“There is an
unclean thing, born and nursed on our soil, polluting our soil, which must be
driven away, not kept to destroy us.” Sophocles, Oedipus The King Act I [1]
Introduction
In the southwest corner of Utah, along Highway18, sits an alpine valley
called the Mountain Meadows. It is a
quiet place, out of the way from any major traffic. There are a few farms that sprawl across
portions the valley but it is, by and large, undeveloped. At an altitude of nearly 6,000 feet the
valley is a pleasant place to escape the summer heat that beats down on the
surrounding dessert. In 1857 this valley
was the scene of one of the most tragic events in the history of the West. That year a group of Mormon settlers disarmed
a California-bound wagon train under a flag of truce and then systematically
slaughtered approximately 120 men, women, and children. For years,
fragments of clothing and the sun-bleached bones of victims lay strewn across
the meadows; their shallow mass graves having been unearthed by coyotes. In
southern Utah
legends cropped up after the massacre about herds of wild cattle haunting the
region surrounding the spot where their masters were slaughtered[2]. Even the land itself seemed to bear a mark of
guilt as a testament to the terrible crime that occurred there. In the two decades following the tragedy,
natural erosion replaced the lush grasses of the meadows with scrub oak and
sage, carved deep gullies across the fields, and turned the little rivulet that
ran through the valley into a wide arroyo.
Even the natural spring was replaced with “a sunken pool of slimy,
filthy water.” Some said that this transformation was a “cu[r]se of God.”[3] But much more pronounced than any effects on
the land have been the guilt and shame experienced by the Latter-day Saint and
nearby communities to this day.
Nearly one hundred years after the
event Southern Utah historian and Mormon
Juanita Brooks referred to the Mountain Meadows Massacre as “a ghost that will
not be laid.” She continued: “Again and again, year after year, it stalks
abroad to cast its shadow across some history or to haunt the pages of some
novel...until it has been made the most important episode in the state [of Utah], eclipsing every
achievement and staining every accomplishment.”[4] The feelings of guilt associated with the
massacre have never fully been put to rest.
Mormons born many decades after the event feel pains of guilt and shame
at its very mention. Collective guilt on
the part of the Mormon faith has been persistently laid at the feet of its
adherents by historians, novelists, and film makers ever since the event. This pain has been particularly acute for
those who, like Brooks and myself, have ancestors that participated in the
massacre.
It has now been 150 years since the
Massacre and it appears that Mormonism is finally beginning to come to some
kind of terms with the event. Crucial to
this reconciliation is the need to deal with the question of collective guilt
for the crime. The question of
collective Mormon guilt seems to implicitly lurk in the background of any
debate about the massacre. Ron
Walker, the coauthor of a recent book on the massacre and a Later-day saint,
observed: “we all bear some kind of moral burden in connection with the
massacre.”[5]
Do
Mormons as a people legitimately bear a burden of collective guilt for this
crime? How far does this collective
guilt extend? And can there be an atonement for this guilt? It must be determined if collective
guilt as a concept is valid, whether Mormon thought has methods for effectively
dealing with the problem of collective guilt, if there is indeed a collective
guilt that attaches to the Mormon faith as a result of the massacre, and if
there can be an atonement, how such an atonement would be possible and what it
would look like.
In his groundbreaking 2002 lecture Liberals and Romantics at War: The problem
of Collective Guilt,[6]
George P. Fletcher gives us a framework for looking at collective guilt
that, I believe, is an effective starting point for an analysis of the question
of a collective Mormon guilt. Fletcher
discusses a set of conditions that are necessary for finding collective guilt
and argues for a method of imposing collective guilt for collective crimes that
avoids excesses such as anti-Semitism. I believe that Mormon thought and
theology provide some further tools with which this problem can be
analyzed.
The very notion of collective guilt
is problematic from the outset. But
there is no doubt that many Mormons feel guilty vis-à-vis the collective for
the atrocity at Mountain meadows.
Equally clear is the fact that many argue that Mormons legitimately bear
collective guilt for this crime. Some go
as far as to argue that this guilt should continue to attach to Mormons to this
day.
I believe that in this, and any other
discussion about collective guilt, that the most important questions regard how
any collective guilt that there is can be reconciled. How can the feelings of guilt be overcome and
how can the state of being guilty be expunged?
The authors of a recent church funded history of the Massacre stated:
“Only complete and honest evaluation of the tragedy can bring the trust
necessary for lasting good will. Only
then can there be catharsis.”[7] I find the use of the term “catharsis”
particularly apropos. Catharsis is the
purging or cleansing of the tragic emotions.
Understanding collective guilt in the context of cathartic
reconciliation provides an effective way to resolve the feelings of collective
guilt as well as to purge the state being collectively guilty.
History
A brief summary of the history of the
massacre bears repeating in any discussion of collective guilt for the tragedy
in order to assess what extent the massacre was a collective crime. This history is controversial, to say the
least. The top historians of the event
disagree over even the most basic aspects of the crime. There are several reasons for this. Part of
this controversy arises from the problematic nature of the sources. Almost all of the information on the massacre
either comes from the perpetrators, lending to the charge that the accounts are
self serving, or from recollections by the surviving children, lending to
charges of incapacity and contamination.
Another reason is the strong tendency in Mormon history for a
polarization between believers and skeptics.
But the most significant cause of tension among historians is the issue
of how much of a collective Mormon crime the massacre was. Collective guilt is
at the heart of the historical debate.
In 1857 The Fancher party from Arkansas was headed to California.
On the way the wagon train crossed through a Utah in turmoil. The Mormon settlers had recently driven out
territorial officials as a result of growing tensions. President Buchanan was sending in new
officials, this time backed by the U.S. army. He canceled the mail into the territory
effectively cutting off Utah’s
communication with the outside world. As
a result paranoia began to spread through the territory. Many saw the approaching army as an
apocalyptic invasion force and expected to be driven from their homes just as
they had been in Missouri and Illinois. Brigham Young who led the Mormons as their
spiritual leader, governor, and military leader decided that he had better
prepare for war. He sent out orders
across the territory instructing his saints not to trade grain or ammunition
with immigrant trains. These would be
needed in the war. He also changed his
Indian policy. Up until this time the
Mormons had come to the aid of immigrant trains as they fought off Indian
raiders. But if Young was going to stand
up against the federal government he would need the help of the local
tribes. The Mormons would no longer hold
back the Indians.
The Utah
that the Fancher train was crossing was also in the midst of a religious
upheaval often referred to as the Mormon reformation. This was a period of intense religious
rhetoric. The most infamous development during the reformation was
the advent and preaching of the doctrine of “blood atonement.” This doctrine, inspired by the Old Testament,
held that if someone committed murder (a few other crimes were sometimes
included) that the Atonement of Christ would not be sufficient to procure their
forgiveness. Rather the person must
voluntarily submit their own life to execution in order to be forgiven. Even Brigham Young who publicly taught this
doctrine when confronted with a man who wanted to submit to it backed down and
told the man “no.[8]”
Nevertheless blood atonement is illustrative of the type of religious extremism
that was sweeping Utah
in the 1850’s.
As the Fancher train moved through
this environment tensions rose. They had
hoped to buy the much needed grain and ammunition for their journey across the
dessert. When the local setters refused to
sell to them as a result of Young’s war policy minor hostilities broke
out. These mostly amounted to threats
and accusations; but they reached a boiling point when the train entered Cedar City
in Southern Utah. Cedar
City was particularly
filled with paranoia. There were rumors
that the army was coming through the nearby southern passes and that the smaller
defenseless communities of the south would be slaughtered by the advancing
troops.
Members of the Fancher party hoped to mill
some flower in Cedar
City. But when they arrived the miller refused to
grind their flour except at an exorbitant price. Harsh words were exchanged between the Mormon
settlers and the emigrants and some of the Cedar City
leaders became enraged. Eventually the
Fancher party agreed to move on. Isaac
Haight, who was the Sake President in Cedar
City (the rough equivalent of an
archbishop), and some other Cedar
City residents were not
happy. They sent a rider up to Salt Lake City, some
three hundred miles away, to ask President Young for permission to attack the
train as retribution of the alleged grievances.
He also sent John D. Lee, an Indian Missionary, to lead a band of
Paiutes and attack the train.
Whatever
the hostilities that had occurred in Cedar
City the Fancher party
did not seem to be alarmed. When they
arrived at the meadows they spread out their camps instead of parking their
wagons in the customary circle, something that no party would do if they
thought that there was even the slightest possibility of an attack[9]. The Fancher train had no idea that the leaders
in Cedar City were planning to attack their
company. The plan was to have Lee lead a
group of Paiutes to attack the train in the Santa Clara Narrows. This would make it look like an Indian
attack. For some reason Lee decided not
to wait until the Fancher train reached the narrows and instead decided to
attack the train as they were camped in the meadows. The attackers snuck up on the camp via a
gully during the early morning. They
would then attack the train while it was dark and the emigrants were still
asleep. But for some reason they waited
until daylight. The emigrants began
making breakfast and their dogs, sensing danger, began to bark. A gunshot went off as either Lee or some
Paiutes shot one of the alerted emigrants as he was running back to the
camp. The emigrants were now aware of
the danger and the attack began. About
seven emigrants were killed before they began to fight back, driving off their
attackers[10].
Eventually the Fancher party circled
their wagons and dug in defensive positions to make a traditional wagon fort
and a siege began.
Not
all Fancher party members were in the corral.
Some were off in another valley making pine tar. They were never heard from again and their
fate remains unknown but most historians believe that they were killed by a
group of Mormons sent after them. There
were also two men who were able to escape the siege and once past the siege,
they headed towards Cedar
City to ask for help. These
two men were intercepted by Mormon scouts who murdered them. Another two men from the party had been sent
off to gather some stray cattle before the attack began. Two Mormon men went searching for them. They found them stopping for a drink at a spring. The Mormons rode up to the unsuspecting men
and shot and killed one of them instantly.
The other managed to escape and even broke through the siege to make it
back into the wagon fort[11]. Now the emigrants would know that white men
were involved. The besieged emigrants also may have seen Lee as he led the
attack on the train. On Wednesday Lee
sent a rider back to Cedar
City to consult with
Haight. From this meeting Haight and
the other Cedar City leaders most likely learned that
the emigrants had seen white men among their attackers. Now they faced a dilemma. If the emigrants survived to move onto California they would
inform the press and the government that Mormons had been behind the
murders. With the approaching U.S. army war
seemed extremely likely. Complicating
maters was the fact that there were other trains on the southern road that
would soon reach the meadows. The
Fancher party was holding back the besieging Mormons and Paiutes in a prolonged
standoff. If these approaching trains
saw the siege it would not be long before the world new who was really behind
the attack. The Cedar City
leaders decided that there was no time to wait for Young’s response to their
letter.
Lee’s
forces were unable to end the siege. The
emigrants were well armed and had several experienced riflemen in their
group. The conspirators would need to
send out the local militia if they wanted to finish off the emigrants before
the other trains passed by. The
authority to do this was held by William Dame of Parowan, another stake
president and colonel of the Iron County District of the militia. Dame would not be easy to persuade. He was currently using the militia to assist
another train that had been attacked in similar circumstances up near
Beaver. He ordered the militia to break
that siege and escort the train to safety.
Haight rode up to Parowan to meet with Dame and probably tried to
persuade Dame to order the militia to attack the Fancher train. Dame held a council with Haight and other
area leaders in which they discussed the escalating situation down at the
meadows. Most likely the leaders from
cedar city were not completely upfront about the extent of the Mormon
involvement in the attack. The council
voted to send the militia to “call the Indians off, gather up the stock of the
company, and let them continue in peace.”[12] After the meeting Haight met secretly with
Dame to try and persuade him to change the orders of the council. It is likely that Haight now told Dame the
truth about the attack. He probably also
informed Dame that Lee had been seen and he probably told Dame about the
emigrant who escaped, after seeing whites kill his companion.[13] Dame decided that the militia would now be
used for a different purpose. “L[ee]
& the Indians had commenced it and it had to be done” Dame later told
another church leader: “For should it come to the ears of President Buchanan,
it would endanger the lives of the brethren.”[14] The militia would go to the meadows and kill
all of the men and women and all children except for those “too young to tell
tales.”[15]
In
theocratic Utah
it was perhaps less difficult to persuade the militiamen to follow these
heinous orders than in other circumstances.
The men giving the orders were not just military leaders but also
ecclesiastical, political, and economic leaders of the community. Dame, Haight and others were meant to be
spiritual guides to those in the community.
And as a result many men obeyed their orders. However some men refused to go to the
meadows. Those who did go later insisted
that they were just following orders and could not have done otherwise.[16]
Lee held a meeting at the militia camp.
The plan was to have the emigrants decoyed out of their fortifications
by a false truce. They would then be
destroyed. Though one participant later
recalled that many inwardly objected none dared to speak out against the plan.
Lee wanted to make sure all were on board.
He said “every man now had to show his colors.” No one dared go against
the group. “All said they were willing
to carry out the counsel of their leaders; that the leaders had the Spirit of
God and knew better what was right than they did.” Some time after 10:00 a.m. on the eleventh
the militia approached the corral with a white flag. Lee then went to the corral to negotiate the
terms of “surrender.” He told the
emigrants that he had negotiated with the Indians and that the militia would
escort the emigrants to safety. The
emigrants would have to load all of their weapons into two wagons that would
lead the procession out of the corral.
The wounded and small children would be allowed to ride in these
wagons. Next the women and children
would follow behind the wagons. Finally,
the men would leave the coral single file each escorted by an armed militia
man.[17]
By
this time the emigrants were desperate with no water or sanitation. Even though they feared a trap, they had no
choice but to agree to Lee’s strange terms.
When the procession was out some distance from the corral the signal
“halt” was given. Each militia man shot
point blank at the man he was escorting.
A few hundred yards up the trail Paiutes came out of their hiding places
to block the escape of the now fleeing women and children. One witness explained that “the women and
children were knocked down with stones, clubs, and gun barrels, struck in the
neck and butchered like hogs.” Some of
the victims managed to escape the melee and ran for the cover of the
hills. They were pursued by Mormons and
Indians who killed them before they could get away, including at least two
young girls who were stabbed and shot some distance from where the attack
began. The wounded traveling in the wagons were also butchered, possibly by Lee
himself. There were 18 small children
who remained as the killing ended.
As
they were rounding the children up the men turned their attention to one girl
who was between 10 and 12. They decided
that she was old enough to tell what had happened and shot her. The remaining 17 children were taken to a
nearby ranch. They would be taken in by
local families. Eventually the federal
government returned them to their relatives back east.[18] Two days later the rider that had been sent to
Salt Lake returned to Cedar City with Young’ s reply. The letter instructed Haight that he was to let
the emigrants “go in peace.” Upon
reading the letter it is reported that Haight broke down and sobbed “like a
child” for half an hour.[19] In the end around 120 men, women, and
children were murdered in connection with the crime.
Finding a Collective
Crime
The first step before we can even
begin to talk about collective guilt is to find a collective crime. Fletcher
gives us a framework from which to determine if a crime was a collective in
nature. Fletcher recounts an event from Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain that illustrates the
nature of collective crime.[20] In Roth’s novel Coleman Silk, a High ranking
professor at Athena
College, uses the term
“spooks” to refer to two absentee students.
What Silk didn’t know was that these two students were African
American. Soon accusations of racism are
directed at Silk and he becomes the target of a campaign of righteous
indignation. The whole college turns
against him, as people leap to conclusions, and he looses his job as a
result. Fletcher discuses why this is a
collective crime: “[The members of the college] provided reciprocal emotional
support for their persecution of Silk; they acted in a group in the sense that
their intentions, attitudes, and actions were all self-consciously
interdependent.” Fletcher draws on John
Searle’s discussion of forming “we intentions.”
These are formed by a reciprocal understanding by people that they are
acting together.[21]
One significant aspect of these “we
intentions” is that it is not necessary that every member of the collective
share the intention in order to say that the members collectively intend
something. Fletcher describes why this
is the case: “The fans can cheer collectively even if there is a dissenter
sitting in the audience with his hands over his ears. The important point is that the college acted
as a body with a sense of shared identity among the participants. They all thought implicitly: ‘if you are one
of us, you will treat silk in the way we do.’”[22] It is from this collective intending or group
mentality that collective action arises.
Fletcher notes that if any of the members of the college had stood in a
one on one relationship with Silk they would have never treated him the way
they did. They would have given him a
chance to explain instead of simply trusting the mob’s authority.
The actions of the members of Athena College
strongly parallel the actions of the militiamen at Mountain Meadows. The massacre was also performed as a “we
intention.” It is doubtful that any of
the individuals would have committed these murders acting alone. Instead, the
individual settlers participated in the atrocity because they saw themselves as
acting as part of a group.
Finding Collective
Guilt
The next step in Fletcher’s analysis
is to infer collective guilt from collective crimes. To do this Fletcher argues that we need some
grounds for culpability. In the case of Athena College,
the ground is negligence on the part the members because they substituted the
judgment of the group for their own. Fletcher perfectly capturers the mentality
that made both the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the actions of Athena College
collective actions: “The group members
follow each other like sheep until something happens to shock them into
awareness of their wrong doing. But at
any moment they could have turned to each other and said, ‘Let’s think about
what we are doing here.’ They had the
capacity all along to understand their brutality and intolerance, but they
could not bring themselves to see it.”[23] No one in the militia would have acted the way
they did except for the fact that they were part of a collective. The guilt for the massacre is therefore at least
collectively attributable to the Iron County Militia.
But is it legitimate to conclude from
the fact that some Mormons are collectively guilty and that this guilt includes
the Mormon people as a whole? This is
where the analysis becomes more difficult and the outcome becomes less
clear. To conclude that there is a
collective Mormon guilt it simply because a smaller collective of Mormons is
guilty would be poor logic. It would
mean that any collective crime extends to all large groups that any guilty
subgroup belongs to. The Massacre, on
this logic, would also be the collective crime of the American people and
humanity as a whole. Fletcher discuses
this problem of attribution[24] and
proposes that a different approach is needed to attribute collective guilt to
nations and other larger collectives.
It is important keep in mind, as Fletcher
points out, that feeling guilty is not a necessary nor sufficient condition for
being guilty. One can be guilty of a
terrible crime and yet feel no guilt for it.
Conversely, one can feel guilty in circumstances where others would
never say that they actually are guilty, as in the case of survivor guilt. The fact that many Latter-Day Saints
experience collective guilt is not enough, on its own, to lead to the
conclusion that Latter-day Saints bear collective guilt.
Several factors do give credence to
the claim that the collective guilt extends beyond the militia. Those who ordered the massacre did, so in
part, in the capacity of their religious positions. Both those who ordered the massacre and those
who carried it out believed that they were doing what was best for the Mormon
people.
In the end, the problem with any
approach that would assign collective guilt to the Mormon people is that it
will likely be over inclusive. Similar
reasoning could support anti-Semitism, racism, and other pernicious
doctrines. Fletcher argues that one solution
to this problem is to say that collective guilt ends with those who were old enough
to know better at the time of the crime.
Hence subsequent generations would not carry the stigma of collective
guilt. The problem with this approach is
that when you begin to exclude from collective guilt those who were unborn at
the time of the crime there is no reason to not also exclude those who did not
participate or otherwise sanction the crime.
Once you have moved this far the concept of collective guilt looses its
meaning.
Another method to that Fletcher
proposes to avoid these excesses is to attribute guilt to the collective but
not to the individual members of the collective. But this approach is also problematic. Individual members who identify with the
collective will not see the difference between condemnation of the collective
and condemnation of themselves.
Directing focus at the collective itself will do little to mitigate the
burden of unfair guilt that would be felt by the innocent members of that
collective.
Accusations of a
collective Mormon guilt
Whether or not it is safe to conclude
that collective guilt attaches to Mormonism for the massacre, I think it is
helpful to examine the history of the charges of collective Mormon guilt. From the very
beginning it has been common to charge Mormons with collective responsibility
and guilt for the crime. Most outsiders
initially tried to place the blame for the massacre squarely on Brigham Young. “For many of Americans it had become almost
an article of faith that Young had a hand in virtually everything going on in
‘hierarchical, tyrannical’ Utah. It seemed to follow then, logically, that
Young had a role in the massacre, too.”[25] The question of Young’s role would be
irrelevant but for the question of collective guilt. What difference would it make that Young
ordered it as opposed to some other leader?
But if Young is guilty of the crime then it is much easier to assign
collective guilt to the Latter-day Saint people who sustained him as their
prophet, seer and revelator.
The
1875 trial of John D. Lee for his role in the massacre was in many ways not a
trial of Lee’s guilt but rather of Mormonism’s collective guilt. Western historian Leonard Arrington notes “a
perusal of its minutes suggests that the real object of the prosecution was to
use John D. Lee as a symbol rather than to try him individually.”[26] Lee was to be a symbol of Mormonism’s
collective guilt. Lee’s prosecutor
Robert L. Baskin told the jury in his statement that the Mormon “theocracy” was
responsible for the massacre. He
compared the trial of Lee to that of Dred Scott which, though it was the trial
of a specific person, was really about slavery in general. Even though Lee’s trial was of an individual
it represented a trial against the Mormon Church as a whole. Baskin further explained in his oral
argument: “It seems to me that part of the Mormon religion is to kill-and a
part and parcel of it-and a great part of it is to shed human blood…There is no
use to disguise it when counsel said that the Mormon Church was on trial-I am
willing to accept the gentleman’s statement…that it is the Mormon Church that
is now on trial.” Conceding the defense
counsel’s argument that this trial was really more directed at Mormonism in
general than on Lee in particular, Baskin embraced the claim that the Mormon
people were collectively guilty. He saw
the Massacre not as a violent act by a few bad adherents but rather as a
natural outgrowth of Mormon teachings and as an action by the whole “Mormon
system.” He continued: “I do hold
Brigham Young responsible; I do hold the system which has carried out, which
distinctly teaches and caries out in preaching and practices, the shedding of
human blood to atone for real and imaginary offenses. I hold, I arraign this iniquitous system, and
the leaders of the church.”[27]
Arrington
points out that it is not surprising that all of the Mormons on the Jury voted
to acquit Lee when faced with Baskin’s reasoning: “To convict him would have been tantamount to
convicting themselves and their church.”[28] The non-Mormons voted to convict and the
result was a hung jury. A year later a
second trial for Lee yielded a guilty verdict and he was executed by firing
squad nearly twenty years after the massacre on the exact site of the
crime. Lee was the only perpetrator to
be criminally punished for the massacre (a grand jury indicted nine men for the
massacre, including Haight and Dame, some ‘turned state’s evidence,’ some were
freed for lack of evidence, and some spent their lives as fugitives on the run).
Many
have considered Lee a “scapegoat” for the other perpetrators of the massacre
and for the Mormon people as a whole.
Lee himself stated as much. In fact in Lee’s second trial the entire
theory of his defense attorney’s case rested on the claim that Lee was a
scapegoat. The notion of a scapegoat has
special relevance in Mormon/Christian theology and is informative in an
investigation into collective guilt. The
term has its roots in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. On the Day of Atonement the chief priest
would ritualistically transfer the sins of the people to a goat. “And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the
head of the live goat, and confess over him all of the iniquities of the
children of Israel and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them
upon the head of the goat and shall send him away by the hand of a fit
[appointed] man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their
iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat into the
wilderness.”[29]
Interestingly,
this ritual seems to be specifically applicable to collective guilt. It is the sins of all of Israel that the
goat is burdened with. The guilt of the
entire people is transferred to the single goat. The goat was an “atonement” for the
collective so that the whole nation of Israel would not bare God’s wrath.
When
Lee is referred to as a “scapegoat” it is usually meant that Lee was focused on
in order to distract attention away from the other participants and from the
Mormon Church. Many believe that the
legal punishment due the other participants and Mormons in general was unfairly
placed upon Lee. Whatever the extent of
the truth behind these claims, Lee can be viewed, in some sense, as a “moral
scapegoat.” Pinning the crime on one man
lessens the feelings of shame and guilt that would otherwise be felt by the
collective. This is the same reason that
Mormons historically have blamed the Paiutes for the tragedy.
Is
it even possible for a single person, or group of people, to bear the moral
guilt of the entire group? It might be
argued that if it is possible for the actions of individuals in the group to
bring guilt upon the entire group could it not also be possible for the atonement
for that guilt to be made by individuals of that group as well? In one sense it seems that this is absolutely
necessary if the group is ever to atone for its sins at all. It is individuals, who give apologies,
individuals that serve prison sentences, pay money, and are executed.
In
the end, however, I think the scapegoat mentality is not enough. The problem with this approach is that by
finding a scapegoat, the collective and its individual members will never look
into their own souls to see if there is not some part of them that is
guilty. They will never look for a part
of their selves that may be the same as the guilty scapegoat, some part that
would have done the same in the circumstances.
As a result this stained piece of themselves will never be purged and
catharsis will remain elusive.
Mormon responses to the
problem of collective guilt
In his essay Fletcher frames his
discussion of collective guilt within the framework of two competing ideologies
that he calls Liberalism and Romanticism.
Fletcher suggests that for the individualistic adherents to Liberalism
collective guilt has little merit. The
Romantics on the other hand would be much more open to ascriptions of
collective guilt. If Mormonism fit
cleanly into one of these categories it would be much simpler to discuss how
Mormonism should approach collective guilt.
But this ideological divide cuts not only through philosophers but
through Mormon theology as well. On the
one hand Mormonism has perhaps the most individualistic theology of any
Christian religion. Joseph’s Smith view
of man as an eternally existing being who was never created and “exists upon a
self-existent principle.” mirrors the thought of even the most hard core
existentialists.[30]
Mormonism teaches of a radically free and responsible self, one that is so free
as to lead to accusations by many Christian theologians of Arminianism (the
belief that salvation comes not through Christ but as a result of man’s free
action). This individualist approach is
also expressed in Mormonism’s rejection of original sin. The religion’s Second
Article of Faith states: “we believe that men will be punished for their own
sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.”
On the other hand Mormonism is one of
the most collectivist religions in modern America. The religion has made numerous attempts at
communal living and collectivist economics throughout its history. At the heart
of Mormonism is a heightened sense of group identity. Until it was discouraged by church leaders
Mormons would refer to all people not of their faith as gentiles. This strong identification with the
collective is also evident in Joseph Smith’s teaching that heaven exists not as
collection of clouds and harps but as a web of human relationships. In Mormon theology you can never truly be in
heaven alone, but only as part of coherent family.
The
historical reaction of Mormonism to claims about collective guilt for the
massacre adds context to this discussion. Young, for his part, felt that blame
for the Massacre was being unfairly laid at the feet of the Mormon
collective. He claimed to have told
those in charge of investigating and prosecuting the crime that he would
personally take a judge down to Southern Utah
and force all in the region to be forthcoming about the truth of the
events. He added that “if any were
guilty of the blood of those who suffered in the Mountain Meadow Massacre, let
them suffer the penalty of the law.”
Young claimed that the reason authorities had not taken him up on his
offer was their fear that Mormons would be acquitted from the charge of
perpetrating the massacre “and our enemies would be deprived of a favorite
topic to talk about when urging hostility against us.”[31] Young also claimed that he overheard the
governor telling a judge that he “did not care to bring the guilty [to trial]…but
wanted time to injure the leading men of the Mormon Church.” Young further argued that these judges wished
to leave the matter open in order to “inflame public opinion against our
community.”[32]
Young
did not seem believe that church or the Mormon people bore any collective guilt
for the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In the years following the Massacre, he received
letters from Latter-day Saints confessing their guilt over the event. In one such letter sent to him over ten years
after the Massacre the writer described how he was haunted by the event. The writer informed the prophet that the deed
“rests with a heavy weight upon my mind” and that “the bloody scene passes
before me day and night.” It was apparently unclear from the letter whether the
writer was directly involved in the massacre or not. Young responded to his letter by saying: “If
you want a remedy, a rope around the neck taken with a jerk would be very
salutary. There are courts of law and
offices in the Territory. Appeal to
them. They would be happy to attend to
your case. If you are innocent you give
yourself a great deal of foolish trouble.”
Young’s belief that feelings of guilt borne by those who were not
directly responsible were foolish seems to indicate that he thought that the
guilt for the crime ended with those who ordered it and carried it out. He went on in his response to argue that the
massacre should not concern people simply because they are Latter-day Saints. “Why do not all the Latter-day Saints feel as
you do? Simply because it does not concern them.” Young then spoke of the failure of
authorities to bring many of the perpetrators to justice, blaming this failure
on the governor’s refusal to cooperate in hunting down the perpetrators. He then continued: “Yet I have no doubt nor
fear on my mind but the perpetrators of that tragedy will meet their reward.
God will judge this matter and on that assurance I rest perfectly satisfied.”
He added: “If you are innocent, you may safely do the same, if you are guilty,
better try the remedy.”[33] In Young’s view those who were innocent could
simply rest assured that the guilty would be punished, if not by man then by
God. Those who were personally guilty
were to submit themselves to the punishment of the law.
John Taylor, Young’s Successor, had
similar feelings about the extent of collective Mormon guilt. He wrote to a newspaper editor in 1874:
“I
now come to the investigation of a subject that has been harped upon for the
last seventeen years, viz.: The Mountain Meadow massacre. . . Do you deny it? No. Do you excuse it? No.
There is no excuse for such a relentless, diabolical, sanguinary deed. . . . It
was most certainly a horrible deed; and like many other defenceless [sic]
tragedies, it is one of those things that cannot be undone. The world is full
of deeds of crime and darkness; and a question often arises, who is responsible
therefor? [sic] It is usual to blame the perpetrators. It does not seem fair to
accuse nations, States and communities for deeds perpetrated by some of their
citizens, unless they uphold it”[34]
John Taylor seems to reject the idea that collective
guilt can extend to nations, states, and communities. Nevertheless Taylor left open the possibility that such
guilt could exist if these collectives upheld the crime. What Taylor
meant by ‘uphold’ is unclear but I believe that it should extend well beyond
any overt endorsement of the massacre.
To truly come to terms with collective guilt members of the collective
should look inside themselves to see if they don’t in some way accept the
crime.
Confronting collective guilt
The difficult part of this for any
Mormon, as they begin seriously studying this issue, is realizing that the
perpetrators cannot simply be dismissed as evil, violent men. When someone
looks closely at this event they will see that the people who committed the
atrocity were, in most ways, no different than themselves. The
perpetrators lived good decent honorable lives before the massacre, committed a
terrible atrocity, and then returned to living good decent honorable
lives.
Any Mormon who sees this
fact is forced to ask the question; “would I have acted any different in the
circumstances?” I believe that this
question is central to understanding collective guilt and it is only by asking
this question that catharsis can be obtained.
This is because we identify with our collectives and their members. Members of any group that has experienced
ties to a collective crime must say to themselves: “I may be no different then
those monsters except for the fact that I was not placed in their situation.” This
is because we share an identity with the other members of our groups. Richard Turley, one of the co-authors of Massacre at Mountain Meadows,
highlighted the need for an emotional understanding and connection with the
perpetrators; “and I think that those emotions that we felt are important to
understanding what really happened. I
think sometimes people try to tell the story of what happened at Mountain
Meadows from a pedestal of righteous indignation that allows them to separate
themselves form those emotions and if they never felt what happened there they
don’t really understand it.”[35]
Fletcher
hints that this process of identification with the group is necessary. He analogizes from Freud’s insistence that we
accept responsibility for our dreams and subconscious intentions “For the sake
of effective therapy, we must accept our dreams as our own. The argument appeals to our desire for
coherence and authenticity of our personalities. The same demands of consistency require us to
recognize that we are part of the culture that nourished us.”[36] It is essential for this catharsis that we
identify with the members of our collective not just in their triumphs but in
their faults as well. It is common for
people to feel pride in the accomplishments of other members of their
collective, whether it be the victory of the hometown sports team or the
achievements of one’s ancestors. Should
we not feel sorrow for their guilt as well?
It
is for this reason that I believe, that in the case of collective guilt,
experiencing collective shame is a necessary part of reconciliation. Fletcher
proposes a very simple and effective distinction between feeling shame and
feeling guilt. He writes “people feel shame
for what they are, and guilt for what they have done.”[37] Fletcher points out that shame leads to a
desire to hide oneself from the gaze of others.
Fletcher
argues that though you can move from guilt to shame it does not make sense to
move from shame to guilt. I believe
however, that in the context of collective guilt this move from shame to guilt
not only makes sense, but is in fact required to overcome collective shame and
collective guilt. Why is it that we feel
ashamed when we learn that other members of our collective, or that our
collective as a whole, engaged in some wrongdoing even when we ourselves had no
personal involvement? It is because we
identify with the collective. We see in
the collective something that is the same in us as a result of our being part
of the collective. That is why we feel
ashamed. We realize that we are no
different from those who are guilty. We
realize that even if we do not do the same as others we are in some sense the
same in our being. And this is when we
can ask; “had I been in the same situation would I have done the same?” Once we answer the question then the purging
can begin. Then we can turn away from
whatever part of us that we share with the perpetrators, in such a way that
will allow us, when the process is complete, to answer that we would not have
done the same as they did.
Just
exactly what steps are necessary in this process of purging is unclear. But a complete purging of that guilty aspect
of our nature that we have identified through this process may be sufficient. The
Book of Mormon recounts the story of the people of Ammon who, in an effort to
atone for the “many murders” that they had committed in their violent past,
buried their weapons and made a covenant never to again stain their swords with
blood, even in self defense. They went
so far as to covenant with God that “rather than shed the blood of their
brethren they would give up their own lives.”[38] The fact that they did this seems to indicate
an attempt at a collective remedy for a collective time. The people of Ammon were later attacked by
hostile neighbors and true to their word they simply laid down on the earth and
allowed themselves to be slain. The
invaders killed over one thousand of the people of Ammon until they were moved
by this act of submission and also abandoned their weapons.[39] Incidentally when the People of Ammon were
again threatened with extermination they allowed their children to fight. The people of Ammon at least seemed to
believe that collective guilt does not pass to the next generation.
What
I think this covenant made by the people of Ammon shows is a total turning
away, almost an over correction in order to experience a collective
repentance. Surely not all of those who
refused to take up arms had murdered, but there is an acknowledgment of a
collective sin and all of the people refuse to take up arms. Fletcher discusses a similar covenant made by
the Japanese people after World War II to never again maintain a military.[40]
It
is this turning away, this overcorrection that I think is essential to
reconciling with collective guilt. Certainly
part of this would include complete and open honesty about the collective
crime. This is a crucial move from shame
to guilt. When we are ashamed of a
collective crime, we identify with the group and we want to hide the shameful
thing done by the group. Once someone
goes through this process self exploration and instead asks if they are not in
someway guilty of the crime there is a desire for disclosure and reconciliation. I believe that Mormonism itself is currently going
through this process, a process that began almost twenty years after the
tragedy.
Digging up the Past:
Tying to Understand the Mountain Meadows Massacre
In 1892 The First Presidency (the
governing body of the church) sent assistant church historian Andrew Jensen
down to southern Utah
to investigate and collect first hand accounts of the massacre. The first presidency gave Jensen a letter to
show the members of southern Utah. It asked them to cooperate and it revealed
the first presidency’s intentions. The
letter stated; “there is an opinion prevailing that all the light that can be
obtained [on the massacre] has not been thrown upon it. We are anxious to learn all that we can upon
this subject, not necessarily for publication, but that the Church may have the
details in its possession for the vindication of innocent parties…” A further purpose of this inquiry was that
some day the world would know the truth: “…and that the world may know, when the
time comes, the true facts concerned with it.”[41] Jensen collected these personal accounts and
they were stored in the First Presidency’s private archives. No public disclosure was made but this was
perhaps the first attempt on the part of the Salt Lake
leadership to really get to the bottom of what happened at Mountain Meadows.
Juanita Brooks
When
Mormon historian Juanita Brooks was a young school teacher she was called to
the bedside of a dying man. He had
previously hinted to her that there was something terrible in his past, but
never spoken of before, that he wished to get it out in the open. Now as he lay dying Brooks finally followed
up on his request. When Brooks approached
him he simply managed to cry out “Blood, blood, blood!” and then died. Brooks asked his family what it meant. They replied, “Didn’t you know? He was at Mountain Meadows.” The old man’s words haunted Brooks. She had grown up within only a few miles of
the massacre site but this was the first time that she ever heard about the
tragedy. As a result of this incident
Brooks began to research the massacre.
She faithfully researched the topic for nearly twenty years, quickly
hiding her work and returning to the laundry and other household chores
whenever visitors came calling. This
research culminated in her groundbreaking The
Mountain Meadows Massacre published in 1950.[42]
Up
until this time conventional accounts had downplayed Mormon involvement in the
massacre, pinning the crime primarily on the Paiutes and on Lee as an individual. Through her research Brooks discovered a much
more extensive Mormon involvement in the crime.
She uncovered the direction of local leaders who ordered the massacre
and investigated the involvement of the militia. She concluded that though Young “would have
prevented it if he could, Brigham Young was an accessory after the fact.” She also gave some of the blame to Apostle
George A. Smith who “did preach sermons and set up social conditions which made
it possible.” Brooks concluded that Lee
was made a scapegoat, sacrificed to the law to hide the extent of Mormon guilt.[43]
Perhaps
the most significant challenge that she made to the conventional version of
this story was her demonstration that the massacre was not the crime of just
one person. She sharply criticized the
church for this view. She wrote “Yet in
the collections of the historian’s office of the Latter-day Saint Church…there
is ample evidence that this was definitely not
the crime of a single individual, nor the responsibility of only one
man. Even the most superficial research
would show the utter ridiculousness of this statement.”[44]
The
church, in many ways, was not yet ready for this open approach to the
massacre. Church President David O.
McKay and his counselor J. Rueben Clark denied Brook’s request for access to
those confessions and personal accounts that assistant church historian Andrew
Jensen had collected 58 years before.
Brooks was sharply critical of this decision.[45] Her
book also likely impacted her future church leadership prospects in the church. Though Brooks had once been president of the
Stake Relief society (an extremely influential position, especially for a woman
in a church mostly governed by an all male priesthood), after the publication
of her work Brooks never again held any prominent positions in the church.
Like
the Church, the Mormon people were also not quite ready to come to terms with
the truth about the Massacre. Brooks and
her family were ostracized by their friends and neighbors in her small Mormon
town.[46] She later remarked that “this book branded me
as an apostate.”[47]
This was a result of a people that were
not yet ready to dig up the bones of Mountain Meadows, instead wishing the
truth, whatever it may be, to remain hidden from the world. Nevertheless Brooks firmly believed that in
exposing the truth behind the massacre she had “done a wholesome thing and done
the church I love a service.”[48]
Brooks’
research led church president David O. McKay to have a committee investigate
the merits of Lee’s guilt. The committee
recommended to McKay that Lee’s church membership be reinstated. McKay accepted the committee’s recommendation
and in 1961 allowed one of Lee’s grandsons to be baptized via proxy for Lee.[49] This decision was nothing less then an
acknowledgment by church leaders, however tacit, that Lee had been unfairly
made the sacrificial scapegoat for a crime whose primary guilt was born by a
much larger collective.
Even
so, the church was not yet ready to make this acknowledgment public. Brook’s wished to include this information in
a forthcoming biography of John D. Lee. As Brooks’ biographer Levi Peterson
observed the decision to rebaptize Lee “was a personal vindication for Juanita,
who for years had suffered a shadowy disgrace among her conservative friends
and relatives for having espoused [Lee’s] cause.”[50] When church apostle Delbert L. Stapley, head
of the committee that had recommended Lee’s reinstatement, found out that she
wished to include the fact of this rebaptism in her forthcoming book he
requested to meet with her. He told her
not to reveal this fact and went so far as to threaten to rescind the rebaptism
that he had recommended. Brooks
persisted and published the fact Lee had been rebaptized anyway. Stapley did not make good on his threat but
he did recommend that Brooks be excommunicated for this perceived
insubordination. When Church president
David O McKay heard of this he told Stapley to “leave her alone.”[51]
It
is also significant that Brooks remained a faithful Latter-day Saint through
all of this. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was really the first indication that
faithful Mormons could come to terms with the tragedy. The book was critically acclaimed as one of
the great works of western history and has been widely considered the
definitive work on the subject.[52] It was perhaps the first hint of intellectual
honesty about the event on the part of Mormonism, something that wouldn't be
fully realized for another fifty years.
Massacre at
Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy
In
2001 the church commissioned three historians to write a history of the
massacre. This history was not to be a
response to prior histories but rather it was to rely on original
documents. To this end the church
provided an enormous amount funding for original research. The church also wanted full disclosure of all
the material that it possessed. The
church opened up all of its archives for the project. These included the personal recollections
that had been collected by Assistant Church Historian Andrew Jensen over one
hundred years before and had up until this time been kept from the public.
Perhaps most significantly, the church surrendered editorial control over the
manuscript, allowing the historians to do their work without supervision. The book, which was released in 2008, was a
major hit among L.D.S. faithful. The first printing of 5,000 copies sold out
before it was even released. As of November 27, 2008 (only two months after its
initial release) book was already in its fifth printing, having sold more than
44,000 copies, most of them in Utah.[53] The
narrative of Massacre at Mountain Meadows
proceeds like a Greek tragedy. As the
authors move through the events the motivations of the perpetrators pervade the
background. The book describes, in
terrifying detail, how decent ordinary people, all of them Mormons, were able
to let themselves murder innocent men, women and children.
The
institutional support for this book and it’s acceptance among mainstream
Latter-day Saints shows a willingness on the part of the church and its members
to come to terms with the massacre. This
reconciliation is just beginning. But as
Mormonism rediscovers the Mountain Meadows Massacre its adherents are forced to
confront the question of what they would have done had they been there. When this question is honestly asked the
purging can begin so that we will never again repeat the tragic mistakes of our
collective past.
Conclusion
In
Greek tragedy the end of the tragedy is catharsis, a cleansing or purgation of
the tragic emotions of pity and fear. It
is by going through the process that the tragedy evokes, that one reaches
catharsis. This is not easy or always
pleasant. The purpose of tragedy is to
bring to the surface negative emotions so that they can then be cleansed from
the spectator. Aristotle remarked: “Tragedy,
then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain
magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the
several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action,
not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper catharsis of these emotions.”[54] C.S. Lewis likewise remarked: “Literary
experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of
individuality.”[55]
I believe that this is because
literature puts us in the position to feel and experience our shared identity
with other people and our own collectives.
Most importantly by experiencing their crimes, sins, and flaws we
identify whatever shared nature and, hence shared guilt, we have with others. By seeing a commonality with tragic figures we
begin to understand the flawed parts of our own nature. It is then that the healing can begin. It is this process that can bring catharsis.
[1]
Sophocles, King Oedipus Act I 96-98
[2]Walker, Ronald W., Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard. Massacre at Mountain
Meadows. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 216
[5] Fabrizio,
Doug. interview KUER public radio 8/4/8.
[6] Fletcher. The Storrs
Lectures: Liberals and Romantics at War: The Problem of Collective Guilt. The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 111no. 7 2002
[20] Fletcher
at 1526-1529.
[26] Arrington,
Leaornard J. Brigham Young: American Moses. University of Illinois
Press 1986. at 385.
[30] Smith, Joseph. Teachings of The
Prophet Joseph Smith. at 354.
[34]
John Taylor to the Editor, April 10, 1874 in “Correspondence: Utah
and the Mormons,” The Deseret
News, April 15, 1874:
[42] Prince, Gregory and Wright, Wm. Robert. David O. McKay and the Rise
of Modern Mormonism. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, UT,
2005. 53
[43] Givens
Terryl People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture Oxford University Press, 2007. at
212
[44]
Brooks, Juanita M. The Mountain
Meadows Massacre
University of Oklahoma Press (Tdr) reissue May 1991; (.
First published in 1950. at 219.
[45] Givens at
212 and Walker at xi.
[50] Peterson Juanita Brooks. at 273 quoted in Prince
at 54.
[53]
Michael De Groote
'Massacre at Mountain Meadows' now on 5th printing, with more expected
Deseret
News November
27, 2008
[54]
From Chapter 6 of Poetics:1449b24-29, SH Butcher transl.
[55] Quoted in
Givens at 339.
Hyrum Smith's copy of Josephus
