Mountain Meadows massacre and Mormon theology

Utah Territory's political structure during the massacre

A decade prior the Baker–Fancher party's arrival, Mormons had established in the Utah Territory a theocratic community (see theodemocracy). There Brigham Young presided over The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as LDS Church president and Prophet of God, until Christ's assumption of world kingship at his Second Coming. U.S. President Millard Fillmore appointed Young governor of the Territory of Utah and its Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Yet there was minimal effective separation between church and state until 1858.

Brigham Young envisioned a Mormon domain, called the State of Deseret, spanning from the Salt Lake Valley to the Pacific Ocean, and so he sent church leaders to establish colonies far and wide. These colonies were governed by Mormon officials under Brigham Young's mandate to enforce "God's law" by "lay[ing] the ax at the root of the tree of sin and iniquity", while preserving individual rights. Despite the distance to these outlying colonies, local Mormon leaders received frequent visits from church headquarters, and were under Young's direct doctrinal and political control. Mormons were taught to obey the orders of their priesthood leaders, as long as they coincided with LDS gospel principles. Young's view of theocratic enforcement included a death penalty for such sins as theft. However, there are no documented cases showing that such threats were ever enforced as actual policy, and there were no accusations of thievery against the Baker–Fancher party. Mormon leaders taught the doctrine of blood atonement, in which Mormon "covenant breakers" could in theory gain their exaltation in heaven by having "their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins". More clearly stated, this doctrine holds that capital punishment is requisite for offenses of murder.

Mormon historian Thomas G. Alexander argues that most violent speech by LDS leaders was rhetorical in nature. He further states that statistical studies are needed in order to determine whether frontier Utah was in reality any more violent than surrounding regions. But he argues that the limited statistical evidence which does exist (although dating from the 1880s) shows Utah to be far less violent than other contemporaneous western states and territories. Referring to the frequent Mormon declarations that there were fewer deeds of violence in Utah than in other pioneer settlements of equal population, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on January 25, 1876: "It is estimated that no less than 600 murders have been committed by the Mormons, in nearly every case at the instigation of their priestly leaders, during the occupation of the territory. Giving a mean average of 50,000 persons professing that faith in Utah, we have a murder committed every year to every 2500 of population. The same ratio of crime extended to the population of the United States would give 16,000 murders every year." Brigham Young's typical response to such charges was undisguised sarcasm. Speaking on July 26, 1857 he stated "what is now the news circulated through the United States?...That Brigham Young has [had] killed all the men who have died between the Missouri River and California." He had previously retorted to similar charges, "just one word from Brigham, and they are ready to slay all before them...It is all a pack of nonsense, the whole of it." Whatever the case, there is consensus that William H. Dame and Isaac C. Haight, the two most senior local church leaders in southern Utah complicit in the massacre, took the rhetoric of such doctrines seriously as they contemplated sanctionable applications of violence.

According to rumors and accusations, Brigham Young sometimes enforced "God's law" through a secret cadre of avenging Danites. The truth of these rumors is debated by historians. While there existed active vigilante organizations in Utah who referred to themselves as "Danites", they may have been acting independently. Historian Leonard Arrington attributes these rumors to the actions of "Minute Men," a law enforcement organization created by Young to pursue hostile Indians and criminals. However, these became associated with the Danite vigilantes which had operated briefly in Missouri in 1838. Haight and Dame were never Danites; however, Young's records indicate that in 1857 he authorized Haight and Dame to secretly execute two recently released convicts traveling through southern Utah along the California trail if they were caught stealing cattle or other livestock. Dame replied to Young in a letter that "we try to live so when your finger crooks, we move". Haight and/or Dame might have been involved in the subsequent ambush of part of the convicts' party just south of Mountain Meadows.

Prior Mid-West Persecution against Mormons and their calls for vengeance

At the time of the massacre, Mormons had an acute memory of recent persecutions against them, particularly the death of their prophets, and had been taught that God would soon exact vengeance. The persecutions began in the 1830s, when the state of Missouri officially opposed their presence in the state, engaged with them in the Mormon War, and expelled them in 1838 with an Extermination Order. During the Mormon War, prominent Mormon apostle David W. Patten died of wounds suffered after leading Mormon insurgents in an attack against the Missouri Militia at Crooked Creek, and a group of Mormons were massacred at Haun's Mill. After the Mormons established a new home in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1839, they were again forced to leave behind homes and land in Illinois after conflicts with locals culminated in the 1844 death of Joseph Smith and his brother, Patriarch Hyrum Smith by a mob of Illinois militia. Brigham Young led the majority of Mormons westward in 1846 to avoid civil war.

In Utah, just months before the Mountain Meadows massacre, Mormons received word that yet another "prophet" had been killed: in April 1857, apostle Parley P. Pratt was shot in Arkansas by Hector McLean, the estranged husband of one of Pratt's plural wives, Eleanor McLean Pratt. Mormon leaders immediately proclaimed Pratt as another martyr, and compared his death with that of Joseph Smith. Many Mormons held the people of Arkansas responsible.

In 1857, Mormon leaders taught that the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent, and that God would soon exact punishment against the United States for persecuting Mormons and martyring "the prophets" Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, David W. Patten, and Parley P. Pratt. In their Endowment ceremony, faithful early Latter-day Saints took an Oath of vengeance against the murderers of the prophets. As a result of this oath, several Mormon apostles and other leaders considered it their religious duty to kill the prophets' murderers if they ever came across them.

The sermons, blessings, and private counsel by Mormon leaders just prior to the Mountain Meadows massacre can be understood as encouraging private individuals to execute God's judgment against the wicked. In Cedar City, Utah, church leaders taught that members should ignore dead bodies and go about their business. Col. William H. Dame, the ranking officer in southern Utah who ordered the Mountain Meadows massacre, received a patriarchal blessing in 1854 that he would "be called to act at the head of a portion of thy Brethren and of the Lamanites (Native Americans) in the redemption of Zion and the avenging of the blood of the prophets upon them that dwell on the earth". In June 1857, Philip Klingensmith, another participant, was similarly blessed that he would participate in "avenging the blood of Brother Joseph". The train led by Alexander Fancher waited outside Salt Lake City for more than a week as other groups caught up with them. The other, led by Captain John Twitty Baker was the last to arrive. Here the groups decided which route to take across the Great Basin to California. The Northern route to the California Trail, involved traveling the along the Humboldt River in Northern Nevada, west across the Nevada desert to California and across the Sierra Nevada mountains into Sacramento. This route put emigrants at risk of becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California as the Donner party had done ten years before. The Southern route went to the Old Spanish Trail, which would take them through the settlements in Southern Utah, through Southern Nevada (now Las Vegas) and then West through the arid dry Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County and eventually into Los Angelesbasin. At least one couple, Henry D. and Malinda Cameron Scott, chose to take the Northern route while others from the woman's family went south with the united parties under Captain Fancher.

It was reported to Brigham Young that the party was from Arkansas. It was also rumored - as presented in the "Argus" letters later published in the Corinne Daily Reporter - that Eleanor McLean Pratt, one of the apostle Pratt's plural wives, recognized one of the party as being present at her husband's murder. Other sources, however, state that Eleanor Pratt herself was not present at the murder.