Cliven Bundy repeatedly told land managers with the Bureau of Land Management that any effort to remove his cattle from public lands would be met with force. His threat continued a history of violent conflict between Mormons and non-Mormons and at times between Mormons and the federal government. The United States nearly went to war with the Mormons in 1858 in the so-called “Utah War.” Smithsonian Magazine writer David Roberts provides a comprehensive overview of the events leading up to the conflict in a June 2008 feature story on the 150th anniversary of the little-known conflict. “The Utah War culminated a decade of rising hostility between Mormons and the federal government over issues ranging from governance and land ownership to plural marriage and Indian affairs, during which both Mormons and non-Mormons endured violence and privation,” Roberts wrote. Armed conflict was averted when Mormon church President and Utah Territorial Governor Young agreed to allow the federal government to appoint a non-Mormon as governor. The year before the Utah War, the most notorious clash between a Mormon militia and non-Mormons occurred in southern Utah when a militia brutally murdered 120 Arkansas men, women and children at the Mountain Meadows Massacre. They were executed after being convinced to surrender their guns. The church tried to cover up its association with the murders for nearly 150 years, blaming it instead on a Native American tribe. In 2007 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially blamed local church leaders in Cedar City, Utah, for the September 1857 massacre and stated that then-church President Young sent a message not to harm the emigrants, but it arrived too late. Some historians theorize Young ordered the attack, but they acknowledge there is no proof. Richard Turley, assistant historian of the church and coauthor of Massacre at Mountain Meadows, told National Public Radio in a 2008 interview that the slaughter of the unarmed men, women and children, some of whom were begging for their lives when they were killed, shows how quickly atrocities can unfold. “These people who carried out the massacre were in many ways ordinary … individuals who got caught up in emotion,
GAGE SKIDMORE
A History of Violence
caught up in the circumstances of their times and began to make decisions that led to committing an atrocity,” Turley said. “And what was disturbing about that was the realization that the difference between ordinary people like us and these people who committed atrocity was really a short distance.” At the time of the massacre, church leaders feared the federal government planned to take control of the Mormon-controlled territory and stamp out the widespread Mormon practice of polygamy. Mormon leaders warned that the incoming settlers traveling on the Arkansas wagon train could be working with the army in the days leading up to the massacre. Overt violent conflict between the Mormon church and federal authorities has largely been supplanted by a struggle over control of public lands. The federal government owns 65 percent of the land in Utah. The Utah Legislature remains dominated by Mormons (88 percent) and is supporting the transfer of federal land to state control. The Legislature passed the Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study in 2012, seeking to force the federal government to turn over much of its public lands to the state. At the federal level, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Congressman Rob Bishop, both Mormons, have sponsored federal legislation to turn over public lands to the state. Murphy, the Edmonds Community College professor, says federal land ownership in Utah is a source of significant conflict because it’s a tangible reminder of the federal government’s role in ending Brigham Young’s theocracy and eventually forcing the church to renounce polygamy in 1890. “It is the federal government through its control of public lands that is still preventing Mormons from realizing this vision,” he says. More than 160 years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and after decades of resentment toward federal control of public lands, Cliven Bundy first clashed with the federal government at Bunkerville. Guided by religious inspiration and a Skousen-influenced constitutional claim to the land, Cliven Bundy whipped up fear of an oppressive federal government to rally a militia to his Nevada ranch. Militia members pointed high-powered rifles at federal employees attempting to execute a court order authorizing the removal of Bundy’s cattle from federal land. The margin for a mistake that could have triggered bloodshed was razor thin. Shortly after the federal government released the cattle and withdrew from the area, Ammon Bundy acknowledged that the militia was used to instill fear in the federal employees. “We did have militia and weapons, and that was important because [the federal officers] didn’t know whether or not we were going to fire on them,” Ammon Bundy says in a video that was presented as evidence by federal prosecutors in a case against Bunkerville defendant Scott Drexler, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge last month.
All Eyes Turn to Vegas
MULTNOMAH COUNTY JAIL
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agency. “He and the Bundys after him believe that government is not merely inefficient, but an inherent moral hazard,” he wrote. The Bundys’ constitutional interpretations take a simplistic, literal reading of the Constitution and often ignore a body of Supreme Court decisions that run contrary to their arguments, particularly in regard to whether the federal government has a right to own vast tracts of land. “These folks are very constitutional based, but only on the part of the Constitution that they like,” says Sheriff Ward, who had “eight to 10” hours of often tense conversations with Ammon Bundy on the Constitution and the role of federal government and religion. Ward says when he attempted to explain his views on the Constitution and religion, Ammon Bundy would get angry. Bundy, Ward says, continued to pressure him to “change my stance” and made “quite a few threats” that were generally “vague.” This was just a prelude to a deluge of emailed death threats from anonymous email accounts. Some threatened Ward with hanging if he didn’t knuckle under, he says. “There were blatant death threats that I forwarded to the FBI,” he says. Walker, the University of Oregon professor, is convinced Ammon Bundy’s constitutional philosophy is traced to Skousen. “When you listen to Ammon Bundy talk about the Constitution, it’s almost word-for-word from stuff Skousen had written,” he says. And while Benson was wary of big government, he also served in the federal government at the highest level as a cabinet secretary. Cliven Bundy has taken Benson’s cautious view of big government much further. “Bundy basically says he does not believe in the federal government. It just doesn’t exist,” Quammen says. “He believes in the county. He believes in the sheriff. He believes in ‘we the people.’ But he doesn’t believe in the federal government.”
While many in Burns are trying to put the Bundy/militia occupation behind them, community leaders, including former county judge Steve Grasty and Sheriff Dave Ward, are hoping that justice is finally served in Las Vegas. And by justice, they mean that the Bundys and their supporters should be held accountable for their actions during the Bunkerville standoff. Ward says he “was very disappointed” after Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five others were acquitted in federal court for their role in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover. He worries that if they’re acquitted again, it would send a dangerous signal to them and their supporters, including the militias, that “there is even less accountability than they thought there was at the beginning.” Grasty is still bitter over the trauma inflicted on his community by the Bundys and their supporters. “I have a hard spot in my heart for Ammon Bundy and his friends,” he says. The importance of the Las Vegas trial cannot be understated, he adds. “If they are found guilty, the system has run its course, and it does put others on notice that this model is not a good model to follow,” Grasty says. “There has to be a better model to follow. Armed insurrection isn’t the way to do it.” CW A version of this article appeared in The Revelator