Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows/Chapter 2

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Chapter 1

A FAIR Analysis of: Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows A work by author: Will Bagley

Chapter 3

Claim

• Mormons saw Indians as instrument of vengeance for Joseph's murder.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• Omissions: Indians as instrument of vengeance?

Claim

•  Author's quote: [Joseph Smith] plunged into new sealings to married women, sisters, and very young girls....

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]
• Compare treatment in American Massacre: p. 26.

Response

•  Prejudicial or loaded language
•  Presentism or anachronism: "Marriages to very young girls"?
• "Sealings to married women"
• Divine manifestations to plural wives and their families

Claim

• Innuendo about death of federal officials

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• "Another troubling tendency of Bagley’s is his habit of almost—but not quite—accusing Mormondom of criminal acts for which there can be no answer because no real facts are given. Federal officials “died mysteriously” (39), and Wakara died “probably of pneumonia but perhaps from poison,” all following conflicts with Mormons (33)."^[1]

Claim

•  Author's quote: [missionaries] were called to prepare the Indians for their role in the

impending apocalypse....

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• Omissions: Indians as instrument of vengeance?

Claim

• Indians regarded by Mormons "as a weapon God had placed in their hands."

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• Omissions: Indians as instrument of vengeance?

== Notes ==

1. [note]  W. Paul Reeve and Ardis E. Parshall, "review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by Will Bagley," Mormon Historical Studies (Spring 2003): 154.