Maxwell, John Gary. The Last Called Mormon Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2022.
What motivated Mormon settlers to colonize frontier spaces? Historian Leonard Arrington observed that colonization in the mid-nineteenth century in the American West was a process directed by the church hierarchy. Church President Brigham Young “called” groups of people, often at the semi-annual General Conference, to populate the West. The language of “calling” mirrored the rhetoric about men called on missions. These settlers understood their colonization labor in religious terms; they were not only digging irrigation ditches, but they were also building Zion.[1] These settlers reported back to church leaders and received advice and support from them when needed. After Brigham Young’s death, however, new Mormon settlement patterns were less a product of institutional oversight and more driven by land-hungry settlers looking for decent land.[2] In his most recent book The Last Called Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, author John Gary Maxwell explores this theme of religious and economic motivations for Mormon colonization. He points to Church leader involvement in the Bighorn Basin and argues that it was the last place that the institutional church “called” its members to settle and represented a potential haven for polygamists.
Maxwell’s discussion of the religious calling of Mormon settlers is limited to the wave of settlers that arrived in 1900-1901. He acknowledges that the Mormon settlers that came to the region before and after did so as volunteers. He shows that Church leaders were interested in the area and promoted its settlement by publishing favorable newspaper articles about the region and assigning apostle Abraham Owen Woodruff to encourage Mormons to settle there. Church leaders also discussed subsidizing settlers railroad travel to Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin.
Yet Maxwell acknowledges later in the book that the First Presidency agreed not to issue “calls from the pulpit” and that many Mormon settlers could have been volunteers based on the positive press that this new area of colonization had received in the press.[3] Thus even his limited sample size of settlers in this small region in Wyoming were more complex than he recognizes in his title. Maxwell does not provide compelling primary source evidence that any settlers in the Bighorn region received a “calling” like they would have in the mid-nineteenth century. While Maxwell recognizes the importance of religiously motivated settlement and the involvement of Church leaders, he neglects to define what “calling” means in this study.
One of Maxwell’s central focuses is what he calls the “disingenuous denials” of Church leaders of polygamy after 1890 Manifesto.[4] Maxwell produces four tables throughout the book that list details about post-Manifesto cohabitation and marriage but does not cite where he obtained this information. In doing so, Maxwell elides some of the central contested nature of primary sources that historians face when looking at this period in Mormon history. His inattention to detail means that he makes mistakes, such as assuming that Matthias Cowley was excommunicated.[5] Maxwell also uses an interview with the current mayor of Cowley, Wyoming to help prove a historical point about the motivation of early Mormon settlers to the region.[6] His first and last chapter, over twenty percent of the book, details the general history of Mormon polygamy. By summarizing the scholarship of past historians, he misses the opportunity to show the details of the lives of polygamous families in the Bighorn Basin region and add nuance to the broader history of Mormon polygamy. The history of Mormonism in Wyoming is still under-developed when compared to other regional histories such as Mexico, Arizona, or Canada. Wyoming is one of the only places in the United States where Mormons talked about feeling “safe” to practice polygamy, particularly after the Manifesto.[7] Indeed Maxwell argues that Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin “was intended to preserve, in frontier isolation, a place to continue plural marriage.”[8] Maxwell shows his readers that polygamous Church leaders encouraged polygamous settlers to colonize the Bighorn Basin but he fails to show why that region fostered (and to some extent still does) polygamy. By prioritizing the history of the institutional church, he misses the opportunity to tell us a unique regional history of the geographic, political, and social conditions that made Wyoming a safe place for polygamists. We still need a history of Mormons in Wyoming that focuses on the politics of Cheyenne rather than Salt Lake City.
[1] Leonard J. Arrington and Ronald W. Walker, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900, New Edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958).
[2] Richard Sherlock, “Mormon Migration and Settlement after 1875,” Journal of Mormon History 2 (1975): 53–68.
[3] John Gary Maxwell, The Last Called Mormon Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2022), 96.
Spencer W. McBride, Jeffrey D. Mahas, Brett D. Dowdle, and Tyson Reeder, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents Volume 11: September 1842-February 1843 (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2020).
John C. Bennett, con man, and political insider, and former Joseph Smith confidante, left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in July 1842. His departure catalyzed a series of changes within Joseph Smith’s religious movement, particularly as the Latter-day Saint prophet and his followers scrambled to adjust to the curious media’s attention and their neighbor’s vitriol.
Those changes are transcribed, annotated, and verified in the 105 documents that comprise the eleventh volume of the Documents series of the Joseph Smith Papers, released in October 2020. These documents fall broadly into three categories. First, the extradition attempts led by Lilburn W. Boggs, related to an assassination attempt that took place on May 6, 1842. The Missouri governor believed that the Latter-day Saints bore responsibility, and, so his logic went, it must have happened on Joseph Smith’s orders. The Latter-day Saint leader won a court case that denied Missouri’s extradition attempt—Smith’s followers celebrated at parties and in song.[1]
Smith was also busy trying to put out the gossipy blaze that was John C. Bennett’s speaking tour. The former Nauvoo mayor and member of the LDS Church’s First Presidency had published several letters that shared scandalous details about Joseph Smith’s practice of plural marriage. As the JSPP editorial team writes, “Smith was, in fact, secretly practicing plural marriage in Nauvoo by this time.” Furthermore, “he had introduced the practice to a small circle of Latter-day Saint, but most church members were not aware of it.”[2] Bennett spun some yarns and “seemingly fabricated” several of his claims, but the truth was irrelevant to a hungry public’s appetite for salacious details about the Mormon prophet.[3]
Lest readers and historians forget, Joseph Smith was also a religious leader. Documents 11 shows how Smith directed his church, oversaw the temple’s construction, wrote editorials for the Church’s newspaper, and elaborated on his teachings regarding the practice of vicarious baptism for the dead. Of utmost importance is also remembering that Joseph Smith felt a deep-seeded duty to protect “his family and his fellow Latter-day Saints from persecution.” (JSPP Press Release).
Map of Nauvoo
The JSPP volume editors for D11 were gracious enough to meet with scholars and journalists to share a few personal reflections and highlights.
Spencer McBride began with a quote from Joseph Smith’s journal from a different JSPP volume to introduce what the Latter-day Saint prophet said about his leadership: that he did not expect perfection from his followers and they should not expect perfection from him. Infallibity was never on the table. Which, McBride reminds us, is important to keep in mind for both devotional members of the Church and scholars. I would add a paraphrased line from O Brother Where Art Thou: one’s ideals and one’s actions don’t always align.
Historian Spencer W. McBride explains how Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo used the still-unfinished Nauvoo temple for worship services in 1842 and 1843
Brett Dowdle introduced a letter from September 7, 1842 on baptisms for the dead. Like Dowdle, I was fascinated by the time that Smith took, while in isolation while evading Missouri’s authorities, to dictate such a long letter. Smith included an immense amount of detail, he said that “you may find this very particular,” but it’s because of his commitment to preserving a record that could be used by God at judgment. Historians everywhere may have different concerns, but I think I speak for us all when I say “thank you for insisting on careful recordkeeping!”
Brett Dowdle introduction records of baptism for the dead in Nauvoo
Jeffrey Mahas explained that Joseph Smith spent a lot of this time in hiding while negotiating his way out of Missouri’s arrest warrants, related to a murder attempt on Lilburn W. Boggs’ life. Mahas calls this likely the greatest legal victory of Joseph Smith’s life. When returning home from court, several Saints composed a song, including lines by Eliza R. Snow. MAHAS THEN SANG THE FIRST VERSE. Friends, this was a time never to be forgotten.
After a stirring rendition of the jubilee song, Mahas pointed out that the song praised Thomas Ford, who later becomes notorious in Mormon history. Eliza R. Snow’s wrote:
“Protection’s wreath again will bloom Reviv’d by Thomas Ford; Which under Carlin had become Like Jonah’s wither’d gourd…
Like Freedom’s true and genuine son, Oppression to destroy, His Excellency has begun To Govern Illinois…
His ‘Mormon’ subjects fondly trust, The citizens will share, A legislation wise and just, While he retains the Chair, While foul oppression’s &c.
The Jubillee Songs, Docs 11, 334.
On to the Q&A:
Dowdle noted that the September 7 letter was special because he doesn’t necessarily produce long letters or discourses like that document, but that he’s still operating with “space” to think. McBride noted that Smith’s life was busy at this time (per usual), but that he was still busy. The types of documents are unique in this period because he’s not preaching, but he’s able to produce a lot of documentation, including on things like currency. Mahas added that he is in hiding, but still near Nauvoo. Smith ends up moving thirty miles upriver from the City of Joseph, where he doesn’t have friends, family, or scribes to record his thoughts at this point (Smith preferred to dictate rather than write). A later account by someone who spent time with Joseph Smith at this time remembered a lot of boredom.
In response to a question about Bennett, McBride said that Joseph Smith was on the defensive, but that it’s essential to remember that many of Smith’s teachings are geared towards assuring converts moving to Nauvoo. Many are coming to Illinois expecting jobs and could be disappointed in what was available. Smith’s concern was with the Saints, though it would be oversimplifying to discount Bennett’s speaking tour against Mormonism.
A question came in about the consistency in annotation, style, etc. comes from frequent review, collaboration, and a consistent effort to have an authorial voice.
This year members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commemorate the 200th anniversary of the First Vision. Such community awareness surrounding the date and religious meaning of that founding visionary event has been historicized by the recent publication of Steven C. Harper: First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins. Oxford University Press (2019).
There were always a million things going on in the life of Mormonism’s founding prophet. But when Joseph Smith had time and secretaries, he set himself to work in matters from the mundane to the metaphysical. That’s certainly the case for the period from May-August 1842 (Joseph Smith Papers Documents, Volume 10, or D10), as he “introduced new religious rituals, directed missionary work, and struggled to organize resources for the hundreds of converts from the United States and England who continued to gather to Nauvoo, Illinois.”[i] Ranging from letters, newspaper selections, financial documents, revelations, and even Nauvoo city scrip (currency), D10’s editors have provided a marvelous set of 105 records for scholars to understand Smith’s chaotic life better.
Brian Q. Cannon and Clyde A. Milner II, eds., Reconstruction and Mormon America (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).
In his 2002 presidential address for the Western History Association, Elliot West argued that American historians needed to think more broadly and holistically when considering race in the nineteenth century. The conflict between North and South over slavery that led to the Civil War was not the only problem surrounding race that vexed D.C. politicians. He writes:
At the moment we took the most dramatic step in our history toward racial justice, freeing one nonwhite people from slavery, we were gathering up skulls of another, and doing it on the premise that this nation was composed of starkly defined races that learned men could tabulate into an obvious hierarchy from best to worst. (1)
Six years later, West explained this further by arguing for what he called a “Greater Reconstruction” that spanned from the annexation of Texas in 1845 to the United States defeat of the Nez Percein 1877. (2) During this period, the United States government tried to assert power over two separate and simultaneous processes: successionist claims of the South over the institution of slavery and westward expansion in spite of the host of sovereign people occupying those lands. Greater Reconstruction thus implies both the expansion of federal power and the ways it strove to incorporate and exclude racial and religious others from citizenship. West argues that Reconstruction is best understood under a broader frame that incorporates federal actions in the West as well as the South.
Mormon Reconstruction takes West’s claims and tests them against the historical experiences of Mormons in the West during the nineteenth century. In doing so, this slate of well-accomplished scholars – in both Mormon history and Western history – tests Reconstruction in the West more generally to see how the idea of Greater Reconstruction works on the Mormon case. The essays in the edited collection come from the contributions and discussion from a 2017 seminar held at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University.
The most compelling chapters of the bookare the ones that explicitly define (and problematize) the relationship between Mormonism and Reconstruction. Patrick Mason, for example, questions whether the term Reconstruction can be applied to a religious culture still in construction. Rachel St John builds on Mason’s critique of Mormon (re)construction and argues that the term loses its meaning when used to expansively cover both the South and the West. Reconstruction in the South occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. It was a rebuilding effort for a nation fractured over slavery. In the West, however, the federal government was still working to establish its authority. The federal government was still building its presence in the West as it was Reconstructing its presence in the South.
Elliot West and Rachel St John offer divergent methods. West urges historians to consider Reconstruction as a national project that took different forms in the West and the South; only then, he says, can we understand the contradictory relationships the state created as its power grew over the course of the nineteenth century. St John, by contrast, wants historians to get specific about what Reconstruction is. Does Greater Reconstruction entail a particular kind of state building and population control? Have we stretched Reconstruction’s time period so far that its boundaries no longer have a distinct meaning? Answering these questions, St John argues, shows that the connections between the history of the West and the South become “both too historically specific and insufficiently broad to encompass the diverse and far-reaching processes of state formation, nation building, colonization, and subordination of racial and minority groups that shaped North America in the nineteenth century.” (188)
If specificity is the goal, applying Mormon history to the already nebulous term of Greater Reconstruction creates another problem. What period of nineteenth century Mormon history merits the term Reconstruction? Authors of the volume seem undecided on this question. Angela Pulley Hudson engages with the idea of Mormon expulsion in the 1830s and 40s as potentially part of the Reconstruction experience. The majority of the authors focus on the Utah War in the late 1850s as the main period of Mormon Reconstruction. Meanwhile, I was surprised to find little explicit discussion of the 1880s when the federal government cracked down on the enforcing laws criminalizing polygamy (a period that legal historian Sarah Barringer Gordon called “Second Reconstruction”). (3) This multiplicity of moments in Mormon history (spanning fifty years) represents a whole array of interactions with the federal government. During these fifty years both the federal government and Mormonism as a movement changed and grew immensely. What does it mean then to speak collectively about a Mormon Reconstruction that references all these different moments?
What this book does best is model how historians of different backgrounds can come together disagree on a concept in a productive way. The diversity of the chapters give us a sense of the spirited debate that Brian Q. Cannon and Clyde A. Milner II fostered during their symposium. The idea of Reconstruction and Mormonism’s place inside it is never taken for granted in this book but something that authors can discuss, expand upon, and question.
(2) Elliott West, The Last Indian War the Nez Perce Story, Pivotal Moments in American History (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
(3) Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) 144. The lack of discussion of the 1880s is a lost opportunity for the authors of this book, for a few reasons. Firstly, Mormons explicitly saw the conflict between them and the federal government through the lens of Reconstruction politics. They referred to federal agents as carpetbaggers and created political ties with Southern politicians based on a shared sympathy from this experience. Additionally, the raids of the 1880s (and 1890s) represent an opportunity to broaden the Mormon element of Reconstruction beyond just Utah. The mass imprisonment of Mormon men occurred not just in Utah but also in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming.
Gina Colvin and Joanna Brooks provide an important intervention into the field of Mormon studies with their edited volume of essays by thirteen scholars. The authors in Decolonizing Mormonism show the power dynamics that become visible by looking at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through a global lens. By viewing Mormonism from the margins, these scholars argue, it is possible to see the colonial history and structures within the LDS tradition. Colvin and Brooks are not just interested in producing scholarship to observe these dynamics. They also call for change, saying that the metropole needs to listen to these voices forgotten both by the institutional church and by Mormon studies scholars. These authors argue that the margins provide the answers to decolonize both the church and scholarship and bring Zion into existence. This is not just an historical text. The intent of this book is to challenge the stories often reflected in Mormon history, arguing that scholars can no longer be complacent in the continued narratives of colonization.
Once I wrote this sentence: “The musical Saturday’s Warrior might well be the most influential theological text within the church since Bruce R. McConkie’s strikingly assertive 1958 Mormon Doctrine.” At the time I stared at the line on my computer and then deleted them. It felt like the claim needed more unpacking that I was in a position to do at the moment. Thankfully, Jake Johnson has stepped forward to do that work. Here is a creative and often insightful reading of Mormon popular culture, a topic that certainly deserves this sort of attention.
Johnson’s argument is that musical theater has been particularly influential within the LDS church for two reasons.
First, Mormons embrace what Johnson calls a “theology of voice.” The spoken word is particularly influential among church members, he claims, because of the church’s emphasis upon prophecy. “Mormonism’s loquacious God,” says Johnson, delegates the power of his voice. (14) This phenomenon, which Mormon theologians have called “divine investiture,” dates back as far as Joseph Smith’s First Vision, in which God appointed Jesus to speak for him, and Jesus in turn made Joseph Smith a prophet. Smith then delegated that power to other authoritative figures. Though Johnson does not unpack this unfolding of prophecy as thoroughly as he might, this ecclesiology of delegation and appointment is for him preeminently an act of speech. Authority is expressed through echoing the language and even verbal style (that is, the voice) of those in authority, as David Knowlton has observed of the vocal patterns of the LDS testimony meeting.
This is, I think, a smart argument, and in an odd way I think it reveals the faith’s rootedness in American Protestantism, whose reliance on Scripture is always in an uneasy embrace with the verbal word of the preacher. Protestants produced innumerable manuals of preaching produced in nineteenth century America, and the ways in which they sought to reconcile the authority of the written word with the mass appeal of the verbal word are strikingly similar to the tensions of authority Johnson sees within Joseph Smith’s nascent movement. For instance, Johnson cites the famous minister Henry Ward Beecher, who dismissed the theater as “garish” and “buffoonery.” (58) But of course, Beecher was famous precisely for his skill in preaching, his theatrical, imposing presence behind the pulpit, and he had many ideas about the relationship between scripture, verbalization, and truth (most tending toward the liberal).
Johnson traces this impulse toward speech and investiture through Mormon history, spending much of his time with the famous “transfiguration” of Brigham Young in August 1844, at which Young, speaking to the gathered and confused faithful in the wake of the assassination of Joseph Smith, was said to have taken on the image and voice of Smith. For Johnson, this was an act of mimicry. Young was, as Johnson notes, known for love of acting and the theater, and Johnson believes he consciously took on Smith’s voice and affect in an attempt to demonstrate his loyalty and take on the mantle of the fallen prophet.
Military chaplains are tasked with leading worship, teaching the faithful, and burying the dead, among other things. In her book, Ronit Stahl lays out a broad narrative that argues that the military chaplaincy was responsible for much more than the souls of soldiers; chaplains may have a distinct mandate of spiritual care, but the chaplaincy itself was involved in a much bigger project: that of reflecting and shaping modern American responses to religious pluralism, issues of race and gender, and the separation of church and state. As America changed and the hegemony of Protestantism waned, the chaplaincy underwent changes too. In eight chapters and an epilogue, Stahl demonstrates the shift in demographics and public life that took the chaplaincy from a generically Protestant institution to a tri-faith model accommodating Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, to the situation today where 221 faiths are recognized in one form or another.
Juvenile Instructor is grateful for a JI-emeritus writer, Brett Dowdle, for writing this review! Dr. Dowdle is a historian for the Joseph Smith Papers Project and holds a Ph.D. in American History from Texas Christian University.
Review, Thomas G. Alexander, Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).
Despite its immense popularity, few
genres of historical writing are more complex than that of biography. Those
figures who tend to merit the kind of biographies that will be widely read
generally carry with them a host of popular perceptions and myths that either
border on demonization or hagiographic adoration. In most cases, the best
biographies must ultimately find someplace in the muddy middle, displaying the
complexity and humanity of the subject. Thomas Alexander’s recent biography of
Brigham Young does an admirable job of finding just such a place for the
controversial leader. The result is a highly readable and fast-paced biography
that is approachable to both trained historians and the interested public.
This is the third post in a roundtable on Quincy D. Newell’s Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019). Find the first and second here
Newell knows the value of a good story, but she is also wary of the simplistic historical messages that such stories send. Newell is critical of the scholars of religious history who tell only the liberatory story of Biddy Mason*, an African American woman who sued and won her freedom in a California court, and not that of Jane Manning James who repeatedly and unsuccessfully petitioned white male church leaders to receive her temple endowments. Newell critiques this absence in the historiographical record but she is also wary of the narratives that do get told about Jane. In the post-1978 era, after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lifted the temple and priesthood ban on its black members, historians and members alike have searched for racial diversity in the Church’s beginnings. They have resurrected Jane’s story because it highlights this diversity and, more importantly, because it shows her close interactions with the movement’s founder, Joseph Smith. Newell is, however, also unsatisfied with these narratives. She writes:
as a scholar of American religious history, I often find these popular representations of Jane James deeply discomfiting. The stereotypes of blackness, the “traditional” constructions of femininity, and the selective presentations of fact that they employ make me squirm. They flatten Jane’s experience, tidying up the messiness of her life. (4)
Newell’s book therefore serves as a counter to this easy narrative about Jane. It is the anecdote to excluding Jane from the historical record and to over-simplifying Jane.
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”
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Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”