2/5 Character Assassination
  by Coug Moog (York, PA, USA)
Bagley doesn't know anything about this subject that hasn't been trodden and re-trodden by many before him.

It would be so great to have enough evidence to know what really happened. Train after train of immigrants passed through Mormon territory unmolested, both before and after the Fancher party.

Brigham Young has been put on trial here, without the opportunity to face his accuser. Certainly he had the weapon to do this thing--Mormons from the north to the south were at his beck and call and would do whatever he asked without question, including shut their traps about it after the fact.

Opportunity? There was the Fancher party, sitting ducks.

But motive is a thorny one. Brigham Young, having been through the Missouri and Illinois persecutions and murders at the leadership level, well understood the perils of a Mormon leader authorizing a 'hit' on anything or anyone. Joseph Smith was murdered for destroying a printing press. The Mormons were driven from Nauvoo for that act. Imagine if he'd authorized a killing.

Rumor and fear were everywhere during that summer and fall. It was said the United States government was marching the army west to kill the Mormons. There was general fear and trembling because of the terrible persecutions that had happened before.

I believe it is entirely possible that a local 'concerned citizens' mob, whipped up by the fear and sense of righteous loss that carried over from the tremendous hardships, suffering and death forced upon these very people only a few years before, would be stirred up to anger because of the rumors of action against a people that wished only to be left alone.

The Fancher party were the innocents caught in this swirling wind of fear, anger, rumor and retribution. All it took were some cruel offhand comments from some of the rougher men with the party, bragging about being in the mob that killed ol' Joe Smith, to take a region already atwitter with fear and set passions ablaze. They really didn't know what they were walking into.

Brigham, however, knew very well the fear and longing for justice felt among his people. You must understand that Salt Lake City is a very, very long ride from Mountain Meadows. Brigham couldn't just get John D. Lee on his cell phone and order a hit on the Fancher Party--or order that it be allowed safe passage.

One rider going at full speed, pony-express style with mount changes every 30 miles or so, can make the trip in a day. But this is not how it happened. By the time word got to Brigham Young about the situation down south, things had already progressed to a dangerous level.

By the time his messenger returned, the murders had been done. Could such a thing be done by Mormons without the acquiescence of their leaders? I contend that's the only way such a thing could have been done. Any conclusion to the contrary is driven by malice. Brigham Young was many things, including a racist indulging in the common racial prejudices of the day. But a mob boss ordering motiveless hits on passersby?

And they say the Mormons are nuts.

5/5 Great book on the Mountan Meadow Massacre
  by T. Perry (Utah, USA)
This book is a must read for anyone that wants to be more informed on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. There are a few books out there on the Massacre, but in my opinion this is the best.

It is important to realize that Bagley certainly does have a bias and presents much of his own personal opinion in this work. That said, he has done an immense amount of research on the subject and I believe that he knows more about the Massacre than any other single historian out there. He also gives Juanita Brooks her due because she was the first to do a published work on the Massacre under immense scrutiny from the church.

While I don't necessarily agree with some of Bagley's opinions concerning who was ultimately responsible of the Massacre, his opinion should be carefully considered. Overall this book was a very readable book and Bagley's sources and footnotes are incredible. I highly recommend it.

3/5 Flawed, overwritten "history"
  by J. Beaulieu (Bangor, Maine United States)
I purchased Blood of the Prophets because I wanted an impartial, detailed book on the Mountain Meadows massacre. I got that -- but I got TOO much of that.

The author crams into his book every possible reference, quotation, or contemporary supposition about the massacre. It's TOO loaded down with detail. Instead of using judicious selection of pertinent details, the author included everything he could find -- which ultimately leaves the reader exasperated, bored or both.

I read over half the book before I'd simply had enough and quit. I may go back and finish it someday, but it's unlikely. The point was made, over and over and over again, that Brigham Young was the "mastermind" behind this disaster, and there are hints that he "might" have been responsible for many more tragedies than the one that is the subject of the book. What those tragedies may have been was not evident, at least through the more-than-half the book I read.

Scholarly writing does NOT have to be boring, and it certainly shouldn't leave the reader with the urge to throw the book across the room, but I have to admit that I came close.

Brigham Young is portrayed, from the very beginning, as the villain responsible for this episode, and he was still the villain when I had had enough. Anyone who writes fiction or nonfiction knows that NO character is wholly good or wholly bad; making that presumption is "author-as-deity", idolizing or condemning without considering any other qualities of the character. But if the author of Blood of the Prophets had anything GOOD to say about Brigham Young, I certainly don't remember what that was. The book is suspect because Young seems to be blamed for anything negative that happens. If I were a Mormon, which I am not, I would likely be angry about much of what is simply inferred about one of the great leaders of the Mormon faith.

Blood of the Prophets sorely needed judicious cutting by a careful, impartial editor. We do not want to read every possible reference to the tragedy; we want selective, impartial, material, gleaned from respectable sources, without having to plow through a glut of more than we really wanted to know -- and a good deal of the references seemed to me to be suspect.

I think the author either badly overwrote, [like I've deliberately done in this review as an attempt to illustrate what reading the book was like for me] or had a specific anti-Mormon agenda to convey to the reader.

If you're absolutely rabid about the subject of the massacre at Mountain Meadows, then I'd tell you to buy the book; if you are reading it to get an impartial view, I'd suggest look elsewhere.

Eating frosting on a cake is certainly pleasurable, but you can get sick if you eat too much frosting. 'Nuff said.

5/5 updates brooks
  by M. baker (california)
i found a reference to this in re-reading Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. Juanita Brooks' Mountain Meadows Massacre had been, for me, the bible about these doings. Bagley has gained access to additional information (eg, letters, meeting notes, etc) and fleshes out the context of the ongoing disputes (from the midwest to the west) in a thorough way, giving me a better understanding of both perspectives. It is a more "academic" book than Brooks'; I wouldn't dispense with either.

Just FYI, my interest in this is based on the decade-plus later murder of the Howland brothers and Bill Dunn* in the "wardhouse" in Toquerville, Utah, on the supposition that they were investigating the MM Massacre. I was disappointed that Bagley didn't get into this.

*the Howlands and Dunn had left the Powell expedition through the Grand Canyon.

5/5 Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
  by Margaret Michell
Book is in A-1 condition; arrived earlier than expected. Has the perfect information required for a graduate history class I am taking at Western New Mexico University. Truths finally being told by historians is a welcome sight.
mitchell