In1857 a wagon train of settlers heading for California was killed by Mormons as they passed through Utah. There were about 120 killed. There were men women and children. The Mormons circled the wagons and attacked them. They attacked them twice and then decided to starve them out. Eventually (after a couple days) when the settlers were running out of food, water and ammo, there was a pow wow. The Mormons agreed to peace as long as the settlers turned over their weapons . They agreed and turned them over. Then each was taken by a Mormon guard. At a signal every one was shot and killed.
The women had been separated from the men. At a signal the Paiute indians who went along with the Mormons attacked and killed the women and every child over the age of 12. They allowed the younger children to live because they though they were too young to describe what they did. While they were taking the children back to their homes, they decide one was too old. They dragged her out and killed her in front of the other children.
Brigham Young was a big preacher of Blood Atonement. That is when you find a person who can not make it to heaven, you kill them and then god will accept them. You are saving them from their sins.
The History Channel had a program on this last night, The leader of the Mormons who killed them faced a trial 20 years later.
And the point we are supposed to debate is?
Um… no they didn’t!
Sorry, don’t see the debate here.
I expect Mormons to have an explanation that would result in a debate. I think they would have come up with some excuse for what their people did.
Is this an example of 150 year old Recreational Outrage?
Well, originally, they tried to blame the Indians (and the Paiutes did participate as well), but yeah, there’s not too much to debate. I mean, I guess you could debate if Brigham Young was involved or not.
As understand it the debate is how far up the LDS religious hierachy the orders for the massacre went. John Lee was clearly the guy immediately responsible for the massacre but that doesn’t mean leaders further up the hierachy (including Brigham Young) did not knowingly allow it to happen, or even directly order it.
I for one think the perpetrators should be brought to trial!
In terms of an excuse as to why it happened, there was a lot of bad blood between the Mormons and the United States at the time, and the Fancher party went out of it’s way to insult the Mormons. There was also the rumor, and I don’t know if it was true or not, that some of the members of the wagon train had participated in the Haun’s Mill massacre, so the Mormons would have held that against them.
Perhaps the OP could have entitled this thread: The Eternal Mormon.
That’s putting it mildly - the Federal Government had declared war on the LDS Church and they had the army marching toward them at the time. Not to mention Mormon’s were being lynched in some parts of the country (and still would be for many more decades).
And the Mormons as a people had been driven out of three different states they tried to settle in, and one state, Missouri, still had an order that any Mormon should be “exterminated” if they were found in the state. They had had family and friends massacred for years.
And if the OP or anyone else can show that Brigham Young or any other leader than Lee had foreknowledge of the Massacre, then speak up. It is far more than any historian has ever found.
Also, the OP’s explaination of the concept of Blood Atonement is far from accurate. Some church members believed, at the time, that some sins were so aggregious, that their own blood must be spilled in order to fully atone for the sin. It was never “believe or die”. This concept, however, has never been the official doctrine of the LDS church, and I have never found anyone under 80 that still believes it.
There is no excuse for the Massacre and what was done to the Francher Party. And Brigham Young was involved in the “cover-up”. And the young children of the party were adopted into Mormon homes. And the LDS church, to this day minimizes the severity of the MMM.
But a little balance and context would be nice.
And that in the days when every girl in Utah married Young . . .
That’s not really true. There was tension between federal appointees and the Mormon population, and Buchanan’s goal wasn’t war against the Mormons…it was to remove Young as governor of Utah and set up an army fort in the territory.
That’s not to say that the Mormons in Utah didn’t believe that the federal government had declared war on the LDS Church (or that there was vigilante violence against the Mormons in other places). Young certainly did, and that led to a ramping up of the tensions.
I don’t think Young had specific knowledge beforehand, but he did inflame the situation and feed the anti-Gentile feeling which helped contribute to the massacre taking place, and I don’t think he was unhappy about it happening.
Now do you?
Blood Atonement in the Mormon Church | Recovery from Mormonism Blood atonement which is spilling the blood of people to save them was a Brigham Young favorite. He preached it to his followers and that could be why they were able to do such a horrible act. I find it telling about the church. Why people don’t walk out when a preacher says things like that I do not know. But I do hold them responsible for allowing it.
Great, another 9-11 thread… Can’t we just let this one go?
If you examine the tapes of the so-called massacre, you can clearly see explosions in the wagon train that could not have been caused by the alleged Mormon/Paiute attackers. 9/11 was an inside job!
Perhaps there is a reparations angle to debate.
No. First, the event isn’t in question. It’s documented well enough that it’s accepted by the vast majority if not everyone. Second, you didn’t raise any questions in your OP. The only disagreement going on is over little details that we don’t have any real info on. Did Young have anything to do with it? Certainly possible given his behavior around the time, but we really don’t know. Anything we say at this point is conjecture. I don’t think anyone is going to step forward and defend the massacre, so we’re pretty much left to snipe at what might inaccuracies in others posts. I don’t see a debate here.
According to author, Bill Bagley", Brigham Young knew the attack was imminent and sent a message " brethren, do your duty".