Depictions in Popular Culture
A number of modern authors make references to "Danites" as a shadowy, secret group who terrorized 19th century Utah. These references usually appear in popular fiction or works critical of the LDS church, and rumors of Danites practicing some form of Blood atonement often play a significant role in these accounts.
Danites feature prominently in Story of the Destroying Angel by R.L. Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson, part of the collection The Dynamiter. Danites are represented as a world-wide secret organization of spies and assassins, dedicated to enforcing the edicts of Brigham Young. They are described as the force that makes Utah a "strong prison who can escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah?" (More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter). They are described as bloodthirsty murderers, planning the "massacre of sixty German immigrants" (ibid.) and with the ability of making dissenters disappear without a trace.
A particularly famous example is Arthur Conan Doyle's fictionalization of the Danites in A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, published in 1887. In the story, the Danites constitute a rather brutal group of enforcing vigilantes operating under the direction of Brigham Young—and more particularly the fictional Sacred Council of Four, silencing criticism and questioning, and preventing dissenters from leaving the Salt Lake Valley. Doyle's embellishment of the folklore surrounding the original Missouri band transplanted to a romantic wild west setting, the established criminal notoriety of Rockwell, and rumors of Young's Avenging Angels made acceptance of the "authoritative" Sherlock story a simple matter for English readers. However, after a visit to Utah in 1923, Doyle wrote more sympathetic Mormon characters into his work.
Sally Denton, in her book American Massacre, claims that the Danites and "blood atonement" had a prominent role in 19th century Utah society. Denton attributes the creation of the Danites to Joseph Smith as his "secret group of loyalists" and suggests that they became "one of the most legendarily feared bands in frontier America." According to Denton, this "consecrated, clandestine unit of divinely inspired assassins" introduced "the ritualized form of murder called blood atonement-providing the victim with eternal salvation by slitting his throat." Denton claims that "blood atonement" was one of the doctrines which Mormons held "most sacred" and that "hose who dared to flee Zion were hunted down and killed." Denton implies that large numbers of such "atonements" occurred during the Mormon reformation of 1856, although "none of the crimes were ever reported in the Deseret News", and that the "bloody regime…ended with Grant's sudden death, on December 1, 1856."
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