Mormons and Lamanites*

W. Dirk Raat

One long-standing popular belief among Franciscans in New Spain was that Indians were descendants of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. (1)

[It was] manifestly more economical, and less expensive to feed and clothe, than to fight them [the Shoshone in particular, Indians in general].

Brigham Young, May 30, 1852 (2)

In 1863, the same year that the Mormons or Latter-Day Saints (LDS) were confronting the Shoshone at the Bear River in southern Idaho and the Kaibab Paiutes in southern Utah and northern Arizona, “prophet, seer, and revelator,” and President of the LDS Church, Brigham Young, received a writ from a federal judge for violating the Suppression of Polygamy Act or the “Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act” (July 8, 1862). The writ alleged that Young had disregarded at least one of the “twin sins of barbarism in the territories—slavery and polygamy,” and that sin, of course was polygamy (more correctly, polygyny; known by the Mormons as “plural marriage”). (3) Arrested by the U.S. Marshal, Young posted a bail bond while waiting for a Mormon grand jury to act. The grand jury refused an indictment.

* This essay previously appeared in W. Dirk Raat, Lost Worlds of 1863: Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Blackwell, 2022), pp. 183-188.

Commentary and Analysis — Raat

As for the other sin of “slavery,” Young knew that the intent of the law was to abolish African slavery, not Indian slavery. Young and his followers were ambivalent in their attitude and treatment of the Indians, but by 1852 Young allowed Mormons to purchase Indian minors and keep them “indentured” for up to twenty years. He instructed his brethren to “Buy up the Lamanite [Indian] children . . . so that many generations would not pass ere they should become a white and delightsome people.” (4)

In 1863 the Saints, who usually distrusted the federal army, did view with favor the Bear River massacre of Shoshone Indians by Colonel Patrick Edward Connor’s California Volunteers “as an intervention of the Almighty”. Yet earlier, Brigham Young, who had led his expedition of followers over the Mormon trail to the Great Basin in 1846-1847, did not hesitate to speak out against the mistreatment of the Indians.

He admonished his followers to treat American Indians fairly with the purpose of converting them when possible. Some of his fellow Mormons even encouraged intermarriage with Native Americans so that the two groups might “unite” against a common enemy, the U.S. government for instance. Young’s instructions to Mormon men to marry “the Indian maidens” led several Mormons to wed Indian women in addition to their non-Indian wives. (5)

In 1857, when the Utah War with the federal government was brewing, the Mormons formed an alliance with the Utes and Paiutes, and many of the latter were converted to Mormonism. Young also encouraged southern Paiutes to seize “all the cattle” of emigrants that travelled the “south route” (through southern Utah) to California, an event that unfortunately eventually led to the Mountain Meadows Massacre where several Missouri men, women, and children were killed. (6)

Yet the ideas of friendship and conciliation with Native Americans that developed over the trail and were revived in times of outside threats to Zion (that place in the Great Basin were the Saints were gathered), were gradually dropped as the Mormons began to compete with their lost Indian brothers and sisters for the limited resources of the high desert country. From the Bear River in Idaho to southern Arizona and from Moab, Utah to the Mormon Station in western Nevada, the Mormons first settled the Great Basin and then spread out to establish colonies in their separate state of “Deseret.” In every instance they encroached upon the indigenous population.

Mormon pioneers and farmers soon appropriated water from rivers, streams, and springs, and took over infertile lands that at least produced pine nut bearing trees. The Indians who resisted these Mor- mon incursions were simply, from the Saints point-of-view, rejecting Christ’s message and retribution was justified. From most Indian perspectives (the exception being Indian converts), the Saints were no different than the Gentiles, those non-Mormon Whites who were moving into the homeland. (7)

From and to these colonies, missionaries were sent to convert the Indians and pave the way for colonization. The Indians in northeastern Nevada, in particular the Western Shoshone, and the Northern Paiute, because of their apparent poverty and lack of military knowledge, were quite passive and for these reasons there were few Mormon settlements and no significant Indian resistance. The prospects for conversion were best among the seemingly peaceful and “more civilized” Hopi, Zuni, and Pima-Papago of Arizona. Those groups that were more organized and reacted in a hostile manner were usually the horse-riding societies of the Eastern Shoshone, Eastern Ute, Navajo, and Apache of the Southwest.

Conversion of the Indian was facilitated by the message of the LDS holy text, the Book of Mormon, a work that purports to be a history of early inhabitants of this American continent and is treated, along with the Bible, as the word of God. It was Mormon belief that the ancestors of the American Indian were members of a group of Israelites who left Jerusalem in about 600 B.C., just before the Babylonian captivity of Jerusalem. (8)

As the story continues, the prophet Lehi led his followers from Jerusalem across the Pacific to the New World. In the Americas, Lehi’s sons, Laman and Nephi, broke with each other and Laman’s followers, the Lamanites, went to war against the other brother’s group, the Nephites. Eventually the Lamanites destroyed the Nephites in a great conflagration that took place near the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York. The Lamanites, who survived the wars between the two groups, became American Indians. Because of these actions, and for rejecting Christ’s teachings when He appeared on this continent after the insurrection, God cursed the Lamanites with a dark skin. For their transgressions “God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them” (2 Nephi

5:21). Thus, the Lamanites were punished for their sins by being turned “dark and loathsome.” However, “in the last days” the Indians will be converted to the true church by Mormon emissaries and eventually become a “white and delightsome people” (2 Nephi 30:5-6). (9)

As a smitten people, the Natives would have their lands taken from them by the Gentiles. Yet, if they converted to Mormonism and accepted Christ’s teachings, they would regain their fair skin and a civilized way of life. In the last days, the converted would occupy a special place in God’s plan and would become the builders of the temple of the New Jerusalem, a holy city of God that would be resurrected in the Zion of the Americas! In this respect, the Book of Mormon story reflected the long-standing popular belief that the American Indian was a descendent of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Like the Franciscans of colonial Latin America who believed that “perfidious Jews” would be converted at the end of the world, the Mormons knew that they too were doing missionary work that was in fact apocalyptic. (10)

This too was the special message that the Mormons brought to their Indian brothers and sisters. With a limited resource base in the Great Basin, the notion of a Zion in the Wilderness was expanded to include vast areas north and south of the Great Basin. The Gathering to Zion would become a major colonization program in which Mormons and their message would extend through the Indian country from the Bannocks to the north to the Tarahumaras in the south. Once the Utes were defeated and restricted to the Unita Basin reservation, and the Shoshone had been pushed into Idaho and Nevada, the Saints could afford to initiate a more benevolent policy. (11)

Once again Brigham Young taught that it was better to deliver rations rather than death to the Indians. Jacob Hamblin, the so-called “apostle to the Lamanites,” was one of the first to pick up the call for action. He carried the missionary program southward into the lands of the Paiutes, Navajos, and Hopis. Although the Navajos proved to be particularly aggressive and resistive, the Saints did succeed in converting Chief Tuba (Woo Pah) of the Hopis and his wife in 1871. Chief Tuba’s baptism meant that the first Hopi convert to the true word of God had occurred. (12)

In 1873 Brigham Young called 250 Mormons to establish missions and colonies in the Little Colorado River Valley in north-central Arizona south of the Hopi mesas. The trail had already been established through the region by Lieutenant Amiel W. Whipple in 1853 when his military expedition, looking for a potential east-west railway route, recommended that a wagon road be built along the Little Colorado River area. (13) His activity led to the establishment of the Edward F. Beale Wagon Road that went from Zuni Pueblo to Sunset Crossing (Winslow, Arizona). In 1876 the Mormon Wagon trail (also known as the Mormon Honeymoon trail), went from Salt Lake City, through Lee’s Ferrry, to Sunset Crossing, and was followed by two hundred men, women, and children who established Brigham City (one mile north of today’s Winslow). Here they were literally in the midst of the Lamanites. Four settlements were established but by 1886 they had all failed as agricultural communities. Their communal form of social organization, known as the United Order, also collapsed. Their efforts at making Mormons out of Lamanites also failed, with many baptisms but very few active members. (15)

Further upstream the Mormon colonies were more successful, not as mission centers but as farms and ranches. On Silver Creek, a tributary of the Little Colorado River, William Flake and Apostle Erastus Snow founded the community of Snowflake in 1878. The Silver Creek towns of Show Low and Taylor soon followed. About the same time other colonies were established up the Little Colorado including Alpine, Nutrioso, Eager, and Greer. (16)

In 1877 the Saints streamed into the eastern Salt River Valley, removing the mesquite and digging irrigation ditches. The new site was called Camp Utah (Lehi). There, missionary Daniel Jones joined the group and, believing he had a special mission to work among Native Americans, he attempted to enlist the aid of several Akimel O’odham, Tohono O’odham, and Pee Posh (Maricopa) in building Camp Utah. Many of the Saints were offended by Jones and his “dirty Indians” and so they left for the San Pedro River where they founded the community of St. David. Evidently missionary zeal could not overcome racial prejudice on the frontier. (17)

Meanwhile, many of the Saints pushed further down the Salt River, establishing Tempe and creating the Papago Ward north of town that contained several hundred O’odham converts. The largest Arizona community was Mesa, established by a group of Saints from Idaho and Utah in 1878. They cleaned out an old Hohokam canal and planted their crops. Mesa was incorporated in 1883. (18)

Around the same time, between 1875 and 1876, Brigham Young sponsored an exploratory and proselytizing journey to Mexico. Their mission was to look for places to colonize and to teach the gospel to the Indians. A small group of Mormons travelled on horseback through Tucson and El Paso del Norte to Chihuahua City. They were not well received in either El Paso or Chihuahua. Unhappy with their lack of success in the cities, they turned west and travelled to the rural community of Guerrero in the Sierra Madre foothills. It was here, on the edge of the Sierra Tarahumara, that the group met with its first success. There was no clerical opposition, the people were not devout Catholics, and the municipal authorities granted them permission to preach. (19)

From Guerrero they took their message to the Tarahumaras (Rarámuri), first in Arisiachi and later in Temósachi in the Papigochi Valley. These Tarahumaras were very friendly to the missionaries and were impressed by the Mormon promise that the Rarámuri, as Lamanites, would have a special role to perform at the end of the millennial era as builders of the temple at New Jerusalem. When the Mormons left the Sierra Tarahumara, the Rarámuri provided them with so much corn and beans that their pack animals were overloaded. Leaving the Tarahumara country behind, the party travelled north along the Casas Grandes River and eventually returned to the United States. Their explorations in Mexico soon led to the establishment of several Mormon colonies in the Casas Grandes area, including Colonia Juárez (1887) and Colonia Dublán (1888). (20)

By the end of the century, facing competition by other faiths on the reservation and a ruling by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that only one denomination could serve on the reservation (and usually that religious group was not the Latter-Day Saints), the Mormon Indian missionary program was mostly terminated. Very few Indians were converted during the first four decades of the twentieth century. The Mormons did develop a strong adoption program in which Indian children would live with Mormon families so that they could be, first “civilized,” and second, “converted.” (21)

The heritage of a half century of contact had reduced the Indians in number. When the Mormons first entered what became the territory of Utah in 1847, the estimated number of Native Americans was around 20,000. By 1900 the number had plunged to 2,623, or about a decline of eighty-six percent from the Natives of a half century earlier. Most of the decline was due to disease, mistreatment, and slavery. (22)

Today Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah has the largest enrollment of Indians in any American university, and many western reservations have established a Mormon Indian ward (akin to a parish). Nearly a hundred Indians were sent out on missions by the Church in the late 1980s. (23) As in the past, while many of the Mormon brethren have no more love for their Indian kindred than that of the average “Gentile” (non-Mormon), the religious message of a special role to play in the last days is an attractive one to many Lamanites.

References

1. Quoted from William B. Carter, Indian Alliances and the Spanish in the Southwest, 750-1750 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), p. 93.

2. Quoted by Brigham D. Madsen in The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985), p. 29 from Young’s “Manuscript History,” May 30, 1852, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Historian’s Office, Salt Lake City.

3. “Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Anti-Bigamy_Act).

4. As quoted by Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Boston & New York:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), p. 3.

5. John A. Price, “Mormon Missions to the Indians,” in William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, vol. ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), pp. 461-462.

6. Douglas O. Linder, “The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 and the Trials of John D. Lee: An Account,” (//law2.umkc.edu/ faculty/projects/ftrails/mountainmeadows/leeaccount.html, 2006). In September 1857, at least 120 members of the Missouri emigrant party were killed near Mountain Meadows north of St. George, Utah. Although the Saints attributed the killings to the Paiute Indians, later investigations proved that John D. Lee and the Mormons were mainly responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It was thought by some that the action against the Missouri party was at least in part retribution for similar actions taken against Mormons when they were living in Missouri. See also Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (N.Y. & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

7. This is a conclusion shared by Howard A. Christy, “Open Hand and Mailed Fist: Mormon-Indian Relations in Utah, 1847-52,” Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (Summer 1978): 216-235, & Sandy Cosgrove, “Mormons and Native Americans: A Historical Overview,” (// www.onlinenevada.org/articles/mormons-and-native-americanshistorical-overview).

8. Scientific proof today does not support the theory of a Hebrew origin or connection with the American Indian. DNA tests, linguistic evidence, and dental morphology all point to East and North Asia as the homeland of the American Indian. The Mormon Church today has revised the traditional view in an essay entitled “Book of Mormon and DNA Studies.” The author(s) argue, after surveying several aspects of DNA research (including genetic drift, population bottlenecks, the founder effect, and post-Columbian immigration), that “DNA studies cannot be used decisively to either affirm or reject the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon.” See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?/ lang=eng. One interesting if puzzling bit of evidence links the

Zuni Indians with the Japanese. See the controversial work by Nancy Yaw Davis, The Zuni Enigma (N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).

9. Quotes from Nephi in Book of Mormon by John A. Price, “Mormon Missions,” p. 459. “Dark and loathsome” quote from Robert Gottlieb & Peter Wiley, America’s Saints: The Rise of Mormon Power (N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984), p. 174. The current LDS authorized version is “…pure and delightsome...”

10. Carter, Indian Alliances, p. 93.

11. Gottlieb & Wiley, America’s Saints, p. 160.

12. Ibid., p. 161.

13. Thomas E. Sheridan, Arizona: A History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012), pp. 119-121.

14. The Honeymoon Trail was a wagon trail taken by betrothed couples on their way from Arizona colonies to a Mormon temple in St. George, Utah, for their covenant marriage, called “sealing.” See Garrett, H. Dean, “The Honeymoon Trail”, Ensign 23 (July 1989).

15. Ibid., pp. 201-203.

16. Ibid., pp. 203-204.

17. Ibid, p. 203.

18. Ibid, p. 204.

19. W. Dirk Raat and George R. Janeček, Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara: A Photohistory of the People of the Edge (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), pp. 82-83.

20. Ibid.

21. Price, “Mormon Missions to the Indians,” pp. 462-463.

22. Reséndez, The Other Slavery, p. 273.

23. Ibid., p. 463.