A Land of Strangers: Cane Creek Tennessee's Mormon Massacre and its Tragic Effects on the People Who Lived There

A Land of Strangers: Cane Creek Tennessee's Mormon Massacre and its Tragic Effects on the People Who Lived There
Author: Bruce Crow
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2012-12-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1304275590

In the hollows of Lewis County, Tennessee, Mormon missionaries baptized nearly fifty members of a large extended family. But their initial success was marred by false accusations of salacious behavior. A few influential citizens were disturbed by the rumors and by the missionaries' apparent popularity. On August 10th 1884, tensions erupted into violence and bloodshed. Two of the Utah missionaries, two young Tennessean converts, and one vigilante were shot dead. At least one other member of the congregation was wounded and never fully recovered. Much has been written about the two missionaries killed, but the real story is much deeper. Step into the lives of these proud Tennesseans, the earnest converts, the fearsome gunmen, and those stuck in between. See how their families intertwined in the years before and after the shooting. Its a snapshot of post-bellum rural Tennessee you won't soon forget.

And Should We Die - The Cane Creek Mormon Massacre

And Should We Die - The Cane Creek Mormon Massacre
Author: Donald R. Curtis
Publisher: Bearhead Publishing
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781937508005

From the early beginning of Christianity, the command to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to all parts of the world rang loud and clear in the hearts of His followers. In many parts of the world, those proclaming the gospels' good news came under the shadows of ignorance, misunderstandings and misconceptions. Many instances erupted in violence against those carrying the light of truth. This has been the plight of missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, (Mormon) from it's organization in the upper State of New York in 1830. Perhaps the most brutal treatment received by Mormon Missionaries occurred in the American South. Still suffering the indignities of political reconstruction following the Civil War, many seemed unwilling to tolerate any preventable outside influence. On August 10,1884, in Lewis County, Tennessee, such an incident occurred, as a mob posing as the Ku Klux Klan, interrupted a Church meeting and what ensued was perhaps the South's darkest hour. Donald R. Curtis covers this tragedy in its entirety, what lead up to it, the actual tragedy itself, and how it effected the years that followed, and the lives of those left behind.

Our Sorrows They've Seen

Our Sorrows They've Seen
Author: Alisha M. Linam
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Latter Day Saint churches
ISBN:

The Tennessee Mormon Massacre, or the Cane Creek Massacre, occurred on August 10, 1884, in Lewis County, Tennessee. A masked mob attacked the James Conder farm during a Sunday worship service and murdered four members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including two missionaries. The leader of the mob died in the violence as well. Several historians have explored the events of the massacre and have connected it to the national anti-polygamy movement of the 1880s. However, no one has approached it from the local level. This thesis introduces the Lewis County Circuit Court records to the literature and reexamines the sources that other scholars of the massacre have used. It reveals several points of local tension that were present before the Mormons arrived and demonstrates community relationships that have previously been left unexplored.

Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Massacre at Mountain Meadows
Author: Ronald W. Walker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2011-02-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199830975

On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter. Massacre at Mountain Meadows offers the most thoroughly researched account of the massacre ever written. Drawn from documents previously not available to scholars and a careful re-reading of traditional sources, this gripping narrative offers fascinating new insight into why Mormons settlers in isolated southern Utah deceived the emigrant party with a promise of safety and then killed the adults and all but seventeen of the youngest children. The book sheds light on factors contributing to the tragic event, including the war hysteria that overcame the Mormons after President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a supposed rebellion, the suspicion and conflicts that polarized the perpetrators and victims, and the reminders of attacks on Mormons in earlier settlements in Missouri and Illinois. It also analyzes the influence of Brigham Young's rhetoric and military strategy during the infamous "Utah War" and the role of local Mormon militia leaders in enticing Paiute Indians to join in the attack. Throughout the book, the authors paint finely drawn portraits of the key players in the drama, their backgrounds, personalities, and roles in the unfolding story of misunderstanding, misinformation, indecision, and personal vendettas. The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands as one of the darkest events in Mormon history. Neither a whitewash nor an exposé, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides the clearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre

The Mountain Meadows Massacre
Author: Juanita Brooks
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2012-09-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0806185384

In the Fall of 1857, some 120 California-bound emigrants were killed in lonely Mountain Meadows in southern Utah; only eighteen young children were spared. The men on the ground after the bloody deed took an oath that they would never mention the event again, either in public or in private. The leaders of the Mormon church also counseled silence. The first report, soon after the massacre, described it as an Indian onslaught at which a few white men were present, only one of whom, John D. Lee, was actually named. With admirable scholarship, Mrs. Brooks has traced the background of conflict, analyzed the emotional climate at the time, pointed up the social and military organization in Utah, and revealed the forces which culminated in the great tragedy at Mountain Meadows. The result is a near-classic treatment which neither smears nor clears the participants as individuals. It portrays an atmosphere of war hysteria, whipped up by recitals of past persecutions and the vision of an approaching "army" coming to drive the Mormons from their homes.

American Massacre

American Massacre
Author: Sally Denton
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2004-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0375726365

In September 1857, a wagon train passing through Utah laden with gold was attacked. Approximately 140 people were slaughtered; only 17 children under the age of eight were spared. This incident in an open field called Mountain Meadows has ever since been the focus of passionate debate: Is it possible that official Mormon dignitaries were responsible for the massacre? In her riveting book, Sally Denton makes a fiercely convincing argument that they were. The author–herself of Mormon descent–first traces the extraordinary emergence of the Mormons and the little-known nineteenth-century intrigues and tensions between their leaders and the U.S. government, fueled by the Mormons’ zealotry and exclusionary practices. We see how by 1857 they were unique as a religious group in ruling an entire American territory, Utah, and commanding their own exclusive government and army. Denton makes clear that in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the church began placing the blame on a discredited Mormon, John D. Lee, and on various Native Americans. She cites contemporaneous records and newly discovered documents to support her argument that, in fact, the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, bore significant responsibility–that Young, impelled by the church’s financial crises, facing increasingly intense scrutiny and condemnation by the federal government, incited the crime by both word and deed. Finally, Denton explains how the rapidly expanding and enormously rich Mormon church of today still struggles to absolve itself of responsibility for what may well be an act of religious fanaticism unparalleled in the annals of American history. American Massacre is totally absorbing in its narrative as it brings to life a tragic moment in our history.

Vengeance Is Mine

Vengeance Is Mine
Author: Richard E. Turley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2023-04-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0197675697

The long-awaited follow-up to the groundbreaking Massacre at Mountain Meadows Published in 2008, Massacre at Mountain Meadows was a bombshell of a book, revealing the story of one of the grimmest episodes in Latter-day Saint history, when settlers in southwestern Utah slaughtered more than 100 members of a California-bound wagon train in 1857. In this much-anticipated sequel, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown examine the aftermath of this atrocity. Vengeance Is Mine documents southern Utah leaders' attempts to cover up their crime by silencing witnesses and spreading lies. Investigations by both governmental and church bodies were stymied by stonewalling and political wrangling. While nine men were eventually indicted, five were captured and only one, John D. Lee, was executed. The book examines the maneuvering of the defense and prosecution in Lee's two trials, the second ending in Lee's conviction. Turley and Brown explore the fraught relationship between Lee and church president Brigham Young, and assess what role, if any, Young played in the cover-up. And they trace the fates of the other perpetrators, including the harrowing end of Nephi Johnson, who screamed "Blood! Blood! Blood!" in his delirium as he was dying, more than sixty years after the massacre. Turley and Brown also tell the story of the massacre's few survivors: seventeen children who witnessed the slaughter and eventually returned to Arkansas, where the ill-fated wagon train originated. Vengeance Is Mine brings the hitherto untold story of this shameful episode in Mormon and Utah history to its dramatic conclusion.

Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Massacre at Mountain Meadows
Author: Ronald Warren Walker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release:
Genre: Immigrants
ISBN: 9780197740057

On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. This book offers a thoroughly researched account of the massacre.

Mountain Meadows Massacre

Mountain Meadows Massacre
Author: Richard E. Turley (Jr.)
Publisher: Brigham Young University Studies
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Presents two newly discovered collections of documents relating to the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.