Utah Books

Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, Glen M. Leonard

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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 expose, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides the clearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history.

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Terry Tempest Williams

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Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The only constants in nature are change and death. Terry Tempest Williams, a naturalist and writer from northern Utah, has seen her share of both. The pages of Refuge resound with the deaths of her mother and grandmother and other women from cancer, the result of the American government's ongoing nuclear-weapons tests in the nearby Nevada desert. You won't find the episode in the standard history textbooks; the Feds wouldn't admit to conducting the tests until women and men in Utah, Nevada, and northwestern Arizona took the matter to court in the mid-1980s, and by then thousands of Americans had fallen victim to official technology. Parallel to her account of this devastation, Williams describes changes in bird life at the sanctuaries dotting the shores of the Great Salt Lake as water levels rose during the unusually wet early 1980s and threatened the nesting grounds of dozens of species. In this world of shattered eggs and drowned shorebirds, Williams reckons with the meaning of life, alternating despair and joy.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre

Juanita Brooks

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The slaughter revealed 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

To be honest, I was hesitant to read "Mountain Meadows Massacre" by Juanita Brooks as she was a life-long mormon and, frankly, I was skeptical that she would treat the slaughter of 120 to 150 innocent souls with anything that even remotely resembled with candor; after all, the cult has an extremely well-established history of censoring and covering up even the most benign (but certainly well deserved) criticisms of their so-called religion. I was also rather puzzled by other authors on the subject who frequently referred to Brook's book and finally decided to find out why. I certainly was not disappointed.

While Brooks' work is now dated (it was originally published in 1950) and later researchers have uncovered additional horrors regarding the brazen butchering of so many people, she actually does an outstanding job of reporting on this horrible tragedy. Considering the amount of research she did, most likely from nearly all of the documentation that was available at the time, she does an extraordinary job in piecing together the details of this infamous blight on American history. Brooks assembled a large number of resources obtained from numerous interviews, newspaper accounts written at the time, court documents, affidavits, and even Congressional records to provide a chilling account of the massacre. At first, I felt that she treated some of those responsible (especially Brigham Young) with kid gloves but as the work progressed, she eventually placed most of the blame where it belonged - I'm rather stunned (as apparently was Brooks) that she was never excommunicated by the cult. Interestingly, she goes so far as to state that she even attempted to interview, as well as tried to schedule an appointment with, David O. McKay, the cult's "president", about the massacre only to be turned away - even though she offered to stay in Salt Lake City indefinitely in order to speak with him.

Interestingly, Brooks also makes no bones about the fact that the only fanatic punished for the atrocity, John D. Lee, was clearly used as a scapegoat for the barbaric behavior of so many other members of the cult that joined him in the carnage of September 11, 1857.

Of course, not all that Brooks wrote is gold. There were times when I felt as if she tried to minimize certain things - she never fully ascribes all of the responsibility that Brigham Young deserves (although there can be no question that he was an evil participant who sacrificed his "adopted son," John D. Lee), she tries to claim that the cult members involved may have been subject to "mob psychology" or "war hysteria" who lead otherwise "ordinary" lives, and that the cult now owns that property and had previously "given their approval" to build a "monument" on the site. Disturbingly, Brooks notes that attempts to turn over even a small portion of Mountain Meadows over to the U.S. Forest service or other Federal agencies have failed. Even now, 150 years later, the cult refuses to turn over the site, refuses to put a cross on the current monument (because the cult is not Christian), and continues to deny reality by accepting responsibility for the massacre. Even Gordon B. Hinckley, their current "president" (i.e., Satan incarnate on Earth) has stated "that which we have done here [at Mountain Meadows] must never be construed as an acknowledgment on the part of the church of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful and tragic day." Some things never change. . .

It's only too bad that Brooks never gave up her cult - how anyone could continue to support such an evil institution, especially after uncovering so much iniquity, is almost unfathomable.

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife

Irene Spencer

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Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The best of the scary bunch 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is the fourth book I have recently read by women who have left polygamy behind, and I found it to be the best of the bunch. Although it is frightening to realize that this lifestyle is still endured in the 21st century and in America, I try to read up on the subject so that I can try to gain some understanding. Each book I read just makes me wonder all the more how these women can stand these husbands who ignore them and their children so shamefully. Not just stand them, actually, but yearn for them.
Irene's book was, in my opinion, the most well-crafted of the books I have read by these women. In some of the others I found the wives to be a little less candid than Irene is, and they seem to try to make more excuses for themselves than Irene does. The most puzzling thing to me, especially after reading another book about the same husband by one of Irene's "sister-wives," is how they all go crazy trying to get their husband's attention and affection when he so clearly only cares about himself and "the Principle." The wives are starved for affection and the children are just plain starving. I understand that they are brought up to believe that this lifestyle is divinely ordained, yet the men involved are such total creeps that you wonder how any woman can yearn for them.
Irene gives a very vivid and clear portrait of the years she spent in polygamy, and how she finally emerged to enter into a happy marriage with one man who cherished only her. It is heartbreaking to see how she threw away so many good years, but her (13)! children seem to be a blessing to her. I am so happy that she has found peace and joy at last.

Editorial Review:

Irene Spencer did as she felt God
commanded in marrying her
brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron, becoming
his second wife. When the
government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous
Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona,
Irene and her family fled to
Verlan's brothers' Mexican ranch.
They lived in squalor and desolate
conditions in the Mexican desert
with Verlan's six brothers, one sister,
and numerous wives and children.
Readers will be appalled and
astonished, but most amazingly,
greatly inspired. Irene's dramatic
story reveals how far religion can
be stretched and abused and how one woman and her
children found their way out, into truth and redemption.

Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Will Bagley

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Taint for Hire, Anybody? 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 13 people found this review helpful.

The book, _Blood of the Prophets_ was unfortunately written by a 'for hire' author with an a priori conclusion that, in Will Bagley's words, would "pin it on Brigham Young". When you pour your research into an anti-Mormon polemic, it tends to be wasted taint and that's what we've gotten here.

The Bagley Conspiracy 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I was hopeful of getting a straight story of what happened at Mountain Meadows when I read this book. My ancestor is involved. Bagley warned that if the reader came to read about the "Saints" this and the "Saints" that, then the reader would be disappointed. I was excited about reading a balanced and unbiased story. I checked it out of the public library. I did not see the biased word "Saints" but I did read a very biased book.


I am not a big conspiracy person. However, Bagley's conspiracy goes like this:

1. The much beloved Parley P. Pratt is murdered.
2. Two Mormon men see the "Arkansas" party leave.
3. They notify the Utah Mormons that the wagon train is on the way.
4. The Mormons want to take revenge for Parley P. Pratt's murder
5. The apostle Charles C. Rich (my ancestor) kicks them out of Salt Lake. He sets in motion the conspiracy and tells them not to take the route that the Donner Party took but rather to go to Mountain Meadows.
6. There Brigham Young has devised a plan to murder all in the wagon train.
7. (By all accounts) About 50 Mormon men (remember no Indians) are led by Lee, a somewhat less of a leader. These 50 men (remember no Indians) keep tough wagon train men with guns pinned down for several days. (That would be tough. I've been there. There were more trees back then.)
8. No attempt is made to cover up the crime site. (The bodies were just left)
9. A very weak story is contrived to explain how everyone in the wagon train was murdered.
10. It doesn't take long for the real story to come out.
11. Still the crime site is not cleaned up. The US Army does that later.

I am not a conspiracy person. I feel Oswald acted alone when he killed Kennedy.
I do not think there was a conspiracy to kill everyone in the wagon train. It is silly, nonsensical, and intellectually offensive to say that Brigham Young ordered the massacre. Such people put themselves in the same class as the Kennedy conspiracy theorists.

What made Bagley write this?

1. I think he has issues with his Mormon past. He hints of it in his writing.
2. He "does not like Brigham Young". It is probably not a good idea to write a book if you feel that way. The best Hitler books are balanced. Bagley's book is not balanced. He all but admits it.

Conclusion: Bagley blew it. He wrote an implausible book based on an unlikely conspiracy. He started out with the goal of pinning it on Brigham Young. This reveals a bias..

The conspiracy that is the foundation of his book is not supported by other unbiased historians.
A recent book, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi, put to rest the Kennedy conspiracy. The upcoming book by Turley will hopefully put to rest the Bagley conspiracy.

Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

Terry Tempest Williams

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

As a lifelong desert dweller, Terry Tempest Williams is intimately familiar with the multiple shades of red, and she explores many of them, among other things, in this tribute to the desert and canyon country of southern Utah that she holds so dear. In this collection of essays, poems, congressional testimony, and journal entries (some previously published), she ruminates on the meaning of wilderness and the need to preserve it as a way to save ourselves as much as the land itself. In Red, she lends an elegant and passionate voice to the growing "Coyote Clan" in southern Utah--"hundreds, maybe even thousands, of individuals who are quietly subversive on behalf of the land"--along with the many others ideologically in step with this movement. She also discusses those deeply resentful of active environmentalists as well as those seething at the U.S. government for the way it manages millions of acres of western land, writing that "Federal control in the American West remains an open wound." Some of these contrary voices even come from within her own clan, a reality she describes in an essay in which she gently debates the merits of the Endangered Species Act with her father and other family members who own and operate a construction company in Utah.

A beloved nature writer and environmental voice, Williams writes emotionally and even erotically of her relationship with the red-rock landscape surrounding her home outside Moab, closely analyzing the wildlife, human characters, and Anasazi petroglyphs of this magical, arid region. --Shawn Carkonen

Hiking And Exploring The Paria River: Including, The Story Of John D. Lee And Mountain Meadows Massacre

Michael R. Kelsey

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is a hiking guide to the Paria River drainage of southern Utah. The upper part of the system begins near Bryce Canyon National Park, and flows south to the Colorado River and Lee's Ferry. Lee's Ferry is not far below the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Many people have now heard of the hike down the Paria, but there are many less-known and less-visited parts of this drainage included in this book.

This guide covers the entire river system, including a couple of mountain climbs in the far north, plus the dozen or so slot canyons in the middle and lower end. The more famous slot canyons are Bull Valley Gorge, the scene of a pickup wreck (still lodged in the slot) which left 3 hunters dead. Also,Round Valley Draw, the Buckskin Gulch and of course the Paria itself. This 3rd Edition includes for the first time Coyote Buttes and its best know part, The Wave, an international destination for fotographers. For this edition, 16 pages and several new hiking areas have been added, plus the author re-hiked many canyons and updated all of them. This editon has 178 fotographs.

As in previous edtions, the history of early-day ranchers and cattlemen are included. The history of gold miners at Lee's Ferry and around the old ghost town of Pahreah is also discussed. And the best story of all is that of John D. Lee, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre (about 120 people were killed), and his life on the run from Federal authorities. It was John D. Lee who was sent by the Mormon Church to the lower end of the Paria River to hide out and build & operate a ferry across the Colorado River. His entire life story is told.

House of Mourning: A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Shannon A Novak

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Bones of the Mountain Meadows Massacre 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 21 people found this review helpful.

"House of Mourning", stands alone among all other literature previously published about the tragedy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Shannon A. Novak, an anthropologist with impeccable credentials, allows the bones of the Arkansas victims to speak for themselves. This book makes no attempt to assign blame or identify motive for the murders but brings together information from oral interviews, primary record sources and other works on the MMM with the analysis of victims' skeletal remains. Novak's work gives a clearer picture of the victims and their lifestyle in the Arkansas Ozarks. The reader meets the interconnected families through Federal Census reports and family records and hears the victims' voices through the medium of scientific data. One can almost see their faces as they set forth for a new life in California, only to meet a horrible death in a formerly peaceful meadow in Southern Utah.

After studying this event for more than twenty-five years, it is exciting to find a work that focuses on the victims and exactly who they were.

American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857

Sally Denton

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Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre (Kingdom in the West)

Will Bagley

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More Great Insights Into the Mountain Meadows Massacre 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Will Bagley and David Bigler are unsurpassed in their knowledge of 19th Century Utah history. Bagley, and to a lesser extent Bigler, have drawn the wrath of the Mormon Church and LDS "scholars" because of their unwillingness to buy the traditional propaganda promulgated by the Church regarding the cold-blooded murder of 120 pioneers headed for California in 1857.

This book, part of the KINGDOM OF THE WEST SERIES published by The Arthur Clark Co., gathers together the most important documents relating to the Massacre. The story of "what really happened" at Mountain Meadows was, quite surprisingly, well known very soon after the slaughter, despite desperate attempts by Brigham Young and his cohorts to cover it up and shield the guilty. Americans outside of Utah who were familiar with the conditions in Young's "kingdom" had no trouble concluding that it was white Mormons, not poor, docile Southern Utah Indians, who were the prime movers in the event.

However, it took years to thoroughly debunk the LDS two-pronged story line. One, that it was Indians who did the murders. Either the immigrants poisoned the Indians' water supply, which resulted in the death of several Indians who ate dead cattle that drank the poisoned water, or, alternatively, that the travelers directly poisoned the beef carcasses consumed by the Indians. Second, that the migrants deserved what they got because they had traveled through Utah antagonizing the Saints and bragging about their role in the deaths of Church founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum thirteen years earlier. (The wagon train was from Arkansas. There is no known connection between any member of the train and those who murdered the Smiths. Likewise, there was no connection between the travelers and the then recent death of the beloved Apostle Parley P. Pratt in Arkansas. The train left Arkansas before Pratt's murder at the hands of a man whose wife was seduced by Pratt into becoming his 12th wife.)

While the Church no longer claims that the Baker-Fancher party "had it coming," it nonetheless clings to the implausible argument that Young was not fully informed concerning the degree of culpability of the participants in the Massacre for years after it occurred, and that only the local Southern Utah yokels, not high Church authorities, were responsible. (See MASSACRE AT MOUNTAIN MEADOWS by Walker, Turley and Leonard (2007), the Church's unofficial official version of the Massacre, commissioned in response to Bagley's BLOOD OF THE PROPHETS (2002)).

This book is a very valuable companion to Bagley's book and others on the Massacre. It will be of interest primarily to those with a fairly substantial knowledge of both the Massacre and the Utah of 1857. Like all of Bagley's and Bigler's work, it is extremely well researched and thoughtfully presented.