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Podcast Transcript:
After being expelled from Illinois in 1847, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, led by Brigham Young, traveled west and (similar to other pioneers of the western frontier) settled on land that at the time was inhabited by various Native American tribes. If you picture a map of the state of Utah in your mind, the Utes (hence the name Utah) lived primarily in the east. The Shoshones in the north. The Goshutes in the West. And the Paiutes in the southwest. The Saints intentionally settled in a shared buffer zone area between some of these tribes. The relationship between the Saints and the natives was … complex. Sometimes, they got along fine. Sometimes, relations were much more … deadly.
By our modern 21st-century standards, Brigham Young and the Saints did not treat Native Americans particularly well. That said, as historian Leonard Arrington noted, “… viewed in the nineteenth-century context, when ruthless exploitation and genocide were all too common, Brigham displayed moderation and a willingness to share.” In 1866, Brigham Young remarked, “We could circumscribe their camps and kill every man, woman, and child of them. This is what others have done, and if we were to do it, what better are we than the wicked and the ungodly? It is our duty to be better than they in our administration of justice and our general conduct toward the Lamanites. It is not our duty to kill them; but it is our duty to save their lives and the lives of their children.”
Brigham Young’s reference to the natives in that quote as Lamanites is important. As per the Church’s website, “Latter-day Saints viewed Indians as a chosen people, fellow Israelites who were descendants of Book of Mormon peoples and thus heirs to God’s promises.”
Richard Bushman wrote in Rough Stone Rolling, “…the book [of Mormon] champions the Indians’ place in world history, assigning them a more glorious future than modern American whites … the Indians emerge as God’s chosen people …. The Book of Mormon is not just sympathetic to Indians; it grants them dominance—in history, in God’s esteem, and in future ownership of the American continent.”
That said, pioneers also viewed Native Americans as a people “fallen into decay.” They were viewed as fellow children of God, and yet, not as equals.
Relations between the Saints and Native Americans in the 19th century were often positive. As per the Church’s website, “Some Indians even distinguished between ‘Mormonees,’ whom they considered friendly, and other American settlers, who were known as ‘Mericats.’”
But things weren’t always butterflies and rainbows. As more and more Latter-day Saints came to Utah, and as new settlements continued to be established, tensions began to rise, and conflict often ensued. The best general summary I’ve seen comes from Paul Reeve’s book, Religion of a Different Color, “the relationships between Mormons and Indians in the Great Basin were frequently messy. Mormons baptized, married, ordained, murdered, indentured, befriended, fought with, traded with, fed, employed, warred against, and ultimately aided in the displacement of Native Americans to reservations.”
The first notable conflict occurred in early 1849 after a band of renegade Utes stole some of the settlers’ cattle. Researcher Howard Christy noted that these were Utes “who had declared their hostility toward the white settlers sometime before … Reportedly they had been driven out of Utah Valley by their chief because they refused to stop stealing cattle from the Mormons.” Deciding that a show of force was in order, President Young sent a company of militia to “take such measures as would put a final end to depredations in the future.”
The militia surrounded the band and demanded that they surrender and pay for the cattle. Though they were outnumbered and outgunned, the rebels gave a war cry, shot some guns, and fired some arrows. The militia returned fire, killing several Native American men. The women and children were taken back to Salt Lake, “where the Saints fed them until they were resettled among their relatives.” The area near where this conflict took place was thereafter named Battle Creek. Later, it was renamed Pleasant Grove.
The book “Mapping Mormonism” notes that as the Saints continued to expand, “There was a typical downward spiral of competition and conflict: pioneer agriculture and grazing pushed out Indians’ traditional food resources; hungry Indians stole cattle; pioneers raided Indian camps to retrieve the cattle, often killing a few Indians in the process; and Indians raided pioneer settlements in retaliation. This often led to pitched battles and even massacres and other atrocities on both sides. As a result, two wars were fought with the Utes, and battles with other tribes were common.” As the Church’s website notes, “some Latter-day Saints committed excessive violence against native peoples.”
Brigham Young’s approach to Native Americans varied depending on the situation. Sometimes he sent out the militia to directly engage the natives, but his general approach was that it was much cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them. He generally tried to avoid conflict. When the Walkara War broke out in 1853, Brigham ordered his people to hunker down in their respective forts and to only act defensively until further orders. Sometimes, the Saints simply didn’t listen and either suffered at the hands of the natives for it or caused terrible suffering among the natives. A frequent cycle of revenge-seeking made it sometimes difficult for either Brigham or Native American leaders to control their people. On multiple occasions, Brigham chastised settlers for their treatment of the natives.
For example, in 1866, Brigham taught: “I spoke a harsh word yesterday with regard to a man who professes to be a Latter-day Saint who has been guilty of killing an innocent Indian. I say today that he is just as much a murderer through killing that Indian as he would have been had he shot down a white man. To slay an innocent person is murder according to the Law of Moses.”
As another example, we read in Thomas Alexander’s biography of Brigham Young, “In April 1866 settlers in Circleville in southern Piute Country arrested twenty Paiutes. They killed six who tried to escape and then massacred the rest, including women and children, except four children. Paiute tradition says that two of the captives escaped. When Brigham Young learned of the Circleville massacre, he condemned both the horrible deed and the settlers for excusing this cruel act as a ‘necessity of war.’ He said that God’s curse rested on Circle Valley because ‘a band of our Lamenite brethren and their families were here cruelly slain.’”
Ultimately, as in other frontier areas, it was decided that the natives and the settlers could not co-exist. As history-to-go-dot-Utah-dot-gov states, “In a series of treaties with the Shoshone, Bannock, and Goshute in 1863 and with the Ute and Southern Paiute in 1865, the federal government moved to extinguish Indian land claims in Utah and to confine all Indians on reservations.”
You’ve been listening to Keystone. Thanks so much for being here. As a heads up, we’re going to have a few more episodes coming out soon related to this discussion about Native American relations in Utah, so keep an eye out for those. If you learned something new in this episode, consider leaving us a quick review to let us know how we’re doing, and have a great day!