VENGEANCE IS MINE

A follow-up to the acclaimed 2008 historical true-crime book Massacre at Mountain Meadows.

In 1857 in Utah, a wagon train bound from Arkansas to California came under attack. It was not the only wagon train to suffer siege and murder, write historians Turley and Brown, but it was unusual in its brutal end, with more than 120 men, women, and children killed. “These assaults were motivated by political wrangling over federal and local rule and tensions between church and state that reached a deadly peak in 1857 but roiled Utah for decades,” write the authors. It has been long supposed that Brigham Young ordered the massacre, and many historians have further suggested that only Mormons disguised as Native Americans carried out the crime, even as contemporary Mormons blamed it on local Paiute Indians exclusively. Turley and Brown sift through a vast trove of documentary evidence to show that the massacre was the product of many hands, and while only Maj. John D. Lee was punished for it—killed by firing squad, fittingly enough, on the very site of the crime—many Mormon leaders deserved the same end. Complicating the crime were several factors, including the need for federal troops to pacify the restive frontier, troops unavailable during the Civil War, and the reluctance of officials to stir things up after the war was over. Interestingly, inquiries conducted by Mormons themselves helped solve some of the mysteries surrounding the events, even if Lee bore the brunt of the punishment and other guilty parties walked. The supposition on the part of federal authorities that the Mormons were reluctant to “punish their own murderers & high offenders” was only partly true. Turley and Brown turn in some interesting side notes, as well—e.g., that Russia parted with Alaska not just because of Seward’s cash offer, but also because they were afraid that Mormons would flee Utah and invade Russia’s American holdings.

While of interest mostly to specialist historians, this is a capable work of scholarly detection.