Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011 Volume 16 Number 1 Article 10 1-1-2004 The Denton Debacle Robert D. Crockett Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Crockett, Robert D. (2004) "The Denton Debacle," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011: Vol. 16 : No. 1 , Article 10. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol16/iss1/10 This Mormon Studies is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011 by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Title The Denton Debacle Author(s) Robert D. Crockett Reference FARMS Review 16/1 (2004): 135–47. ISSN 1550-3194 (print), 2156-8049 (online) Abstract Review of American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 (2003), by Sally Denton. The Denton Debacle Robert D. Crockett ally Denton’s American Massacre is the “Native Americans didn’t Sdo it” version of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 near Cedar City, Utah. The massacre has recently attracted much attention with the refurbishing of the memorial at Mountain Meadows and the publication or republication of three other widely acclaimed books: Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets, which I have reviewed earlier;¹ Jon Krakauer’s bestseller Under the Banner of Heaven; and William Wise’s Massacre at Mountain Meadows.² Denton’s polished writing style is more readable than Bagley’s. That is about the best one can say of this work, though, because Denton’s pursuit of Native American political correctness fails her 1. Robert D. Crockett, “A Trial Lawyer Reviews Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets,” FARMS Review 15/2 (2003): 199–254. 2. Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002); Jon Krakauer, Under the Ban- ner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (New York: Doubleday, 2003), reviewed by Craig L. Foster, in this number of the FARMS Review, pages 149–74; William Wise, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Legend and a Monumental Crime (New York: Crowell, 1976; reprint, Lincoln, NB: iUniverse.com, 2000). Review of Sally Denton. American Massacre: The Tragedy at Moun- tain Meadows, September 1857. New York: Knopf, 2003. xxiii + 306 pp., with bibliography and index. $26.95. 136 • The FARMS Review 16/1 (2004) when she gets into the tough issue of culpability beyond the direct participants. In an area that demands a thorough knowledge of the relevant literature, Denton is deficient. She also relies heavily on secondary sources, many of which are suspect because of their own failure to adequately document primary sources. Her work, there- fore, is largely a reinterpretation of old sources rather than a treat- ment of new sources and material. Her suggestion that she is an insider to the Latter-day Saint psyche (p. 293) proves unconvinc- ing because she makes mistakes that careful historians of Mormon Americana do not. American Massacre revisits some of the difficulties inherent in the nineteenth-century “Mormon question,” but from a twenty-first- century relativistic perspective. Nineteenth-century American Prot- estants had developed their own version of manifest destiny (p. 71)—a belief that nothing could stand in the way of democracy, egalitarian- ism (among white Protestants, at least; blacks, Catholics, and Native Americans were another story), and emerging feminism. This assur- ance came head-to-head with Mormonism, the alien peoples it at- tracted, its theocracy, its policy of Native American accommodation, and its doctrine of plural marriage. Mormonism was as antithetical to Protestant manifest destiny as the Jews were to the Spanish crown in the fifteenth century. Denton takes up these “Mormon question” issues, as is appropriate, but she examines them in the light of shallow, twenty-first-century political correctness and postmodernism, the latter of which holds that there are no social or religious truths and that history should be judged against new standards of relativism.³ Matters of faith, eternal truth, and obedience to ecclesiastical lead- ers are as foreign to the twenty-first-century skeptic as a challenge to manifest destiny was to the nineteenth-century Protestant, so they do not enter into the discussion at all. To say it more succinctly, Denton discusses the massacre out of context. 3. David Gergen, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 341. Denton, American Massacre (Crockett) • 137 Denton’s Story Denton’s version of the massacre begins in earnest with the Gun- nison affair. John W. Gunnison was a lieutenant in the United States Army assigned to Captain Howard Stansbury’s survey in 1849. Gun- nison developed an unusual interest in frontier Mormonism, travel- ing with future Mormon apostle Albert Carrington as his guide to the Great Salt Lake area basin (pp. 63–64). In Washington, Gunnison actively worked to defray public misperceptions of Mormons at the height of the “runaway” officials scandal (p. 67).⁴ Gunnison’s publica- tion of The Mormons, or, Latter-Day Saints, in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1852 was a major early glimpse into Mormon theocracy in the Great Basin.⁵ According to Denton, Gunnison believed his work to be objective, but the Latter-day Saints did not (p. 67). The massacre of the Gunnison party on the Sevier River by Na- tive Americans on 26 October 1853 attracted the attention of one of the runaway officials, Judge William W. Drummond, in 1857 (p. 87). In correspondence with Gunnison’s widow, he blamed the Mormons for the Gunnison massacre. The New York Times published the cor- respondence on 1 May 1857, raising national ire against the Latter- day Saints (p. 90). President James Buchanan’s message to Congress in that same year also blamed the Saints for the Gunnison massacre (p. 90), and General Winfield Scott was ordered west with an army. Albert Sidney Johnston later replaced Scott. 4. President Millard Fillmore appointed non-Mormon federal judges and a territo- rial secretary to the territory in 1851. As Stenhouse’s sarcastic nineteenth-century work against the church puts it, they “very soon after their arrival concluded that Utah was not the most pleasant place for unbelievers.” They almost immediately fled the territory and published a statement to the Eastern press to explain their departure. The officials’ pub- lished statement implied that, due to polygamy, there was a shortage of women “for the Federal officers.” Their departure and their published statement led to substantial public ridicule, even from sources hostile to the church. T. B. H. Stenhouse, The Rocky Mountain Saints (New York: Appleton, 1873), 278. Later, Judge W. W. Drummond repeated the ac- tions of his predecessors and fled town in 1857. Ibid., 285. 5. John W. Gunnison, The Mormons, or, Latter-Day Saints, in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake: A History of Their Rise and Progress, Peculiar Doctrines, Present Condition, and Prospects, Derived from Personal Observation, during a Residence among Them (Philadel- phia: Lippincott, 1852; reprint, Brookline, MA: Paradigm, 1993). 138 • The FARMS Review 16/1 (2004) Picking up the story of the Fancher train in Salt Lake City, Denton lauds the Fancher train members as “orderly, peaceable, Sabbath- loving and generally Christian people” (p. 156). Her accounts of dif- ficulties with local residents (pp. 122–24) are not groundbreaking, ex- cept that Denton recounts a “divine revelation” from Brigham Young, read aloud to massacre perpetrators early in September, commanding them to “raise all the forces they could muster and trust, and with the arrows of the Almighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale” (p. 153). Denton also mentions a letter signed by Brigham Young, carried by the Native Americans, “ordering the emigrants to be killed” (p. 159). I will discuss also both this “revelation” and the letter below. Denton’s account of the massacre of over 140 members of the Fancher train from 7 to 11 September 1857 covers the same ground as many others. However, Denton attempts by her account to remove all Native Americans from the scene of the massacre, blaming the Mor- mons for the entire affair (p. 156). Like Juanita Brooks,⁶ Bagley, and Wise, Denton relies heavily on John D. Lee’s uncorroborated report to Brigham Young concerning the massacre in order to tar Young with the brush of a cover-up. None of these writers has given any weight to Brigham Young’s detailed affidavit denying the meeting.⁷ Like Bagley, Denton spends considerable effort recounting Col- onel Thomas Kane’s history with the Saints, including his efforts to conciliate the parties to the Utah War (p. 180). Denton spends time on Judge John Cradlebaugh’s early initial investigations (pp. 188–93). Cradlebaugh convened the Provo grand jury, “many of whom were the very men he believed to be participants in the crimes he was in- vestigating” (p. 190). Denton relies very heavily upon Cradlebaugh’s 6. Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950; reprint, Norman: Uni- versity of Oklahoma Press, 1962). 7. Brigham Young, affidavit, 30 July 1875, in Brooks, Mountain Meadows Massacre, 286 (1962 ed.). Original affidavit is in Brigham Young Collection, Family and Church History Department Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter Church Archives). While Brooks attaches the affidavit to her work, she does not discuss it in the context of explaining Lee’s meetings with Young. Brooks, Mountain Meadows Massacre, 140–42. Denton, American Massacre (Crockett) • 139 account of his work, or at least upon T.