Mormon History and Beliefs Applied to the Massacre

Mormonism follows multiple beliefs that are unlike those of any other religion, and many of these beliefs played direct and indirect roles in leading to the massacre at Mountain Meadows.

  

The Mormon faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr.  Smith attempted to move the LDS Church headquarters to Jackson County, Missouri.  Here Smith encountered much intolerance and the LDS Church was forcefully expelled from Missouri during a bloody movement that left a handful of Mormons dead.  This event is believed to be one of the primary factors in leading to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, as the Arkansas Emigrants were mistakenly believed by the Mormons to be traveling from Jackson County, Missouri.

Eventually Smith died and left Brigham Young as his successor.  Under the new leadership of Brigham Young, the Mormon Church migrated westward toward the Rocky Mountains and found their home in Utah.  Here the faith flourished and began settling in under the lack of persecution of the western frontier.

There are several aspects to the Mormon faith that lended to the frenzied state under which the massacre at Mountain Meadows.  For starters the LDS Church established a standard that the Mormons are God’s people and that everyone else is a wretched sinner that can only be saved once they die and are unable to sin any longer.  This in itself led to murder on multiple occasions in an attempt to “save” non-Mormons (gentiles).  This can be explained by the example of polygamy.  The Mormons believed that since the gentile population is sinners and people not of God that they are unfit to reproduce, leaving the burden of reproduction to those who were fit: the Mormons.  Mormon officials also tended to practice a sort of brain washing that kept the people of the Mormon Church blindly following orders, no matter what they might be.  Lee himself even wrote in his diary (quoting Brigham Young and other church officials), “Just do as I tell you and all will be right,” and, “And when you hear of Brigham Young stealing you may know that it should be stolen.”  These are examples of things said to members of the LDS Church during sermons and help to explain the alleged cries of “Mormons, do your duty!” that were supposedly shouted by Lee before the massacre unfolded.

In short, Lee was the ringleader of the massacre at Mountain Meadows, but he was likely receiving orders from higher church officials.  Even if there were no direct orders to carry out the massacre, the event can partially be blamed on the nature of the LDS Church itself.  The church’s use of brainwashing style techniques and portrayal of the Mormon Church as the only acceptable people on God’s Earth lended to a delusional frenzied state among the Mormon people, which ultimately ended in the slaughter of over a hundred innocent people at Mountain Meadows.

SOURCE: Lee, John D. Journals of John D. Lee 1846-47 and 1859, ed. Charles Kelly. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1984.