑ Richard E. Turley Jr., "The Mountain Meadows Massacre," Ensign (September 2007): 14.off-site
  4. ↑ Jacob Hamblin, (September 1876), "Testimony of Jacob Hamblin" off-site
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