Mormons were behind the Mountain Meadows Massacre of Sep 11, 1857

[IndianaGreen]

Mountain Meadows Massacre
Sept. 11, 1857

"I had many to assist me at the Mountain Meadows. I believe that most of those who were connected with the Massacre, and took part in the lamentable transaction that has blackened the character of all who were aiders or abettors in the same, were acting under the impression that they were performing a religious duty. I know all were acting under the orders and by the command of their Church leaders; and I firmly believe that the most of those who took part in the proceedings, considered it a religious duty to unquestioningly obey the orders which they had received. That they acted from a sense of duty to the Mormon Church." (...Life and Confessions of John D. Lee..., p. 213)

http://www.greaterthings.com/Topical/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre/

In case you are not familiar with these events, it is best known as the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. It involved a number of Mormons, dressed up like Native Americans, who ambushed a wagon train heading towards California from Arkansas. After the pioneers on the wagon train surrendered, the Mormons slaughtered every last one of them, some by gunshot and some by bashing in their skulls when they ran out of bullets. All in all, 120 people were killed. Only 17 children under the age of 10 survived. The pioneers were buried in mass graves.

One might wonder why the Mormons would kill these people so mercilessly. Well, these people weren't Mormons. Thus they deserved to be killed, at least according to then President of the LDS Brigham Young.

http://bloggingpoints.blogspot.com/2007/01/mormon-massacre-at-mountain-meadows.html

[Duke Newcombe]

1. I'm unsure as to how this helps Progressives get elected.

[Downtown Hound]

2. Um, okay

I'm as angry at the Mormons as anybody for what they just did, but an atrocity that happened over 150 years ago relates to it...how?

[Duncan Grant]

10. I think the contemporary Church's efforts to obfuscate is relevant. They're good at that.

They have no intention of apologizing for this (or the Prop. 8 "advocacy").

Seems relevant to me regarding the Church's character. Others can disagree.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. I think the Mormons had themselves been subjected to massacres

by "gentiles" at various points in their history. Missouri? Weren't they also run out of Nauvoo, IL after having built the town?

That stuff's from fallible memory; been many years since I read that history.

[Duncan Grant]

11. Is there a context that removes the stain of the massacre? I don't think so.

I also don't think there's a context to remove the stain of complicity regarding Proposition 8. That's just my take on it. It's fine with me if others see it through a different lens.

[aquart]

4. It was a revenge killing and A LONG TIME AGO.

Ye gods, yeah they did it, but so what? What groups didn't? The Quakers?

Open a Bible if you want juicy massacre stories. How about the Benjaminite rape wars in Judges? How about the vengeance for the rape of Dinah (which was ever so crafty and mean)?

How about Christians walling up dozens of Jews and setting the buildings on fire, a popular practice after the outbreaks of plague in Europe?

And does anyone believe the phrase Flaming Sword of Islam is just public relations?

There isn't a square inch of this planet's liveable space that isn't drenched in blood from some time or other.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Prop 8 eliminated the covenant we all had about respecting religions

If a church persecutes us, we have the right to persecute it.

[Duncan Grant]

12. True but it probably doesn't hurt to remember the capacity for evil.

The rules of the game are different now. The violence is much more subtle and refined but no less "lethal" on a psychological and emotional level.

No need for me to belabor the point. We're all familiar with this issue.

[sam sarrha]

5. THIS WILL SHED SOME LIGHT ON THESTORY..>>LINK>>

http://blog.mrm.org/category/mountain-meadows-massacre/
"snip...In the chapter titled “Constitution,” Ms. Novak wrote:

“Many traditional accounts of Mountain Meadows have claimed that the Arkansas emigrants were, in some sense, diseased. Some two weeks after he participated in the massacre, John D. Lee described the victims as syphilitic: ‘Many of the men & women was ro with the pox before they were hurt by the Indians’… Soon it was reported in the Los Angeles Star… that William H. Dame, colonel of the Iron County militia, had examined the bodies of the Arkansans and determined that all the women were prostitutes. As Bagley… points out, such stories seem to have been transmitted to reporters by William Matthews, a leading Mormon official in California, as part of a ’systematic defamation of the murdered emigrants.’

“This conclusion is no doubt correct. To understand such defamation, however, we must consider what it meant to be ‘diseased.’” (page 88, source citations in the original replaced here with ellipses)

After explaining multiple types of diseases common in Antebellum America and the health of the Arkansas victims as evidenced by their remains, Ms. Novak turned to a discussion of syphilis and it’s “endemic” status “within any nineteenth-century population center” (107). She wrote:

“The remains at Mountain Meadows, however, tell a different story. In the study sample of at least 28 massacre victims, there was no evidence of lesions that would be consistent with a diagnosis of venereal or congenital syphilis. Once again we are struck by the apparent vigor of this population.

“These findings are in sharp contrast to claims that were made in the immediate aftermath of the massacre…snip"


http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=syphilis&btnG=Search+pshm.org&domains=www.pshm.org&sitesearch=www.pshm.org.

syphilis of the brain explains all the hallucinations of conversations with god..he sounds like he had sex adiction,..

[kestrel91316]

7. My g-g-g-grandfather, William Adams Hickman, was Chief of the Danites,

the early Mormon church's "enforcement arm". Basically they were murderers doing the church's dirty work.

I found contemporaneous written evidence online (gotta love the internets, right?) a few years ago that basically proves what I have suspected for years: that the Danites were the MMM perpetrators, and Bill Hickman led them in their effort. It was a shock, and yet not a shock. OF COURSE they did it. Who the hell else had the motive, means, and opportunity in the Utah of that day? But it has been denied for years. People even try to deny that the Danites existed at all, though they were written about all the time back then.

Blood atonement was taken very seriously by the church back then.

I look at the Mormon Church as a group of ruthless megalomaniacal theocrats. They will do anything it takes to accomplish their goals, they have lots of money to fund their efforts, and they have time on their side. They have a singleminded vision of a theocratic government, and all their efforts are in that direction. Never trust the Mormon Church and never underestimate them.

[IndianaGreen]

8. And they are making inroads in Latin America

Mainstream denominations have failed to properly addressed the threat that these intolerant variants of their faiths pose to us all.

[Jamastiene]

9. Agreed.

No one knows better than someone who has dealt with it up close and personal. Just like someone who has actually dealt with the ex-gay groups up close and personal knows more than anyone that they are NOT harmless. They are brutal and hateful and will stop at nothing to destroy anyone in their way.

[bluedawg12]

13. My last post on another forum

(not DU), after many years of non-political pleasant discussions about sci-fi topics, was after discussing Prop8 with one of that cult who was on that small forum and listening to her spout her defamatory assertion that she was voting for Prop8 because gay marriage would destroy this nation and that it was immoral and then she clung to her right to hide behind her cult/faith and was "offended" by my rejection of her poison.

And non-cult Xians found her reasoning laudable and agreed with her dehumanizing description.

I finally lost my cool, when later that night Propagate hate 8 passed - never going back there again. Want no part of such intolerance.