I just binged watched American Primeval

[Calm]

5 hours ago, gopher said:

Also, after the massacre, the Mormon leaders give the surviving white women to the Indians to rape, but instruct the Indians to kill them when they are done.  I guess that is supposed to be an act of compassion?  I'm not sure if the Mormon leaders realized the white women from the wagon group were also Mormon.

No, it was to remove the possibility of them being ever used as witnesses, I am guessing.  Haven’t seen it myself and won’t, but I understand that was a major premise of the show.   

Quote

The little Indian girl is able to stab to death her much larger assailant (was he her dad?)

This was one of the complaints I read on a Native American reddit, iirc, where they thought the show was a poorly done representation of the Native Americans even if the styling was authentic (though they pointed out the lack of dogs was a major gaffe there).

Edited January 22, 2025 by Calm

[webbles]

3 hours ago, Tacenda said:

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/01/21/american-primeval-left-this-historian-confused-and-frustrated-heres-why/ I know this link has been shared, but I was left wanting because it didn't go into more detail about women being raped. In the past I thought I read that the women were raped, but not by the native Americans. Or Shoshone tribe? But by the Mormon men. I could definitely have this wrong. Do we know if women were raped and by whom?

 

There were no rapes at the Mountain Meadow Massacre.  Everyone who was old enough to be a witness was killed pretty quickly.  Only 17 survivors and all of them under 7.

The Shoshone tribe had nothing to do with Mountain Meadow Massacre.  They are 100s of miles away.

[Calm]

22 hours ago, webbles said:

She had also mentioned the use of tropes in her interview with Mormon Stories.  Did the show really use a lot of tropes?

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/01/17/what-american-primeval-gets-wrong-about-brigham-young/

[Tacenda]

23 minutes ago, webbles said:

There were no rapes at the Mountain Meadow Massacre.  Everyone who was old enough to be a witness was killed pretty quickly.  Only 17 survivors and all of them under 7.

The Shoshone tribe had nothing to do with Mountain Meadow Massacre.  They are 100s of miles away.

I wish producers like those of the Netflix series, would at least try to be as truthful as possible. I appreciate your reply, always do because ya know, you are the webbles! And don't know why but I put "webbles" right besides wiki or an encyclopedia. Don't ask me why!!

 

Edited January 22, 2025 by Tacenda

[gopher]

25 minutes ago, Calm said:

No, it was to remove the possibility of them being ever used as witnesses, I am guessing.  Haven’t seen it myself and won’t, but I understand that was a major premise of the show.   

This was one of the complain I read on a Native American reddit, iirc, where they thought the show was a poorly done representation of the Native Americans even if the styling was authentic (though they pointed out the lack of dogs was a major gaffe there).

Right, I meant instead of killing the women at the site, the Mormons permitted the women to live long enough to be raped and then killed by the Indians instead.  I guess it was to show the Mormons had some decency since they didn't kill them, but allowed them to live a bit longer?  (I'm using Indian since my friends prefer it to native American)

 

[webbles]

16 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I wish producers like those of the Netflix series, would at least try to be as truthful as possible. I appreciate your reply, always do because ya know, you are the webbles! And don't know why but I put "webbles" right besides wiki or an encyclopedia. Don't ask me why!!

 

It sounds like pretty much everything in the show was made up.  They used a few bits and pieces of history but rewrote it completely to the point that it is unrecognizable.  It would be nice if it was more truthful, but I guess that isn't interesting enough.

I really hope that we get a good TV show or movie on the actual Mountain Meadow Massacre.

[MustardSeed]

21 minutes ago, gopher said:

Right, I meant instead of killing the women at the site, the Mormons permitted the women to live long enough to be  killed by the Indians instead.  I guess it was to show the Mormons had some decency since they didn't kill them, but allowed them to live a bit longer?  (I'm using Indian since my friends prefer it to native American)

 

Nothing about rape is benevolent.  I doubt any woman would choose rape and immediate death over immediate death. I think the point of this offering  in the movie was to cinematically demonstrate how absolutely “deplorable” the Mormons “were.” 

[webbles]

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I found a wiki article mentioning two girls. It doesn't make it very clear or I'm dense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_and_aftermath_of_the_Mountain_Meadows_Massacre#:~:text=50 years later%2C a Mormon,were then sworn to secrecy.

The wiki article needs some help.  It linked to a source called "Gibbs (1910)" with no indication of what that source is.  On the main Massacre wiki page, it does indicate that that is Gibbs, Josiah F. (1910) The Mountain Meadows Massacre.  That was one of the first books about the massacre and it does relate a story about two girls who apparently were able to hide but were found out and then killed.  He relates a story that they were probably raped as well and uses as a source a woman who told him so.

I don't recall Juanita Brooks, in her book The Mountain Meadows Massacre, mentioned that.  I also don't recall if Massacre at Mountain Meadows mentions that.  But Barbara Jones Brown says that there were no rapes and she's the co-author of the Vengeance is Mine which is the sequel to Massacre at Mountain Meadows.

https://mountainmeadowsmassacre.com/massacre/appendices/appendix-a-emigrants has the list of emigrants and there is a footnote mentioning that Rachel and Ruth Dunlap are mentioned by Gibbs but there is no other evidence that they existed.

It is also interesting that Gibbs was able to name the two girls when the perpetrators wouldn't have known the names.  So how did Gibbs get the names?  It feels like this is an invented story that Gibbs learned about and put in his book.

[Doctor Steuss]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

There were no rapes at the Mountain Meadow Massacre. 

FWIW, John Moore wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law (James Kelly) that some Native Americans had claimed to have seen Lee rape a teenager before killing her.  As far as I know, that's the only somewhat contemporaneous (1859) source that mentions sexual assault as part of the events, and that's the only instance it mentions.  I don't know if that's where Gibs maybe gets it from, and then embellishes it?  I believe a collection of Moore's letters were published in a volume sometime in the late 1800's.  If I'm remembering correctly, Richard Lloyd Dewey, in his Porter Rockwell biography, includes parts of the letter in one of his appendixes (in one of the later revised versions) about the MMM and Utah War.  At least that's where I think I picked it up from... (rascally memory).

[Calm]

1 hour ago, gopher said:

Right, I meant instead of killing the women at the site, the Mormons permitted the women to live long enough to be raped and then killed by the Indians instead.  I guess it was to show the Mormons had some decency since they didn't kill them, but allowed them to live a bit longer?  (I'm using Indian since my friends prefer it to native American)

 

I highly doubt it since rape is seen as torture by many and a quick death if death is coming would be preferable.  But haven’t watched it, so maybe that is the tone.

Quote

(I'm using Indian since my friends prefer it to native American)

I have heard “Nations” used by someone in connection with the series iirc.  Canadians use First Nations, which I prefer.  I don’t use it on the board because it would need an explanation probably every time.

Ask your friends what they think of that term if you get a chance.  I am curious if it’s catching on south of the border as well.

Edited January 22, 2025 by Calm

[webbles]

4 hours ago, webbles said:

I don't recall Juanita Brooks, in her book The Mountain Meadows Massacre, mentioned that.  I also don't recall if Massacre at Mountain Meadows mentions that.  But Barbara Jones Brown says that there were no rapes and she's the co-author of the Vengeance is Mine which is the sequel to Massacre at Mountain Meadows.

I went through both books just to double check.  Both actually do mention it, but extremely lightly (which is probably why I wouldn't have recalled it).  The story of the 2 girls fleeing, hiding, being found, and killed is in many of the early statements.  Lee and/or a Paiute were involved with the killing.  But about the rape, The Mountain Meadows Massacre says:

Quote

Although there have have been cases where man has committed murder after rape, the circumstances surrounding the massacre make such an action highly improbable.  In the midst of wholesale murder, surrounded by excited Indians, with more than fifty Mormon men in the immediate vicinity, such an incident seems fantastic.  Such use of bleeding corpses is beyond the realm of the probable.  In fact, the whole suggestion of rape in this incident seems to be another example of how repeated suggestion and whisperings may grow into more and more impossible tales, which are then passed on as fact.

And Massacre at Mountain Meadows says:

Quote

Some stories about the killing of the girls had even more lurid details.  One account said one of the girls begged for life and offered to marry Lee, who took her into the brush for half an hour before killing her.

In a footnote, it also says:

Quote

Another lurid story suggested the girls had been forced to dance nude before they died.

 

But that's all they have on rape.  There were several witnesses of the murder of the 2 girls but none of them mention anything about rape.

[Zosimus]

5 hours ago, webbles said:

On the main Massacre wiki page, it does indicate that that is Gibbs, Josiah F. (1910) The Mountain Meadows Massacre. That was one of the first books about the massacre and it does relate a story about two girls who apparently were able to hide but were found out and then killed.  He relates a story that they were probably raped as well and uses as a source a woman who told him so.

Gibbs prefaces the story by reminding the reader that he was also once a Mormon, and that he found the accusation of rape to be fanciful and "another Mormon canard to further blacken the memory of John D. Lee"

But Gibbs had a couple additional sources, including an Indian boy who claimed he witnessed the rape and murder, by slit throat, of the two girls. Jacob Hamblin testified in the trial that he had been led by the Indian boy to the scene and witnessed the naked bodies of the two girls. Hamblin also testified in the trial that he interviewed the Indian chief who was Lee's partner in that crime, and he confirmed the Indian boys account. This could be why American Primeval includes the horribly similar scene. Although in American Primeval it is not the Mormons but an Indian chief alone that murdered the women.  

[webbles]

1 hour ago, Zosimus said:

Gibbs prefaces the story by reminding the reader that he was also once a Mormon, and that he found the accusation of rape to be fanciful and "another Mormon canard to further blacken the memory of John D. Lee"

But Gibbs had a couple additional sources, including an Indian boy who claimed he witnessed the rape and murder, by slit throat, of the two girls. Jacob Hamblin testified in the trial that he had been led by the Indian boy to the scene and witnessed the naked bodies of the two girls. Hamblin also testified in the trial that he interviewed the Indian chief who was Lee's partner in that crime, and he confirmed the Indian boys account. This could be why American Primeval includes the horribly similar scene. Although in American Primeval it is not the Mormons but an Indian chief alone that murdered the women.  

The Indian boy would be Jacob Hamblin's adopted son, Albert.  He didn't claim to witness a rape.  He claimed to witness Lee slitting the throat of one of the girls.  That is what Hamblin testified as well.  Neither testified anything about the rape.  Here's Hamblin's testimony - https://mountainmeadowsmassacre.com/wp-content/transcripts/trial2/3-Hamblin-and-Johnson-Testimonies.pdf.  It starts on page 32 of that document or page number 3692.

[Zosimus]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

The Indian boy would be Jacob Hamblin's adopted son, Albert.  He didn't claim to witness a rape.  He claimed to witness Lee slitting the throat of one of the girls.  That is what Hamblin testified as well.  Neither testified anything about the rape.  Here's Hamblin's testimony - https://mountainmeadowsmassacre.com/wp-content/transcripts/trial2/3-Hamblin-and-Johnson-Testimonies.pdf.  It starts on page 32 of that document or page number 3692.

I should say that all of the above is what Gibbs claims in his book. He is certainly using words to imply that Albert said he had witnessed rape and that several women in St. George and Hamblin believed the same:

"Note.—Since the massacre, rumors have been persistent to the effect that prior to their death those girls were outraged by those who murdered them. The charge was so terrible, so diabolical and inhuman that, as a Mormon, and later on an “apostate,” I could not believe the rumor—it appeared to be just another Mormon canard to further blacken the memory of John D. Lee. There was, however, something in the terms of the girl’s appeal that is inexplicable when considered apart from the rumor. Last winter (1910) I met a devout Mormon woman in southern Utah, who was a girl at the date of the massacre, and she assured me that the rumor is entirely trustworthy; that she remembers hearing the women of St. George discuss the awful fate of the Dunlap girls. “And,” the lady concluded, “we Mormons have never been accused of charging crimes to our people when the accusations were not true.”

Jacob Hamblin was on his way from Salt Lake to his ranch near the Meadows when the massacre was perpetrated. Hamblin’s Indian boy, Albert, who was about sixteen years old, and whom the former had adopted, was present at the massacre and witnessed the ravishment of the Dunlap sisters and the cutting of their throats. On Hamblin’s arrival at the ranch the boy conducted him to the clump of oak brush where the bodies of the girls, nude and bloated, furnished ghastly evidence of the truth of the young Indian’s story. Subsequently, Hamblin interviewed the Indian chief, who was Lee’s partner in that special crime, and who verified the young redskin’s story, and repeated the words used by the elder girl when pleading for her life. The above is the substance of Hamblin's testimony on that incident as given at Lee's second trial."

So whether or not rape happened at the Mountain Meadow Massacre, I'm only suggesting that the writers over at American Primeval may have got that scene from the Gibbs version of events. 

4 hours ago, webbles said:

But that's all they have on rape.  There were several witnesses of the murder of the 2 girls but none of them mention anything about rape.

OK but in fairness to the writers, the scene in American Primeval doesn't claim the women were raped. As far as I remember the scene is fairly aligned to the account in the trial. In the scene the women were captured. One of the mormon leaders had discussed their fate with the Piute Indian chief who had participated in the attack who wanted to keep the surviving women alive. The Lee character pretty much says to let the Piute do whatever they want so long as they don't leave surviving witnesses. Later, a Shoshone band, not participants in the attack, come along to witness the aftermath. After the Shoshone kill the Piutes for participating in the attack the Shoshone end up slitting the throats of the women, leaving only one Mormon woman named Abish (interesting choice of names). By comparison, in the trial, Lee discusses with the Indian chief their fate, the Indian chief says they are pretty and hesitates to kill them - I assume rape is part of this calculation - but instead both Lee and the chief end up killing them.

I dunno, after reading the trial transcript I'd say the TV show depicts Mormons far more favorably in that particular scene than the testimonies of the witnesses to MMM. In Hamblin's account Lee himself "throws down" one of the surviving women and slits her throat. This is not depicted in American Primeval. Imagine if they had written that in.

Through that whole episode, the strongest character (and the only one in the whole series that I felt any compassion for) was Abish. Her life was preserved because she tells the Shoshone chief that she doesn't mind being killed by him because she felt she'd lived a good life. My take on the series is that it shows how lawlessness combined with our will to survive can corrupt any of us, even the noble Shoshone and the decent Mormons of Utah.

Edited January 23, 2025 by Zosimus

[Bernard Gui]

On 1/13/2025 at 3:38 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

As to lawlessness and violence in the west, I noticed this contrast in the FAIR essay on whether Brigham Young had created a culture of violence in Utah.

I also notice the relationship between set theory and how if focuses attention specifically on the Mountain Meadows tragedy, and this statement: "about the lawlessness and violence in the west during this period of time."  That time being 1857.  Well, there was Bleeding Kansas at the same time.  If you want to open up time a bit, there are these sorts of things spread across US history.  I recall that when Sir Richard Burton visited Utah and published City of the Saints in 1861, he also contrasted the peaceful culture in Utah compared with the mining towns in Nevada, where people were killed every week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_United_States

To my mind, there are several conspicuous absences in the list.  Sand Creek in 1864 were US soldiers killed 230 mostly unarmed men women and children, Bear River when Federal soldiers killed 400 in Utah, Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears....  I lived in Lawrence for 10 years, where the Lawrence Massacre of 1863 was still remembered.  In 1999, while I still lived there, Ang Lee directed a very good film about that event, notable for not sensationalizing the violence for political reasons.  Ride with the Devil.  One could argue that those were wartime acts, but so was Mountain Meadows.  Without the coming of the Army, and the wartime footing and hysteria grounded in the very real trauma that the LDS had actually experienced.  The violence was not an aspect of Brigham Young being ambitious or a fanatic nor a defining characteristic of the LDS faith or culture.  I also notice that the Wikipedia list includes Haun's Mill, that it does not consider things like the Memorial list at the end of Parley Street in Nauvoo, of those who died after being forced from their homes in Nauvoo in the Winter.  Hundreds died of exposure.  Since only the threat of violence put them in harms way, was that not a crime?  How much effort did Governor Ford spend in trying to track down the perpetrators?  More, or less, effort than what Brigham did to secure justice for Mountain Meadows?  Calm and Weebles have pointed to specific contemporary evidence that Brigham actually tried to get justice.  It was the Feds that failed.

I notice the Wikipedia lists the dead at Mountain Meadows as 100 to 140, whereas the most recent and careful research says 95.  

CFR for any evidence the Brigham Young told the perpetrators of the Massacre to hide in the hills to escape justice.   There is very good contemporary evidence that Brigham actually did direct the local leaders to leave the migrants alone.  Did the series include that detail?  Or would that give the wrong impression about Brigham Young, wrong being relative to their desired image of Brigham as a bogeyman?  A contemporary copy of the letter for the courier from Brigham's day book, made by placing the letter, while the ink was still wet, against the blotting paper of book, just where it should be, amid all his other correspondence of the time, the letter given to the rider Haslem,  who arrived just too late.  The letter was provided as evidence during the trials.

For another look at the supposed culture of violence in Utah relative to both the ordinary Saints who lived through the times and in those places, see Hugh Nibley's "Is there a Danite in the House?" in Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass, no longer online alas, thanks the vision of the New Maxwell Institute leadership.   And for the problematic sources behind some of the most resilient insinuations about the relationship of Brigham Young to the events see Richard Turley on "Problems with Mountain Meadows Massacre Sources."

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3951&context=byusq

For a look at Brigham's character, see one of my favorite essays in Nibley's Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, "Brigham Young and the Enemy."  

https://archive.interpreterfoundation.org/nibley/pdf/Brigham-Young-and-the-Enemy-TheYoungDemocrat-B.pdf

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Sister Gui and I started the series tonight as a result of talking with a recent convert friend who had watched it and was very disturbed to learn that Mormons killed all those people as it was depicted. Sister Gui left in disgust after several brutal scenes, but I laughed my way through two episodes. Stilted dialogue, f-words, violent lustful drunken Indians, rebellious Mormon wife, grumpy mean frontiersmen, jaded army officers, shady Mormon leaders… the stereotypes abounded…even a ferocious NA female warrioress dressed in battle garb and war paint.

In one scene, Brother Brigham is shown pontificating about “Zion” to a group of Mormon “elders” around a campfire somewhere out in the desert in the winter. I never knew he had such an enormous nose. After a lengthy screed, the camera (with an extreme wide-angle lens) zooms into his face, distorting in the boilerplate horror movie style.

The whole thing was laughably overwrought. I could not take it seriously. I read a number of reviews in the usual Internet moviesources. Especially amusing now is the effort of aficionados to attempt its redemption by praising the acting, the depiction of the times, the fight sequences, some sort of “honest” depiction of the Real Wild West, etc. That sounds like the old “I read Playboy for the great articles not the photos” routine.

Sister Gui commented that it was like watching someone play a first-person shooter video game. She has a point.  

I would sluff it off as another crappy pop-culture effort to ridicule and defame the Church were it not for the concern expressed by our convert friend. In this sense, it is not dissimilar to “The Godmakers” or “Book of Mormon: the Musical.”

 

 

Edited January 23, 2025 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

Come to think of it, the series reminds me of “The Hobbit” three-parter and “The Rings of Power”…imaginative productions loosely based of a few ideas of JRR Tolkien…a flick very loosely based on a tragic event that happened back in the 1800s West. 

Edited January 24, 2025 by Bernard Gui

[MustardSeed]

.

Edited January 23, 2025 by MustardSeed

[gopher]

17 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

Nothing about rape is benevolent.  I doubt any woman would choose rape and immediate death over immediate death. I think the point of this offering  in the movie was to cinematically demonstrate how absolutely “deplorable” the Mormons “were.” 

Of course, I'm trying to figure out what the director wants us to think.  He seems to want us to believe many of the characters are bad, but also have goodness that comes out at random times.  I wouldn't recommend the show to anyone suffering from the trauma of rape since the male director includes it at least three times in the first two episodes.   It starts to seem exploitive after a while (see Game of Thrones)

[MustardSeed]

1 hour ago, gopher said:

Of course, I'm trying to figure out what the director wants us to think.  He seems to want us to believe many of the characters are bad, but also have goodness that comes out at random times.  I wouldn't recommend the show to anyone suffering from the trauma of rape since the male director includes it at least three times in the first two episodes.   It starts to seem exploitive after a while (see Game of Thrones)

It’s seems clear to me that the “offering” is the directors attempt to demonstrate the inhumane disregard for life and absence of all compassion during that event. 

[Bernard Gui]

The true story of the MMM is so compelling as it stands. Offer a faithful retelling using all the talent and production resources that are available to the modern movie producers and directors, leave out the biases and agendas, let the viewers decide for themselves. 

 

Edited January 24, 2025 by Bernard Gui

[manol]

18 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

That sounds like the old “I read Playboy for the great articles not the photos” routine.

I couldn't resist replying to this:  My grandmother (as prim and proper a Southern lady as ever there was) did exactly that!  She wanted to read Playboy's interview of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who had been investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

And no, she did not pass the magazine down to her grandson when she was done! 

Edited January 24, 2025 by manol

[Bernard Gui]

A Mormon henchman informs Brother Brigham of the MMM in a wintery camp somewhere in the wilderness.

BB: Do our hands show a drop of blood on this?
Mormon Henchman: No.

BB: Good.

BB to Spooky tall Nauvoo Legion dude with spiffy hat: Brother Hickman, we need to speed up our plans.

Edited January 24, 2025 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

The Real Brigham Young at that time. Not quite so horrendous. Why take this series seriously?

 

Edited January 24, 2025 by Bernard Gui

[sunstoned]

21 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Come to think of it, the series reminds me of “The Hobbit” three-parter and “The Rings of Power”…imaginative productions loosely based of a few ideas of JRR Tolkien…a flick very loosely based on a tragic event that happened back in the 1800s West. 

The Netflicks series might not have been fully accurate in time and place, but it did portray savagery that did happen. Unlike the Hobbit and Rings of Power fantasies, Mormons did murder 120 men, women, and children in 1957.  And the real Brigham Young did order the 1850 massacre of the Timpanogos families on the Provo River. 

[Zosimus]

Quote

BB to Spooky tall Nauvoo Legion dude with spiffy hat: Brother Hickman, we need to speed up our plans.

Again, if you think the writers of the series were unfair to Brigham Young and Bill Hickman, its a good thing they left out the worst stuff. From the Bill Hickman wiki:

"According to Hickman, Jim Bridger had offered a $100 reward for Old Elk's head. Hickman chopped off Old Elk's head and brought it back to Fort Utah. There, he hung Old Elk's head by its hair from the walls of the roof. Dr. Blake saw the head, and ordered more heads to be chopped off. Around 50 heads were piled in boxes for two weeks, next to where they kept the prisoners. They were then delivered to Salt Lake City. Some ghost stories have circulated about the victims' ghosts haunting Rock Canyon"

That's what Hickman did during the massacre that Sunstoned mentions above, ordered by Brigham Young. Hickman later wrote a book confessing to 70 murders. He claimed, probably exaggerating more than the writers of American Primeval did, that Young ordered him to commit most of those.

It's kinda hard to criticize American Primeval's unfair portrayal of someone like Hickman, when Hickman's portrayal of himself and Brigham Young was far worse.