REVIEW
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Title: Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and its Aftermath
Authors: Richard Turley and Barbara Jones Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Genre: Religious History
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 520
Price: $34.95
ISBN: 978-0195397857
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and its Aftermath, the highly anticipated sequel to the previous book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, is not your typical historical read. It is a gut-wrenching, emotional experience that left me shaking my head and wondering how brave pioneers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found themselves capable of murdering over one hundred emigrants bound for California and then covering up the crime.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows, published in 2008, told the story of how this terrible event came about and the circumstances that led devout Christian men to even consider such a crime. Richard Turley and his co-authors found that they had too much material for just one volume, so the aftermath of the massacre, including the trial and execution of John D. Lee, was saved for a second volume. Taken together, the two books present the most complete retelling to date of this terrible event and are the result of more than forty years of work.
Documented with extensive endnotes, Turley and Brown sifted through thousands upon thousands of pages of correspondence, journals, legal briefs, court transcripts, and newspaper reports to retell the aftermath of the massacre, the return of the surviving children to family members in Arkansas, and the fate of the perpetrators of the murders. The authors chose to use a narrative style to reach as many readers as possible. The result is comprehensive, compelling, and accessible to the average reader. The thoughts of the participants in the crime, investigation, and the prosecutions that followed become evident through personal correspondence and journals.
For example, John D. Lee, just days after the massacre, was speaking in a church meeting and used a shockingly accurate retelling of the bloody event as the subject of his sermon. He was interrupted by a messenger who delivered a note indicating that Church President Brigham Young had instructed the Iron County Militia, the primary participants in the massacre, to let the emigrant train safely leave Utah and continue on to California. That instruction came too late. Lee suddenly quit talking about the massacre. Shortly thereafter, another meeting was held asking the listeners to not talk about Lee’s speech under penalty of violence [p 49].
Cedar City Stake President Isaac C. Haight and Militia leader and Parowan Stake President William Dame, who initially gave the orders to “use up” the emigrants, were not at the Meadows the day of the massacre but toured the site the following day. Lee overheard Dame tell Haight:
“…he would have to report the destruction of the emigrant camp.”
“How?” Haight asked. “As an Indian massacre?”
Dame said he was not sure he would lay the responsibility on Indians.
“How the h—l can you report it any other way without implicating yourself?”
Haight retorted.” [p 33]
Vengeance is Mine is full of such exchanges, recorded in journals and correspondence. The narrative pulls the reader along through the attempts to cover up the massacre, the efforts of various territorial authorities to investigate and fix blame on Church leaders Brigham Young and George A. Smith, and the eventual trials of Lee. Ultimately, Lee was the only participant tried and convicted for his part in the affair. Haight, Dame, John Higbee, and other participants spent the rest of their lives on the run, trying to avoid law enforcement and living apart from their families under assumed names.
Brown and Turley make it clear that the territorial judges, prosecutors, and marshals almost universally believed that the corruption began at the top with Brigham Young. Nothing in Utah happened without Young’s knowledge or approval, the argument went, so Young must be responsible. George A. Smith, as Young’s first counselor, had toured the settlements around Cedar City and the Meadows in the weeks leading up to the massacre, talking about the fears of the approaching army dispatched by President Buchanan to put down a purported rebellion in Utah. Territorial officials assumed that Smith transmitted the orders for the massacre during that visit.
As Brown and Turley show in their retelling, tensions were high everywhere with the fears of war and the ongoing religious retrenchment known as the Reformation. Concerned about religious backsliding, Young encouraged sermons “…like pitchfork tines downwards, so that the people might wake up” [p 14]. This was also a time when the since disavowed doctrine of blood atonement was a frequent sermon topic. Such Reformation rhetoric likely played a part in the Parrish-Potter murders in Springville earlier that same year and other violent acts towards people viewed as apostates.
Turley and Brown are quick to point out that some of the religious elements in play at Mountain Meadows are no longer believed to be doctrines of the Church. As subsequent investigations show, there is no evidence that Young or Smith ordered the massacre, but they did help create an environment, amplified by local leadership, where such actions could be misconstrued as approved.
As with any crime, the coverup becomes a major part of the story. In the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the coverup began as soon as the order from Salt Lake arrived, indicating the emigrants should be left in peace. By then, most of the emigrants’ property had been auctioned off to local members in Cedar City and elsewhere. Being a record-keeping people, Cedar City Bishop Philip Klingensmith had his clerk dutifully record who received what. That record book was later destroyed when the investigations began in earnest. Territorial officials avoided using the telegraph lines to communicate, as they knew that Mormons were operating the telegraph and that any word of their movements would be shared with those involved in the massacre.
John D. Lee remains the only participant in the massacre who was tried and convicted. Turley and Brown give detailed accounts of the legal maneuvering by both prosecution and defense, and the arguments forwarded by both sides. Lee’s first trial ended in a hung jury, an outcome that was anticipated by both the judge and the prosecution. The prosecutor even admitted that he was trying the case in the press [p 300]. It was anticipated that an acquittal or mistrial would force politicians in Washington DC to enact stricter measures against Utah and the Church.
Throughout the period from the time of the massacre to Lee’s second trial, Brigham Young had always offered the assistance of the Church in investigating and prosecuting the accused. Territorial officials continually refused, assuming that Young was not sincere. After it became clear to Young that Lee and others truly had been involved, Lee, Haight, Dame, and one other individual were excommunicated, a move that deeply upset Lee. Haight was rebaptized later, but Lee remained outside the church for the rest of his life. In Lee’s second trial, the prosecution made it clear that they were not prosecuting the church, but only seeking justice for the victims and the child survivors. A jury made up exclusively of Latter-day Saints returned a guilty verdict. After Lee’s appeals failed, Lee was transported to the scene of the crime at Mountain Meadows, where he was executed by firing squad while sitting atop his coffin.
For this reviewer, I struggled to understand how Haight, Lee, Dame, Klingensmith, and the others could get so caught up as to participate in this tragedy. As one researcher put it, reading all the documentation for the two volumes and editing on a daily basis for months at a time, reduced her to sitting in her locked office, weeping as she worked[1].
Perhaps that is the value of these two volumes. Massacre at Mountain Meadows and Vengeance is Mine should force all of us to look at ourselves and realize that good people are just as capable of awful acts as well as good acts when we are under stress. The period in which the massacre occurred took place under the threat of imminent war and invasion, coupled with extreme economic hardship where most families in Utah were struggling to put food on the table and survive until the next harvest. Turley and Brown, along with their co-authors of the previous volume, have clearly shown how this terrible stain on the LDS Church’s history could sweep otherwise good people to act in terrible ways. The Saints were on the receiving end of similar violence in Missouri and Illinois. It is both surprising and disappointing to see that they could respond in kind.
Turley and Brown have accomplished a remarkable feat in capturing so much primary source material and delivering a highly readable text that has lessons for all of us. If you end up finding yourself weeping or not being able to sleep, then the authors have accomplished what they set out to do, making you feel for this senseless tragedy. Vengeance is Mine is worthy of our concentrated attention.
[1] See Janiece Johnson, Convicting the Mormons: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in American Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Johnson worked for twenty years on this and the previous publication, Massacre at Mountain Meadows as a researcher and editor.