Brigham Young's Attempt To Enlist Native Americans To Fight "the Americans"
Brigham Young, as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Utah Territory, built strong diplomatic ties with the area's Native American tribes. When it became clear there would be an invasion by U.S. troops, he sought to enlist them to join Mormons in fighting the "Americans".
On August 4, 1857, Young notified Jacob Hamblin that he was appointed President of the Santa Clara Indian Mission and instructed him to to continue a concilitory policy towards the Indians. "..they must learn that they either got to help us, or the United States will kill us both".
Young sent his trusted interpreter Dimick B. Huntington to various tribes with wagon loads of food. Huntington told Native Americans that the Utah War was a battle, prophesied in the Book of Mormon, between Mormons and Native Americans, on the one hand, and "gentiles" (non-Mormon whites) on the other. Young's message for the tribes was that they should "be at peace with all men except the Americans". Scholars disagree whether Young intended the Native American tribes to fight all non-Mormon Americans, including emigrants, or just the approaching U.S. Army.
No disapproval was expressed by Huntington when told by Shoshones that cows, horses, and mules had been stolen from Californians. Wilford Woodruff recorded Young's message to the Mormon apostles on August 26, 1857, "The Gentile emigrants shoot the indians wharever they meet with them & the Indians now retaliate & will kill innocent People.", On August 30, 1857, Huntington gave a group of northern tribes "all the beef cattle & horses that was on the road to Calfornia, the North rout".
On September 1, 1857, frontiersman James Gemmell was in Young's office with Hamblin, who had accompanied the group of tribal leaders (including Ammon, Kanosh, Tutsegabit, and Youngwids), and George A. Smith on his return to Salt Lake, all of whom had camped near the Baker-Fancher party.
When Hamblin told Young that the Arkansas train was near Cedar City, Young said, according to Gemmell (whose statement derives from an 1896 posthumous source named Wheeler), that if he were in charge of the Nauvoo Legion he "would wipe them out." These chiefs then met with Huntington and Brigham Young, where the Native American leaders were given "all the cattle that had gone to Cal. the south rout." The Native American leaders questioned this, because previously, the Mormons had told them not to steal cattle. Young acknowledged this, but said, "now they have come to fight us & you, for when they kill us then they will kill you." Modern scholars generally agree that Brigham Young was authorizing Native American leaders to steal emigrant cattle. And there is evidence that a policy that Native Americans should steal emigrants' cattle was put into effect against emigrant groups other than the Fancher–Baker party.
Read more about this topic: War Hysteria Preceding The Mountain Meadows Massacre
Famous quotes containing the words brigham, young, attempt, enlist, native, americans and/or fight:
“John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on.”
—Thomas Brigham Bishop (1835–1905)
“Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“A man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow men.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a Protective Monastery of Aesthetic Truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)