“A son of the Forest” and “an intelligent son of Abraham”: Orson Hyde and Samuel Smith meet William Apess, 1832

In June 1832, Orson Hyde and Samuel H. Smith arrived in Boston, Massachusetts to preach Mormonism to the people of what was then the fourth largest city in the United States. The previous year, a young Methodist woman had traveled from Boston to Kirtland, Ohio, been baptized a Mormon, and then returned to her Massachusetts home. That woman—Vienna Jacques—had prepared several of her friends and family members for the arrival of the itinerant missionaries, and Hyde and Smith gained several converts that summer, a number of whom came from the Bromfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church, to which Jacques had belonged prior to her conversion to Mormonism.[1]

The Mormon Reserve

This installment of the JI’s Mormons and Natives Month comes from Paul Reeve, associate professor of history at the University of Utah and frequent guest blogger at the JI.

In every instance where Mormons faced growing animosity from outsiders and tension escalated between Mormons and their neighbors, accusations of a Mormon-Indian conspiracy were among the charges. The Mormon expulsions from Jackson County, Missouri, from Clay County, Missouri, and from the state of Missouri altogether, along with their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, and the later Utah War were all events notably marked by claims that Mormons were combining with Indians to wage war against white America.

Outsiders did not always see war and conspiracy, however, when they conflated Mormons with Indians. Sometimes the conflation was in the search for a solution to the Mormon problem. Such was the case in early 1845 as residents of Hancock County, Illinois cast about for a resolution to their increasingly untenable situation. As my contribution to JI’s Mormons and Natives theme month, I offer below an excerpt from my book project, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (Oxford). It describes a little known effort following the Murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith to find a peaceful resolution to the tension between “old settlers” in Hancock County and the Mormons. It is an interesting episode in its own right; but beyond the details of the story, larger themes emerge, a tangled weave of Mormon and Indian threads which outsiders sometimes used to blur the distinction between the two groups and justify discriminatory policies against both.

Within seven months of the murder of the Smith brothers, one minor political figure, William P. Richards from Macomb, Illinois, fifty miles East of Nauvoo, offered a potential solution to the mounting tension between the Mormons and Hancock County residents. In February 1845, Richards proposed a plan patterned after the Indian Removal Act (1830) from the previous decade. This time the correlation between Mormons and Indians moved in a new direction, toward a potential resolution of the Mormon problem that was based upon the Indian solution. In light of the continuing strain between Mormons and outsiders, a condition that Richards believed was “on the very eve of violent and bloody collision,” he offered a plan. His proposal called for a land “Reserve to be set apart by Congress for the Mormon people exclusively,” a place where they would be “safe from intrusion and molestation.” He called for a twenty-four mile square section of land, North of Illinois and West of Wisconsin, bordering the western edge of the Mississippi River, to be “forever set apart and known and designated as the Mormon Reserve.” With a design reminiscent of Indian reservations, Richards’ proposal authorized the president to appoint and the Senate to ratify a “superintendent” to administer the reserve and ensure that only Mormons settled there. They would be allowed to draft a constitution for themselves, so long as it did not violate the U. S. Constitution, and thereby enjoy a measure of freedom and self-determination.

As the proposal circulated locally, Richards defended it and met with Mormon leaders to cultivate their favor. The initial response from the Mormons was positive, although one leader believed that twenty-four square miles was inadequate space for the growing number of Mormons. Richards was not opposed to a larger reserve or to other potential locations in Oregon, Texas, or land west of Indian Territory.

In making his case, Richards noted that the Indian Removal Act established a precedent for such a land reserve. It was a policy for the Indians that he deemed “at once enlightened and humane.” It moved them to a country where they were “secure from future intrusion” and put them in possession of homes that were “sure and permanent.” Richards admitted that it was “not very complimentary to the Mormons to place them in the same category” as the Indians, but his focus was upon a peaceful solution to the Mormon problem and he believed that the example of Indian removal offered exactly that. As he saw it, removing the Mormons to land “set apart for their exclusive occupancy and use” would eliminate the threat of outside persecution. With persecution eliminated as a binding force among Mormons internally, Richards predicted “their present rampant religious zeal would evaporate in a single generation and the Sect as such, become extinct.” If they stayed at Nauvoo, he feared the opposite, “constant turmoil, collision, outrage and perchance,–extensive bloodshed.”

It was an echo from President Andrew Jackson’s justifications for the Indian Removal Act (1830). Jackson, in his 1830 State of the Union Address, argued that providing the Native Americans land West of the Mississippi River and far removed from outside interference was a humane option designed to save the Indians from extinction. “The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward,” he argued, and the Indian Removal Act would send the Indians “to a land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual.” To save the Indian from “perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home.”

Beyond a period of local discussion and debate, Richards’ plan did not generate enough interest nationally to garner serious consideration. It did nonetheless indicate the persistent ways in which some outsiders linked Mormons to Indians, not just as a danger, but also in the search for a solution. It further demonstrated how dramatically Mormons were deemed different, a people so distinct, so potentially hostile to American democracy, that they required physical separation, ostensibly to preserve them from the crush of civilization but in reality to preserve civilization from the threat of Mormon savagery.

Rather than an organized “reserve,” Illinois citizens banished the Mormons to their own fate, an expulsion from “civilization” to a new refuge in northern Mexico among “savage” bands of Great Basin Indians. In light of the earlier accusations surrounding the Missouri expulsions, the Mormons found themselves in an ironic bind. As Brigham Young put it, Missourians had accused them of the “intention to tamper with the Indians” and so removed them from that state and their relative proximity to the Indians. Then, ten years later, he said, “it was found equally necessary . . . to drive us from Nauvoo into the very midst of the Indians, as unworthy of any other society.” It was an absurd contradiction for the Mormons, one in which they recognized their own marginalization alongside Native Americans, people whom they were supposed to simultaneously stay away from for fear of conspiracy and live amongst for lack of whiteness

Painting the Mythical and the Heroic: Joseph Smith Preaches to the American Indians

By Laura Allred Hurtado, with David G. Note: This represents preliminary and ongoing research for the Armitage painting. 

In 1890, British born painter and founder of the Utah Art Association William Armitage created the massive historic painting, Joseph Smith Preaching to the Indians. The artwork, which once hung with prominence in the Salt Lake Temple, now fills the wall leading up to the 2nd floor of the Church History Museum. The scale itself means that it demands the attention of the entire room, standing almost as a sentinel within the space. The painting depicts, as the title suggests, a well-dressed Smith preaching to a crowd of nearly forty American Indians which surround the frame. Smith?s outstretched right arm gestures heavenward while his left hand holds the Book of Mormon, a book that according to historian Ronald W. Walker was ?not just a record of the ?Lamanite? or Native American people, but a highly unusual manifesto of their destiny.?[1] Smith stands triumphantly and confidently among this crowd of mostly male Indians whose expressions vary from guarded, taken aback, distrusting, perhaps even provoked but in all instances, they are engaged, looking toward Joseph and his distinct message regarding the destiny of North America?s Indigenous peoples.

Continue Reading

Return of Ma?ii: Brigham Young and his Indian Farms

This installment in the JI’s Mormons and Natives month comes from Corey Smallcanyon. He is a Dine’ (Navajo) Indian from the Gallup, New Mexico area, who grew up on and off the Navajo reservation. He works as an Adjunct Professor with Utah Valley University teaching United States History. His emphasis is in U.S. History, the American West, Utah history, LDS history, Native American and Navajo history. In his spare time he volunteers teaching Navajo genealogy to surrounding areas and spending time with his family.

Among the Dine’ (Navajos) Ma’ii (coyote) stands center stage as a trouble maker, wise counselor, cultural hero, and powerful deity. Ma’ii stories help establish a foundation for the ethical teachings for all children. Early traditional memory tells of Ma’ii who tried to steal the farm of Grandfather Na’asho’ii Dich’izhii (Horned Toad). Ma’ii came “wandering” upon Na’asho’ii Dich’izhii tending his farm and asked for some of his corn to eat. After much begging, Na’asho’ii Dich’izhii gave into Ma’ii’s demands, but Ma’ii was not satisfied and began taking more without permission. As Na’asho’ii Dich’izhii tried to take the corn away Ma’ii ate Na’asho’ii Dich’izhii. Upset with his predicament, Na’asho’ii Dich’izhii was eventually able to make his way out of Ma’ii, and triumphed by taking back his farm.[1]

As Jim Dandy, a Mormon Navajo traditionalist, states that Ma’ii is one of the most misunderstood animals, “He is neither good nor bad, just innocent and trying to understand how everything works,” although he admits his innocence creates problems for people.[2] The enigma known as Brigham Young falls into this dilemma of how to view his Indian policies and treatment of a group who considered themselves as “the People.”[3] As leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Governor of Utah Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs; this allowed Young to deal with Natives in three different capacities; which included the creation of a multifaceted program known as Indian farms.

Young oversaw near 100 colonies within the first ten years of reaching the Great Basin. His initial Indian policy was of peace and kindness; but that was overshadowed by his expansion onto choice Native lands, over exertion of limited natural resources, and exploitation of traditional sources of foods Natives relied on.[4] The solution to Young’s Indian Problems mirrored all other Americas with the removal of Natives onto reservations. The culminating issues resulted in armed conflict which was quite costly and fostered in officially his policy that it was cheaper to feed Indians than to fight them.

By 1850, the Trickster wrote Washington D.C. requesting the extinguishment of Indian title to the land, and the removal of Natives to locations outside of present-day Utah. He argued that “the progress of civilization, the safety of the mails and the welfare of the Indians themselves called for the adoption of this policy.”[5] Although his request was denied, mini-reservations were created around 1852 and called Indian farms. Many view these farms as a “policy of cultural integration”[6] to show Natives “a way wherein they could help themselves overcome their destitute condition and become self-sustaining,”[7] but also to monitor their semi-nomadic movement. Young’s Indian farms would be short lived ending around 1859 because they proved to be inadequate or failed completely.[8]

No longer does Ma’ii “wander” around trying to control the Dine’ or take their land. Now he offers a way for “the People” to live in two worlds. In June 2008, the Tuba City Arizona Stake called Larry Justice as its new leader.[9] As other denominations are hurting for converts, Justice helped introduce a modern-day Indian farm program in Tuba City, an area the Church has had a long turbulent history with the local Navajo and Hopi Indians. On October 30, 2013, the New York Times published an article about this gardening program, “Some Find Path to Navajo Roots Through Mormon Church,” written by Fernanda Santos. In 2009, the pilot program was launched and since then the Church has seen a 25 percent increase in membership. The program originally started with 25-30 Church members and has increased to 1,800 gardens with plans of adding 500 more in 2014 with at least 50 percent of the participants being non-Mormons. As a result the Church has plans to expand the gardening program into other parts of the world with hopes of converting indigenous peoples by teaching them “principles of self-reliance and Provident Living, through gardening.”[10] As Santos focuses on the gardening program, Justice stated that the Tuba City Stake has a “two-pronged approach–gardening and family history work,” which is discussed in Samantha DeLaCerda’s article in Church News, “Garden Project in Arizona” written in March 2012.

As for the new Tuba City converts, Santos notes: Nora Kaibetoney (Dine’) states that even though Mormonism compels them to leave behind part of their Dine’ identity, the Church helps enforce Dine’ values of “charity, camaraderie and respect for the land.” Linda Smith (Dine’) stated that joining the Church “wasn’t about turning away and embracing an entirely different tradition; it was about reconnecting.” Sam Charlie (Dine’) also stated that he “went on the LDS Placement Program for four years and never learned how to grow a garden. It has been a wonderful thing to recapture this lost element of our culture.”[11] Justice told reporters that through the garden program, “Navajos connect with their heritage through the land.”[12] I wish there was more of an allowance here to navigate the use of the sacredness of land as a missionary tool among “Native” peoples.

These stories of Ma’ii are not just meaningless folklore. They have great worth to the Dine’ because they express, enhance and enforce the morals and customs of Dine’ society. A “wandering” Ma’ii is a representation of socially unacceptable behavior, but the eventual victory and good fortune of those whom “wandering” Ma’ii tries to trick, cheat or destroy just reaffirms the eventual triumph of justice and morality. As the 21st century Dine’ people try to understand Ma’ii, we become transitional and walk between two worlds. As many celebrate Native American Heritage Month, a unifying theme is a reminder to the world that we are still here. This message applies to Ma’ii and his Indian farms, past or present. As Natives learn to adapt to the 21st century, Ma’ii still is as ambiguous today as he always has been.

______

[1] Robert Roessel, Jr. and Dillon Platero, eds., Coyote Stories of the Navajo People (Rough Rock, AZ: Navajo Curriculum Center Press, 1974), 85-90; Margaret Schevill Link and Joseph L. Henderson, The Pollen Path: A Collection of Navajo Myths (Literacy Licensing, LLC, 2011), 48-49; also see, Shonto Begay, Ma’ii and Cousin Horned Toad: A Traditional Navajo Story (Scholastic Trade, 1992).

[2] Robert S. McPherson, Jim Dandy, and Sarah E. Burak, Navajo Tradition, Mormon Life: The Autobiography and Teachings of Jim Dandy (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2012), 183.

[3] The Shoshone call themselves Newe, meaning “People;” Goshute is a Shoshone word for “Desert People;” the Navajo call themselves Dine’ meaning “the People;” the Northern Paiute call themselves Numa and Southern Paiute call themselves Nuwuvi, both meaning “the People;” and the Ute call themselves Nuciu meaning “the People.”

[4] Young often championed for the needs of local Natives with sentiments like, “Before the whites came, there was plenty of fish and antelope, plenty of game of almost every description; but now the whites have killed off these things, and there is scarcely anything left for the poor natives to live upon,” but his actions usually ended up benefiting his members, which was his main concern. See Brigham Young, “Wilford Woodruff sermon on 15 July 1855,” Journal of Discourses, 9:227.

[5] Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 16 November 1850. Young again asked for the creation of Indian reservations in 1852, 1854, and 1861. President Abraham Lincoln signed an Executive Order establishing the Uintah Valley Reservation in 1861, which was finally signed by Congress on May 5, 1864. Eventually, other reservations would be established for the removal of all Natives in Utah. In 1863, the Shoshones and Goshutes signed treaties for removal, and after years of conflict between the Indians, Mormons, Utah and Federal governments, reservations were established for the Goshutes at Skull Valley in 1912 and Deep Creek in 1914. The Shoshone never received a reservation until the donation of land by the LDS church in 1960. In 1865 the Paiutes also agreed to hand over tribal lands and over years of conflict were given several reservations which included the Shivwits (1891), Indian Peaks (1915), Koosharem (1928), Kanosh (1929), and Cedar Band (1980). The White Mesa Utes signed over tribal lands in 1868 and never received a reservation in Utah and are unrecognized by the federal government. The tribe did purchase lands at White Mesa and some tribal members reside there. The Navajos also signed over tribal lands through the 1868 treaty and were given reservation lands in southern Utah in 1884. See Forrest S. Cuch, ed., A History of Utah’s American Indians (Salt Lake City: Utah State Division of Indian Affairs and Utah State Division of history, 2003), 67-72, 104, 113-19, 139, 141-65, 189-94, 243, 261, 288-90.

[6] Richard H. Jackson, “The Mormon Indian Farms: An Attempt at Cultural Integration” in Geographical Perspectives on Native Americans: Topics and Resources, Vol. 1, (Washington D.C.: Association of American Geographers, 1976).

[7] Frederick R. Gowans. A History of Brigham Young’s Indian Superintendency (1851-1857) “Problems and Accomplishments (July 1963), 39.

[8] Trying to find a solution to his Indian problems, Young attempted to settle Natives on farms established under the watchful eye of Mormon superintendents in 1852. This at least attempted to assist Natives in finding another source of food, but these farms would be short lived, by 1859, conflicts with non-Mormons hindered Mormon interactions with Natives. Federal Indian agents argued that Mormons were trying to influence Natives against the United States and recommend that Natives in Utah Territory then be placed on reservations within Utah Territory, where they could have legal jurisdiction over the Natives (see, David Bigler, “Garland Hurt: The American Friend of the Utahs,” Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Spring 1994), 149-70). After the Civil War, the conflict in Utah between the Natives, Mormons and non-Mormons brought about the creation of Utah’s first Indian reservation. It was soon found that Young’s Indian farms either proved to be inadequate or failed completely. The idea of Indian farms did pique the interest of the Indian agents and implemented Indian farms among a number of tribes. In part this eventually evolved into the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 (a.k.a. General Allotment Act), which divided Native lands into allotments for individuals with the hopes that Natives would farm their lands and become productive members of white society, with surplus Native lands ending up in the hands of non-Natives (see, Beverly Beeton, “Teach Them to Till the Soil: An Experiment with Indian Farms, 1850-1862,” American Indian Quarterly Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter, 1977-78), 299-320).

[9] “New Stake Presidents,” Church News (1 November 2008).

[10] Aside from the embedded link, see See Allie Schulte, “Seeds of Self-Reliance,” Ensign (March 2011), 61-65.

[11] Allen Christensen, “Bountiful Garden,” Church News (October 2, 2010)

[12] Tad Walch, “Why are more Navajos joining LDS Church”, Deseret News (October 31, 2013)

Ed. This post has been updated.

Mormons and Natives: A JI Blogliography

Since the JI’s founding in 2007, our permas and guests have spent a lot of time thinking about Mormonism’s encounters with indigenous peoples. Here’s a “blogliography” (ht: Blair) of our past posts on the subject, through October 2013:

Continue Reading

Mormon History and the history of Indigenous Peoples: a top 10 list

One of the difficulties with engaging in new fields of inquiry is finding out what books are essential for providing a background in the topic. As part of our month investigating the relationship between indigenous people and the LDS Church at the Juvenile Instructor, we have compiled a list dealing with the top 10 books on Native American, Polynesian, and other native peoples within Mormon history. Compiling the list of books was difficult because it raised issues of how much weight should be placed on different categories. How should we weight syntheses vs. monographs? How much should theory count over information? How do you compare books about different locales and different time periods? How should articles count?

Included with each books is a description of its contents from Amazon.

In no particular order, they are:

Continue Reading

The Re-Convergence of Mormon and Indian History

This installment of the JI’s Mormons and Natives month comes from Matthew Garrett, associate professor of history at Bakersfield College in California. He received his Ph.D. in American History from Arizona State University in 2010. He is currently revising for publication his dissertation, “Mormons, Indians, and Lamanites: The Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000,”  which should prove to be the definitive history of the ISPP.

When David G. approached me to contribute to this month’s theme, I initially thought the notion of a “Mormons and Natives” field of study seemed a bit odd. I never viewed the two fields with much connectivity, other than a few mid-century works about Jacob Hamblin or Chief Wakara. As I sat down to draft out the separate evolutions of the two fields, the task proved far more complicated than expected, and the only way I could think to articulate it was to take the reader on a semi-biographical journey that follows my own intellectual awakening. I trust that the Juvenile Instructor’s readers will tolerate a little self-indulgence as I relate the divergence and re-convergence of Mormon and Indian history.

My interest in history blossomed on my LDS mission and during undergraduate studies at BYU as I read about pioneers and western heroes such as Porter Rockwell. Like most history buffs, I looked to explorers and battles more than indigenous cultures but I did not understand that my approach mirrored Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis. In 1893, Turner’s nationalistic narrative identified waves of civilizing conquest that ended in 1890 with the settlement of the region by whites. Though essentially silent on Native Americans and Mormons, this foundation served as the methodological origin of Western American history that eventually spawned those sub-fields.

By the mid-twentieth century, Turnerarian history had gained an impressive following of amateur and professional historians interested largely in nineteenth-century topics: mountain men, pioneers, and cowboys and Indians. A new wave of neo-Turnerians gradually focused on individual people and communities, as well as environmental topics; those individual case studies fragmented the monolithic and ethnocentric national narrative.[1] In 1961, the Western History Association organized and soon after began publishing the Western Historical Quarterly (WHQ). Professionally trained Western American historians proliferated over the following decades and other organizations spun off to create even more specific associations, such as the American Society for Ethnohistory (1966) and the Mormon History Association (1965).

Professionally trained scholars including Leonard Arrington, Davis Bitton, and Alfred Bush organized the MHA and laid the groundwork for the New Mormon history; their concern with critical questions and historical inquiry strengthened a field formerly characterized by faith building authors such as B.H. Roberts. Still, they cooperated closely with the Church and the larger Western history field, most evident by Arrington’s service as Church historian, president of the MHA, and president of the WHA.

By the 1970s, recent cultural shifts era had ushered in new academic interests. The New Western History fused social history with environmental history, and eventually redirected the field into twentieth-century topics and oft-ignored ethnic voices. Popular author Dee Brown drew attention to the overlooked victims of longstanding conquest-oriented history in his moving text, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970). Meanwhile, trained scholars including Arrell M. Gibson, Angie Debo, Tom Hagan and others paved the way for a new generation of scholars who inaugurated the New Indian History. This ethnographic approach stressed Native perspectives and tackled tribal histories and other Indian topics across time, including the long overlooked twentieth century. In 1972, the Newberry Library created the D’Arcy McNickle Center as academic institutions opened Native American studies programs and interdisciplinary journals, such as American Indian Culture and Research (1971+), American Indian Quarterly (1974+), and Wicazo Sa Review (1985+). Emerging young scholars fit neatly within the ranks of the equally progressive New Western History.

My introduction to the New Indian history came during graduate studies at the University of Nebraska where faculty mentors pointed me to a new world of Indian driven narratives that explored Native voices and perspectives. Still, I moved forward on an unimpressive thesis exploring colonial Kickapoo foreign policy from European records. The final product resembled an awkward and incomplete transition from the neo-Turnerarian framework that still structured my thoughts. I had come a long way from Turner’s omission of Native Americans, and went to the extent of a minor in anthropology that included four semesters of a Native language, but I still struggled to fully represent indigenous perspectives when dealing with a colonial era population that left no written record of their own.

After completing my degree at UNL, I enrolled in doctoral study at Arizona State to work with two leading figures in the New Indian history. One of the first students I met was two years ahead of me in the program. She was studying under another professor who advocated a radical new approach to Native American history: decolonization theory. I was uninitiated and probably in a bit over my head when this fellow graduate student took it upon herself to expose my inadequacies. She aggressively questioned me, particularly on twentieth-century Indian history where my readings were admittedly the weakest, and then she explained that a white man such as I had no business studying Indian history. In retrospect, she probably assumed my unfamiliarity with decolonization equated to an endorsement of ethnocentric Turnerian history. Nevertheless, her overt racism surprised me because it ran so contrary to my expectations of an open-minded academy. That was my first introduction to decolonization studies, and I would not be honest if I did not confess how much it tainted my view of those who practice that methodology.

In theory, decolonization is an interdisciplinary and deconstructionist approach to reveal the mechanisms of colonization and indigenous resistance by use of overlooked Native voices.[2] In practice, the exclusionary methodology often endows Native voices with extraordinary authority while dismissing traditional sources and scholarship as hopelessly corrupted by ethnocentrism. During the 1990s, many senior historians rejected decolonization-based scholarship in tenure evaluations, manuscript submissions, and conference presentations. The conflict came to a head when decolonization advocates publicly challenged senior scholars Patricia Limerick and Richard White at an academic conference, who then responded with critical roundtables, editorials, and even a T-shirt campaign.[3]

Over the past two decades, dejected decolonization activists turned to non-scholarly presses and produced new interdisciplinary journals to publish their work and assert themselves the authoritative voice.[4] Their following expanded and in 2007 a small group launched the Native Americans and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). One year later at the annual WHA meeting, Dave Edmunds directed his presidential address to departing scholars. He offered clear examples of the association’s commitment to Indian history but also stood his ground as he criticized “some Native academics [who] have urged that scholarship conform to a new orthodoxy defined through the rhetoric of post-colonialism.” He continued, “We do not need a new cadre of self-appointed “gate keepers.’”[5] NAISA and the WHA continue to hold separate conferences each year attracting a very different type of scholar to each.

My feeling is that decolonization has much to offer. It brings long needed attention to Native perspectives through interdisciplinary inquiry and introduces post modern study of power structures. However, it cannot be permitted to eject non-native voices or impose a simplistic oppressor-resistor relationship on every historical interaction. While it may often apply, few theories have universal application.

These debates have gone largely unnoticed in Mormon studies because the New Mormon history’s attention to critical revision of longstanding nineteenth century topics like the early Church and polygamy, leaving little consideration for Native Americans in the modern era. Juanita Brooks well represented the sharp analysis of the New Mormon history as she addressed Indians, but even her pioneering work remained largely in the nineteenth century and focused on Mormons more than Native cultures they impacted. It lacked the ethnographic nature of New Indian history and certainly the Native voices championed by decolonization theory. Essentially, Mormon scholarship on Indians remains heavily neo-Turnerarian, while Indian scholarship moved through the New Indian history and now faces a challenge from decolonization.[6]

Despite an increasingly common interdisciplinary inclination among Mormon and Indian history scholars, they speak a different language depending upon their point of origin. While practitioners of the New Mormon history are no strangers to difficult questions, I suspect they will be disturbed by the tenor of decolonization advocates. Like any revisionist movement, it brings valuable new criticisms that can be taken to an extreme at the expense of the past.

In the coming years the LDS church’s twentieth-century Indian policy will surely serve as the battle ground between the new Mormon history and decolonization theory. Indeed, the 2013 meeting of the MHA featured what I believe was the association’s first overtly decolonization-driven interpretation of Mormon-Indian relations. My research tries to preempt much of this debate on what is sure to emerge as one of the focal points: the Indian Student Placement Program. This voluntary foster care program for Native American youths operated between 1947 and 2000. While many Latter-day Saints viewed it as a benevolent opportunity to educate deprived Indians, outsiders criticized Placement as simply another assimilation program. Tensions mounted in the 1970s and though external pressures subsided by the 1980s the correlation movement continued to erode the program until the Church prohibited the enrollment of any new students after 1992.

My approach to this topic is to examine the institutional rise of the program, building on the work of Michael Quinn and Armand Mauss but balanced with ethnographic focus on student experiences. Their thoughts are recorded in over one hundred interviews and other sources. While many participants surely resisted colonizing pressures, a great many others internalized the imposed Lamanite identity as their own. Placement students left reservations and spent years immersed among Mormon host families; they attended schools, church activities, and a barrage of Lamanite-specific activities including dances, leadership conferences, and cultural extravaganzas that promoted a hybrid identity. These students’ experiences demand a more nuanced approach than the sloppy imposition of a binary model of aggressive colonizers and resisting colonizees.

As the fields of Mormon and Native history/studies re-converge, interested readers must carefully evaluate scholarship to ensure the narrative is indeed an honest reflection of the past and not an intellectual exercise in bending it to meet theoretical expectations. Long ago the New Mormon history and Western history threw off their allegiances to a single ideological narrative, and to adopt yet another would constitute a methodological step backward. Decolonization theory does have a role to play and we should follow its council to incorporate marginalized voices; however, it cannot be the singularly authoritative approach that its advocates demand. There must be space for alternative forms of analysis and no singular approach can be complete. The greatest strength of the New Mormon history and especially Mormon studies is its aspiration to achieve intellectual independence, and I hope that characteristic remains the dominant attribute among those who study Mormons and Natives.

______

[1] Richard White, “Western history,” The New American History, Revised and Expanded Edition, ed. Eric Foner (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 205; Donald Worster, “New West, True West: Interpreting the Region’s History,” Western Historical Quarterly, vol 18 (April, 1987), 141-156. For an example of early environmental work see Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931).

[2] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books, 2005), 3, 20. See also Angela Wilson and Michael Yellow Bird, For Indigenous Eyes Only: a Decolonization Handbook (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 2005); Devon Mihesuah, Natives and Academics: researching and writing about American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); Devon Mihesuah and Angela Wilson, Indigenizing the academy: transforming scholarship and empowering communities (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).

[3] William T. Hagan, “The New Indian History,” in Rethinking American Indian History, ed. Don Fixcio (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 30.

[4] The last ten years has also given rise to open source and other low tier interdisciplinary journals, such as: Canadian Journal of Native Studies (launched in 1981); AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples (2005); Te Kahoroa (2008); Rethinking Decolonization (2008); International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies (2008); Indigenous Policy Journal (2009); Journal of Indigenous Research (2011); Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society (2012).

[5] R. David Edmunds, “Blazing New Trails or Burning Bridges: Native American History Comes of Age,” Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 39:1 (Spring 2008), 14.

[6] For example, over the past year, twentieth century topics constituted only 13% of Journal of Mormon History and 70% of Western Historical Quarterly articles. Likewise, ethnically marginalized individuals or groups were directly addressed in only 9% of JMH articles but in 64% of WHQ pieces. Of course, the JMH is by nature an ethnically specific journal so a broad survey of other ethnic groups is understandably beyond its mission. Nevertheless, their different foci are evident.

LDS American Indians in Their Tribal Communities

Here is a guest post from Megan Falater who is researching the interactions between nineteenth-century Mormon ecclesiastical authority and doctrine related to the family for her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also a longtime lurker of Juvenile Instructor. For this post, she revisits an undergraduate project on the LDS Indian Student Placement Program.

In 1971, Victor Selam complained in Diné Baa-Hani, an underground newspaper published in the Navajo Nation, that Brigham Young University limited American Indians? expression of their identities. Selam recounted a conversation he held with a member of the University Standards Office prior to his dismissal from the school:

I reminded the ?Man? that in Mormon prophecy the Indian people would ?rise up and blossom as a rose in the latter days.? I said that I fully agreed with the prophecy and that it also exists among the Indian people, only in different words in a different language. But how can this rose ?blossom? if it doesn’t push and pull itself up? How will Indians rise up if they sit back, quote prophecy, and do nothing like some people at B.Y.U.? And furthermore, what of those Indians who cease to exist as Indians-who want to be white people and act accordingly and forsake their own people?[1]

Continue Reading

Mormons and Natives Month at the JI

For the past several months, the JI has sponsored various theme months, allowing permas and guests to ruminate on such topics as politics, the international church, and material culture. November is Native American Heritage Month, which was first promoted in the Progressive Era by reform-minded Indians to recognize the contributions of Natives to the development of the United States. As in the case of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, we at the JI believe that Natives are an intricate part of Mormon history, rather than a sub-topic only worthy of discussion once a year, but we also see the value in focusing our thoughts at this time in conjunction with Native American Heritage Month. This month’s editors, David G., Amanda, and Farina, have assembled an all-star cast of guest bloggers, who will share fascinating insights from their research, alongside contributions from permas. The editors have also put together some brief thoughts on their areas of expertise for this introductory post.

Mormonism’s Encounters with Native America in the 19th Century (David G.)

From the earliest days of Mormonism, indigenous peoples were central to Joseph Smith?s vision of the future.

Continue Reading

Graphical Representations of Hooded Mormon Vigilantes

Second only to polygamy, Mormons in the second half of the nineteenth century were known for violence. Paramilitary groups of ?Danites? or ?Avenging Angels? allegedly surveilled, threatened, and/or killed as directed by Church leaders. In three instances that I know of, non-Mormons portrayed members of these groups as using robes, hoods, and masks like those of the Ku Klux Klan. The purpose of this post is to put all three instances on the same page at the same time.

Continue Reading