The Mormons

                                          Joseph Smith

            An incident occurred in 1858 which could have proved disastrous to my great great grandparents, Smith and Ellen, and to their little family, and it started with the Mormons.

             The Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, were founded by Joseph Smith, who had a revelation in the late 1820's, while Smith Paul was living with the Chickasaw Indians. Smith's revelation had a place for Native Americans. He said they were descendents of one of the twelve tribe of Israel, brought to North America by Jesus. Actually this theory wasn't original with Joseph Smith. In the 1700's James Adair, a trader who lived with the Chickasaws for many years wrote a book in which he went to great lengths to draw parallels between Native American and Jewish customs. Anyway, according to Smith's revelation, Jesus' chosen people had sinned and the world needed another prophet to set things straight. That's where he came in. 

            Smith's new religion advocated strong family values and a strict moral code and it attracted many followers. Its members tended to live apart from the rest of society though, and soon they became the victims of prejudice, like the Indians. Also, like the Indians they didn't back down peacefully. In Missouri the Mormons raised an army to defend themselves. In 1839, shortly after the Chickasaws were run out of Mississippi, the Mormons were run out of Missouri. They tried again to establish themselves in Illinois, where the congregation had grown to 12,000, but there they again came into conflict with the state government. Their leaders were arrested, and finally their founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered by an angry mob. That was the last straw for the Mormons. They decided to move west into Mexico, so far away that they would never again be persecuted. 

             In spite of the Native Americans' place in Mormons' version of world history, the Mormons didn't respect them any more than did other white settlers. Once they arrived in their Promised Land, the present state of Utah, Mormon missionaries went among the Ute, the most prevalent tribe in the Utah area, to educate "the despised and degraded sons of the forest," and eventually they used them to their advantage, much as the British, the Spanish, and the French had used the southwestern tribes during the 18th century.

              The Mormons weren't left in peace for long. In 1848, after the war with Mexico, their new home became a part of the United States, and in 1849 gold was discovered in California.  The Mormons were practical, however. In addition to befriending the Ute, they contributed a military unit to fight in the Mexican War, thereby collected $70,000 for the church's coffers. In 1849 they claimed a huge area, including Nevada, western Utah, southern Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and southern California, and lobbied for statehood. The United States compromised in 1850 by creating the Utah Territory, and President Fillmore appointed the Mormons' leader, Brigham Young, as its first governor.

            In 1856 the Republican platform denounced slavery, and also polygamy, now a well known practice of the Mormons. There was a public outcry against the Territory of Utah being controlled by polygamists, so the new president, James Buchanan, replaced Brigham Young as governor, and sent a force of 2500 troops to bring Utah under federal control. The Mormons armed themselves, fortified the mountain passes, and blocked caravans coming west on the Santa Fe Trail.

             In 1857 a force of 54 Mormons and 300 Ute attacked a wagon train headed to California and killed 120 of the settlers. This was called the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and it got the attention of the U. S. government. Virtually all the federal troops in Indian Territory were sent to Utah. My great great grandparents were then living next to Fort Arbuckle, the farthest west of the forts, and they  became vulnerable to attack. 

             About that time something happened to cause the Comanche to decide to take advantage of the situation.   

To be continued.