Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows / Edition 1

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ISBN-10:: 0806136391
ISBN-13:: 9780806136394
Pub. Date:: 09/01/2004
Publisher:: University of Oklahoma Press

ISBN-10:: 0806136391
ISBN-13:: 9780806136394
Pub. Date:: 09/01/2004
Publisher:: University of Oklahoma Press

Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows / Edition 1

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Overview

The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the thirty-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians. Based on extensive investigation of the events surrounding the murder of over 120 men, women, and children, and drawing from a wealth of primary sources, Bagley explains how the murders occurred, reveals the involvement of territorial governor Brigham Young, and explores the subsequent suppression and distortion of events related to the massacre by the Mormon Church and others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806136394
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	09/01/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	550
Sales rank:	604,577
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.11(d)

About the Author

Will Bagley (1950–2021) was an independent historian who wrote about overland emigration, frontier violence, railroads, mining, and the Mormons. Bagley published extensively over the years and is the author and editor of many books, articles, and reviews in professional journals. Bagley was the general editor of Arthur H. Clark Company's documentary history series KINGDOM IN THE WEST: The Mormons and the American Frontier. Bagley was a Wallace Stegner Centennial Fellow at the University of Utah and a Archibald Hanna Jr. Fellow in American History at Yale University's Beinecke Library. Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows has won numerous awards, including a Spur Award from Western Writers of America, the Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library, Westerners International Best Book, and the Western History Association Caughey Book Prize for the most distinguished book on the history of the American West. So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812–1848 is the first of the two-volume Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails series.

	List of Illustrations	XI
	List of Maps	XII
	Preface	XIII
	Acknowledgments	XXI
	Prologue: The Mountain Meadow	3
1	Their Innocent Blood Will Cry unto the Lord of Hosts	6
2	The Battle-Ax of the Lord	23
3	Political Hacks, Robbers, and Whoremongers	38
4	The Arkansas Travelers	55
5	I Will Fight Them and I Will Fight All Hell	73
6	We Are American Citizens and Shall Not Move	95
7	The Knife and Tomahawk	123
8	The Work of Death	140
9	The Scene of Blood and Carnage	156
10	Plunder	171
11	All Hell Is in Commotion	188
12	They Have Slain My Children	208
13	Vengeance Is Mine	225
14	A Hideous Lethargic Dream	248
15	Lonely Dell	268
16	As False as the Hinges of Hell: The Trials of John D. Lee	287
17	He Died Game: The Execution of John D. Lee	307
18	The Mountain Meadow Dogs	323
19	Nothing but the Truth Is Good Enough	348
	Epilogue: The Ghosts of Mountain Meadows	365
Appendix	Victims of the Massacre	385
	Notes	391
	Bibliography	447
	Index	475

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Editorial Reviews

An exhaustive, meticulously documented, highly readable history that captures the events and atmosphere that gave rise to the massacre, as well as its long, tortuous aftermath.”—The New York Review of Books

"While the word ‘definitive’ is often overused, this account of the killings merits that distinction. Bagley’s book ranks as a Mormon historical classic."—Brigham D. Madsen, Western Historical Quarterly

“A reflective and well-researched history of Mormonism’s darkest hour.”—Publishers Weekly

“A new standard work on the massacre.”—Library Journal

“A major contribution to western American history.”—Robert M. Utley

From the Publisher

In 1950, Utah historian Juanita Brooks stunned the Mormon community when she published The Mountain Meadows Massacre, a detailed and careful history of LDS involvement in the 1857 slaughter of an emigrant party from Arkansas headed for California. She argued that Mormons had instigated the attack and then covered up the bloodshed with a vow of secrecy. However, based on the available evidence in the 1940s, her research did not indicate that Brigham Young, the president of the Church, had ordered the attack. Enter this account by Salt Lake Tribune columnist Bagley, who draws respectfully from Brooks's work and also unpublished diaries, letters and other documents to raise the ultimate question: "What did Brigham Young know, and when did he know it?" In this meticulously researched and well-argued book, Bagley provides ample evidence to demonstrate that Young was at least an accessory after the fact, who led the effort at a coverup and eventually scapegoated John D. Lee, a massacre participant who was executed in 1877. Bagley's book presents some new and fascinating source material: accounts by the Paiutes who participated in the attack, memories of the young children who survived it and, most interestingly, the voices of those Mormon objectors who refused to cooperate in the massacre or who dared to break the silence about it afterward. Bagley also does a fine job of situating the massacre within the context of the Mormon Reformation, a short but intense period of fundamentalist zealotry. Although it's not flawless, this study will, like Brooks's, stand the test of time as a reflective and well-researched history of Mormonism's darkest hour. (Sept.) Forecast: There has been a burst of recent interest in the atrocity, including Sally Denton's American Massacre (coming from Knopf) and Judith Freeman's novel Red Water (Pantheon, Jan. 2002). In May, three historians employed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced their own plans to do a full-scale interpretive history of the subject, tentatively titled Tragedy at Mountain Meadows (Oxford, 2003). After that book's publication next year, all relevant documents owned by the Church will be made available to the public for the first time, so there may be still more interpretations in the offing. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In 1857, over 100 men, women, and children in a wagon train from Arkansas were murdered in southern Utah by local settlers aided by Southern Paiute warriors. For 50 years, Mormon historian Juanita Brooks's The Mountain Meadows Massacre has been the standard work on the subject. Here, independent historian and Salt Lake Tribune columnist Bagley claims only to extend Brooks's work. But by using documents not available to Brooks and by following her example in pursuing the truth wherever it led him while not going beyond the available evidence, he confirms her private opinion that territorial Mormon leader and governor Brigham Young was heavily involved in both the massacre and its cover-up. In the process, Bagley has produced the new standard work on the massacre. This well-written and well-thought-out analysis is essential for all libraries with collections on the West or the Mormons.-Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows / Edition 1

Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows / Edition 1

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