163 years ago this month a terrible massacre occurred in southern Utah: the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Juanita Brooks was the first LDS scholar to examine the massacre, and her book published in 1957 set the standard for Mormon scholarship. In our next conversation with Will Bagley, we’ll get acquainted with him, and he will give his impressions of Brooks’ famous work.
Will: That takes me to my next subject, which is how much I admire and respect Juanita Brooks. When I began working full time on the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1995, the first thing I did was read the second edition, but this is the first edition of her Mountain Meadows Massacre. She did a minor update, which I’ve got around here, someplace, in 1970. I don’t agree with everything Juanita Brooks concluded, but I can’t help but recognize her courage and her dedication to the truth.
…
It was courageous book. She worked within very narrow confines but did an absolutely beautiful job. I want to read a quote… It’s not very long, but it’s absolutely the essential documents and everything that had emerged that Juanita Brooks found in her long life, because she was 52 when the book came out, and she came to four basic conclusions. The first one was, while Brigham Young and George A. Smith, the Church authorities chiefly responsible, did not specifically order the massacre, they did preach sermons and set up social conditions which made it possible. Now to me, that is assigning who holds the moral responsibility for the worst event to ever happen in Utah, outside of a couple of massacres of Indians. I think that pretty well defines who deserves to be held accountable.
Do you agree?
Just a few years before the Mountain Meadows Massacre was the Willie & Martin Handcart disasters. Will Bagley has some surprising allegations about Brigham Young concerning these disasters.
Will: Brigham Young gets word of this through Franklin D Richards, and goes into Conference–it’s late October by this time. How does he deal with the crisis? He lays it on the bishops. He says, “You guys get stuff and send it up and feed the handcart pioneers and bring them on in.” So the bishops do it, and they do a remarkable job of a rescue effort. But still, hundreds of people die, miserably. It is not a pleasant way to go.
I did a long article on this for the Journal of Mormon History. It’s available on the internet. But I was shocked when I found out what Brigham Young’s priorities were, and what did Brigham Young put ahead of the lives of these people? His steam engine. He was importing through A. O. Smoot, who’s come into the news lately as a slave owner in Utah. But he’s also Brigham Young’s agent and man on the trail. He led a lot of freight trains to Utah with stuff that Brigham Young really wanted, and they included a steam engine. We have no idea what Brigham Young wanted to do with a steam engine. It may have been that he intended to have a steam yacht on the Great Salt Lake. But some of these things are still mysteries.
Will goes on to talk about other things Brigham wanted, besides the steam engine. We’ll talk about how the Mormon Reformation ratcheted up Brigham’s fiery sermons leading to the terrible disaster on September 11, 1857.
Will: But at the same time, they’ve got the Reformation underway. That started in September of 1856. Utah has been through a famine. They’ve had really hard times. The famine breaks in 1857. But in 1856, it’s still very hard times. Brigham Young decides it’s the people’s fault, because it can’t be his fault. It’s everybody else’s fault. This is what the Reformation does, and he assigns, or I think Jedediah Grant decides he’s going to be in charge of it.
GT: See, I always thought Jedediah Grant was kind of the driver behind the Reformation, and Brigham just kind of let him do his thing. Is that right?
Will: That’s how it’s sold, but it’s not what happened. They’d even used reformations earlier in different periods, but he was the face and voice of it. He gets out and he’s baptizing people in creeks in December and dies of pneumonia, probably.
GT: Jedediah Grant.
Will: Yeah, and in the faithful telling of the Reformation, it ramps down, it’s virtually over. But it’s not true. It lasts well into 1857.
Brigham Young has often pushed a lot of blame on Franklin Richards. Do you think he deserves more blame in the Martin-Willey Handcart Disasters?
Wheat & Tares 
Will Bagley seems to have a hatred for Brigham Young that colors his analysis of everything that happened while Brigham led the church.
BY definitely instilled a culture of paranoia and revenge among his followers. So much so much winking and nodding would go a long ways. It may be that the evidence of ordering a massacre is not there in written form and yet we could still holds BY responsible. One interesting thing to do is compare Mountain Meadows with other massacres in the US during the 1800s. It is truly horrific. One of the largest massacres in US history. Willie Martin was a disaster on the scale of the Donner Party disaster. And yet because of a deep culture of anti-murmuring in the church, all we ever hear about Willie Martin is how it was this miraculous rescue and how the saints never complained (not true) and how it was a show of remarkable faith and obedience. We never heard about MMM until very recently. But again it is supposed to be some offhand tragedy that our beloved prophets couldn’t have possibly been involved in. Brigham Young was a quixotic leader with tyrannical tendencies.
I just learned some sad news. I was lucky to interview Will Bagley on September 4. I’m pretty sure this is the last interview he will give. I am sad to learn Will has suffered a series of strokes that have affected his memory. He will need to live in a care facility.
Not all of the historians who criticized Bagley’s “Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows” are Mormon apologists. But to whatever extent Will’s bias may have affected his analysis and conclusions, it is hard for the non-historian at least to argue with his evidence of a difference between the general violence of the American west at the time and the culture of top-down violence and deference to (“sustaining” of) out-of-control, immoral authority that seems to have been prominent in BY’s Utah and encouraged by BY and HCK. See, e.g., https://www.cesnur.org/2009/slc_bagley.htm “The Servants of God Will Come Forth to Slay the Wicked: Apples and Oranges—What Was Different about Violence in the Mormon West?” by Will Bagley, June 11-13, 2009
I have to agree with E’s comment, I listened to about an hour of the interview and had to turn it off.
(Note: I am NOT a fan of Brigham Young).
Two of the worst massacres in US history (Mountain Meadows, 1857; Bear River/Boi Ogoi, 1863) and the worst loss of life in 30 years of overland wagon travel on the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails (Willie/Martin tragedy, 1856) are inextricably linked to Mormon pioneers under Brigham Young’s leadership.
Willie/Martin losses are estimated by the LDS church at 252. About 120 people were killed in Mountain Meadows. and somewhere between 300-500 Shoshone were killed near the Bear River in Cache Valley. For context, the Donner Party lost 38 individuals.
Given this background, it is not difficult for me to understand why Brigham Young doesn’t look good in historical accounts. I’m going to need some concrete examples before I buy the take that Bagley’s history is unfairly biased against Brigham Young.
A little perspective on the Handcarts
First, let us not forget that there were ten handcart companies. The other eight not only were successful, but were more successful than any wagon train. They had fewer deaths and made the journey about a week faster than the wagon trains. Taken as a complete episode the handcarts were a massive success and a glowing tribute to Brigham Young’s leadership.
The Martin and Willie companies did, however, meet with tragedy. However, they had been warned not to set out as late as they had. If I remember correctly the decision to leave was actually put to a vote of all the adults in the companies, and they chose, as a group, to carry on. They did have some bad advice (though I don’t recall who it was from) as well as some good advice; the choice was theirs, however bad it was.
On a final point, the comparison to the Donner party is not accurate.
The Donner party had only 90 people, and lost 39, which was about 43% of their group.
The Willie Company had 404 people, and lost 68, or about 16%.
The Martin Company had 576 people, and lost somewhere around 150, or about 26%.
So, not only did the Martin and Willie companies loose less people in relation to their size, but they had the greater logistical challenge because of their larger numbers. To say that what happened with them is worse than the Donner party is not accurate.
shem, That’ does help put the handcart plan as a whole in perspective. However, if I recall correctly, what Martin and Willie companies had was not just “bad advice.” It was also a false “prophetic” promise from Apostle Franklin D. Richards (not Brigham Young). The advice of Levi Savage that it was too late led to his being reprimanded or chastised for lack of faith.
On the other hand, I understand those companies didn’t have funds to buy provisions and lodging to overwinter, nor were there provisions for sale nearby in such quantities as would have been needed.
Saying “the choice was theirs” doesn’t absolve leadership entirely of responsibility for the actions that led a large group of inexperienced British travelers to make such a choice. I wonder what might have happened had Richards been less demanding when he past those two companies or had sent help back from Salt Lake sooner. Or had there been funds to build the carts from seasoned wood. Or any number of other factors that contributed to the late departure and the inadequate means.
Bagley notes in the paper he referenced (“One Long Funeral March”: A Revisionist’s View of Mormon Handcart Disasters) that handcart companies, other than Willie/Martin, did travel faster than wagon trains and had comparable deaths during the trip. But “the five handcart companies that followed those of 1856 still suffered from food shortages and mismanagement”
In 1857, the sixth handcart company ran out of food before reaching Fort Laramie. They were asked to turn over their “‘…handcarts, teams, wagons, tents, cooking utensils, etc., to the Church when [they] arrived in Salt Lake City’ in exchange for enough food to complete the journey”
C.C.A Christensen, in the seventh company, wrote “We were only poorly supplied with provisions when we left…” and they were “subjected to almost every deprivation that people could bear and endure, and that for all of thirteen weeks” When this “company ran out of supplies on the Sweetwater River, a captain in the army’s provision train ‘approached us and said in a kindly way, that one of his oxen had a crushed foot… If we could use it we were welcome to have it” (This train was part of President Buchanan’s Utah Expedition, which ironically had three of their wagons destroyed by Mormon raiders).
The eighth handcart company resorted to eating prickley pear cactus. Sarah Beesley, part of that company is quoted “We didn’t have any trouble with the Indians… In fact they saved our lives at various times, such as when they gave us food.”
“One of the last two trains went three days without food”.
Brigham Young ended travel by handcart in 1860, stating “the hand-cart system had been pretty well tried, and, though successful in the proper season, yet it was not altogether satisfactory”
Wondering
I am not saying there was not some errors in the leadership. I was simply pointing out that, in general, the handcarts were successful compared to most wagon trains. People want to focus so much on the two companies that met tragedy and forget the other eight. They also want to ignore the many troubles that the companies faced that had nothing to do with the leadership. If you look at it all the very first error made was leaving England when they did, as it made then late at every leg of the journey. Even back at that point there were those who advised them to wait.
As to Richards, his prophetic statement needs to be fully understood. He was not commanding them to make the journey right then, nor did he tell them they would be perfectly safe, or that they would suffer the wrath of God if they didn’t go. The choice was given to the people, and all Richards said was that if they did choose to go on they would have the power of God to bless them on the journey.
I would argue that they were blessed by God in many ways. Today it may be hard for us to see it because we let our vision be clouded by the suffering and tragedy that they faced. But I do believe they were blessed for their choice to continue and I believe that the majority of them knew that they were blessed.
Dave
I never said that they didn’t face trials. I said that by all the normal measures of success for a westward migration, the handcarts were more successful than most wagon trains. Yes they went without food at times, and yes they struggled. But most wagon trails faced similar trials, and even those that didn’t still had similar or less success than the handcarts.
Just consider that a company of over 100 people walking and goings days without food still had no more deaths than companies of only 60 people riding in wagons with full supplies. That is success; truly miraculous success.
It does feel like Shem is trying to make lemonade out of lemons here.
Shem, Other reports of what Richards told the people both before they left England and when he overtook them on the plains differ greatly from your summary.
Rick
I am just saying it the way I see it. I have read quite a bit on this subject. It was the topic of a research paper I did in my masters classes. I am not saying I have read everything, but I have read a significant amount of what is available.
In my personal opinion, I don’t think anyone is to blame. There were too many things that went wrong that no one had any control over. To me it is like blaming people for a hurricane or an earthquake. It doesn’t really work.
Wondering
None that I have read. However, I will say that I am not stating this because it is what others have said or what historians have concluded. I say it because I believe it. I have studied the event in depth and I have prayed for understanding of what happened. This is what I have come to understand through this study and prayer.
I think Shem is doing what many believing LDS do in effort to remain believing and that is to either interpret the information in ways that leads back to a faithful conclusion, deny, ignore or claim that the information is deceptive and wrong.
We come by it honestly. From the very beginning we’ve been raised to believe that the world is out to get us.
Rick, I admire your courageous curiosity and very much enjoy what you produce. Thank you.