Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer and American Frontiersman written by Carmen R. Smith and Talana Hooper covers the life of Lot Smith and his large family including eight wives and over fifty children. The book’s subtitle Mormon Pioneer and American Frontiersman are fitting umbrella terms that acknowledge many of Lot Smith’s roles on the Mormon Colonial Frontier. This is a comprehensive examination of Smith’s life from his involvement in Utah frontier wars to his lifelong defense of and dedication to the Mormon church and leadership. Smith exhibited a  devotion to the church that propelled his military action. Known as a hero in the church during the Utah War of 1857 where he engaged in risky acts like burning the supply wagon of federal soldiers, he also served in the Union Army during the Civil War protecting and rebuilding the US telegraph lines and mail lines to guarantee open communication between Utah and the Northern US. 

However, the subtitles of this book also misses out on covering other parts of Lot Smith’s multifaceted identity.  Many identities covered in the book could have been used such as “Mormon Militia Man,” “Missionary,” or “Mormon Husband and Father.” The most fitting subtitle would have been “Family Patriarch,” as his large family is portrayed throughout. The writing of the book was even a family affair. The authors are related to him: Carmen R. Smith, married into the Lot Smith family tree via marriage to his grandson, and Talana Hooper, is her daughter and Lot Smith’s great-granddaughter.

            What is refreshing about this text is that it is not a hagiographic treatment of this Mormon militiamen and patriarch. Instead the text aims to provide a well-rounded portrayal of an imperfect man whose allegiance was to his church before all else. It is during the coverage of his frontier settlement that Carmen R. Smith and Talana S. Hooper thoroughly cover Lot Smith’s colorful and bittersweet family life as he married eight women, contended with marital difficulties stemming from plural marriage, lost children to early death, and settled, organized, and left many church communities

            Though the book is far from a praiseworthy treatment of a beloved family patriarch, Smith and Hooper miss out on providing the necessary historical context. They do not shy away from recording stories and family lore that featured Lot Smith’s questionable and violent behavior toward his wives and children. However, they rarely offer any historical and psychological context to analyze his behavior. For example in the second chapter, the writers recount a rumor of how Lot Smith joked about branding everything he owned, including his wives. The rumor was based upon a story of how while holding a branding stick Lot Smith had to dive between his wife and a horse who was charging her. His wife Jane ended up being pushed into a fence with the branding stick. She was left supposedly unharmed but the “branded” story stuck.[1] 

            This story about branding is just one of many family anecdotes that suggests Lot Smith’s usage of corporal punishment was a regular occurrence. During a later episode, one of his wives Laura went to Brigham Young she was concerned with how Smith reprimanded two of their young daughters who did not pay full attention during family prayer. Lot Smith knocked the two girls heads together when they became amused by a squeaky rocking chair. This wife ultimately tried to divorce him and lived separately from him during most of their lives. Though the discipline was not identified as physical in this particular scenario, Another wife Diantha was driven to leave after he reprimanded their son Hyrum too” severely” when he could not keep control of a cow while Lot Smith tried to milk the cow.[2] 

            Historians have written about how attitudes toward corporal punishment and intimate partner violence were more forgiving in the nineteenth century. However, given that this book was written in the twenty-first century and with the emerging wealth of Mormon women centered scholarship, it is very surprising that the authors did not provide contextualization to this behavior especially when writing about a family member.

             The absence of historical context also occurs with coverage of Lot Smith’s military expeditions in Utah and the West. In the detailed descriptions of his military career in the West is a problematic treatment of relations between colonial Mormon settlers and the Indigenous populations. Smith and Hooper’s account of these relations falls into an outdated narrative that promotes the simplistic and dangerous view that the rise Western civilization and the deaths of Indigenous people were inevitable. In one instance when discussing the cause of what is known as the Provo War or Battle at For Utah in 1850, Hooper and Smith write: “Mormons had accidentally killed the Ute called “Old Bishop,” an incident later credited with inciting warfare.”[3] Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount also covers the same incident but with possible explanations: Old Bishop was accidentally shot during an argument over a shirt or he was killed by Mormons when he expressed dismay with white Mormon settlers who hunted and killed cattle.[4] Both of these stories share a similar conclusion of his body being discovered in a river after it apparently had been weighted down with rocks that did not fully sink. In the same chapter, Hooper and Smith refer to the death of another “accidentally killed” Indian White Cloud as being the cause of warfare. While this death is reported as an accident in Orson F. Whitney’s 1904 History of Utah collection, these two anecdotes ignore the culpability of how Western Colonial Settler’s arrival and settling led to the near eradication of Indigenous peoples and culture.[5] To excuse away the deaths of Indians as “accidents” diminishes the history of trauma experienced by Indigenous peoples and the violence perpetuated by colonial settlers.[6]  

            For a man with a history of a tempestuous disposition and violent tendencies, it may not be surprising that Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the church’s most troubling and violent historical events, is included in this biography. It is a historical event that contains trauma for victims, survivors, and descendants. Descendants of perpetrators have started the difficult, humbling, and needed work of redress. I was expecting the event to be covered in much more detail when I read the following: “As he defended his ranch interests against those who would rustle his stock or steal his range rights, he acquired the reputation as the most feared gunman in Arizona with several notorious acts wrongly credited to him, including participation in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, acting as one of Brigham Young’s destroying angels, and the branding of his wives.”[7] I expected at some point during the text that there would be further exploration of these accusations. But the only other mentions of the massacre occurred in a reprinted obituary that alluded to the accusation and the index. A reference or citation to any of the more recent work like Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy and/or Juanita Brooks’ seminal treatment of the subject.[8] Call me the persnickety historian, but I checked the bibliography and footnotes for any references to work by Brooks and was astonished to see her biography on John D. Lee, the man accused of leading the massacre, cited.[9]  

            Unfortunately, there are a lack of missed connections in this historical biography. Lot Smith is a fascinating figure that embodies the complexities of men on the Mormon frontier doing the difficult and sometimes thankless work assigned to them by their church leadership. An acknowledgement and exploration of Lot Smith’s privilege and how that privilege could lead to abuses of power in interactions with his family members (wives and children), other white settlers, and Indigenous people would have provided a multilayered biography of imperfect but fascinating Mormon.

[1] Carmen Smith and Talana S. Hooper, Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer and American Frontiersman (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2018): 27-8.

[2] Smith and Hooper, 191.

[3] Smith and Hooper, 20.

[4] Jared Farmer, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010), 67-68, 70.

[5] Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah (Salt Lake City: Cannon, 1904): 107.

[6] For example, see Elise Boxer, “‘This is the Place’: Disrupting Mormon Settler Colonialism” in Colvin, Gina, and Joanna Brooks. Decolonizing Mormonism: Approaching a Postcolonial Zion (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018): 77-100.

[7] Smith and Hooper, xi.

[8] Ronald W. Walker, Glen M. Leonard, and Richard E. Turley; Massacre at Mountain Meadows An American Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974).

[9] Juanita Brooks, John Doyle Lee: Zealot, Pioneer Builder, Scapegoat (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1961.