7.6 /10 1 Votes
Country United States Publication date September 2002 Pages 544 Genre Non-fiction | 3.8/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print (Hardcover) Originally published September 2002 Page count 544 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Subject Mountain Meadows massacre Publisher University of Oklahoma Press Awards Spur Award for Best Nonfiction Historical Similar Will Bagley books, Latter Day Saint movement books, Jesus books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Will bagley 2002 blood of the prophets
Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2002) by Will Bagley is an award-winning history of the Mountain Meadows massacre. The work updated Juanita Brooks' seminal history The Mountain Meadows Massacre, and remains one of the definitive works on the topic.
Contents
Awards and Praise
Brigham D. Madsen, a fellow Utah historian, wrote: “While the word ‘definitive’ is often overused, this account of the killings merits that distinction. Bagley’s book ranks as a Mormon historical classic.”, Western Historical Quarterly.
The New York Review of Books praised the work as “an exhaustive, meticulously documented, highly readable history that captures the events and atmosphere that gave rise to the massacre, as well as its long, tortuous aftermath. Bagley has taken great care in negotiating the minefield presented by what remains of the historical record.”
Criticism
The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at Brigham Young University criticized Bagley's conclusion that Brigham Young ordered the massacre. For example, FARMS points to Bagley's misuse of a quote, written by Dimick B. Huntington, in which the Piedes Indians told Brigham Young they were "afraid to fight the Americans & so would raise grain" during the Utah War. Bagley replaced the word "grain" with "allies", so as to read "afraid to fight the Americans & so would raise allies", and published this revision in Blood of the Prophets. It has also been pointed out that some of Bagley's more controversial conclusions can only be reached by using a flawed timeline of events.
Some historians feel that, since Will Bagley was hired by California businessman Frank James Singer to "rewrite the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre," this may have influenced his interpretation of the facts, a charge Bagley denies.