Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows/Omissions/Tutsegabit and Youngwuds at Mountain Meadows

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A FAIR Analysis of: Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows A work by author: Will Bagley Use of sources, Tutsegabit and Youngwuds at Mountain Meadows / Tutsegabit "rewarded" with priesthood ordination?

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Criticism

• The author claims that Brigham met with two Indian chiefs (Tutsegabit and Youngwuds) on 1 September, who then participated in the massacre and later "rewarded" Indian chief Tutsegabit for his role in the massacre by ordaining him to the priesthood.

Source(s) of the criticism

• Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 170.

Summary conclusion

It is impossible for the author's scenario to play out as described.

Supporting Data

Noted one reviewer:

Huntington, on the other hand, says Young commissioned this Native American to "preach the gospel & baptize among the house of lsreal [sic]."

Careful examination of contemporary documents that mention this ordination reveals problems with Bagley's link between the ordination and the massacre. D. B. Huntington recorded September 10 as the day Brigham Young "ordained Tutsequbbeds an elder" in Salt Lake City. If this date is accepted, then it would have been impossible for Tutsegabit to have been at the massacre the following day. Other observers, however, recorded different dates for Tutsegabits ordination. On September 13, George A. Smith wrote to William Dame about it, and Wilford Woodruff noted it in his journal on September 16. Even if this last date is accepted for the ordination, Tutsegabit would have had to travel an impossible eighty-eight miles per day to cover roughly 350 miles in four days, since the massacre occurred just before dark on September 11.^[1]

Endnotes

1. [note]  Lawrence Coates, "Review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows," Brigham Young University Studies 31 no. 1 (January 2003), 153–. off-site