The Three Ringed Circus

I wanted these pages to be my own--for my memories, feelings,
suppositions and hypotheses about the settlement of South Western Utah and the role of my ancestors in it. The role of the ancestors of the children I once hoped to have.

I knew I wanted to write a novel. My ancestors played a role, but they were not at the core of the story of the tribulations of the early days, they were never beaten or flogged or riddled with bullets, they never lay in a lonely grave with the wind whistling and the wolves howling above them, though they did dig such a grave, laid a lace coverlet over it, memorize the names of those they buried in the icy ground.

No, the story belonged, as I thought, to my childrens' ancestors--Cherokee Mountain men, bodyguards to the prophet, a starving orphan who wandered, much as the very young partisans in the European winters--sleeping in barns,
knawing on raw potatoes, their parents already buried.

Such a life does not make heroes or Saints of human beings. It may not make them good people, though they may grow in their capacity for goodness when they are settled. And what if, after nearly twenty years of hardship the wolf is again at the door threatening to raise a enormous mob, known for their atrocities, and they know this pack of wolves and they say what they will again do.

I wanted to get this blog started before I began surfing to see what is out there--my family stories and the Gibbs article is enough to occupy my time and energy.

But I had to do it, I had to open the lid of the box and draw back in horror, like Pandora. At the end of the tale, there is still
beauty and hope. I drew back in rage.

What right has anyone, after massacring via Air America, between tens of thousands to a million souls, largely children,
women and old, honored men, to seek some explanation, some allegory, for our needless, heedless barbarism. Do we seek it in the unmarked graves of uncounted ravaged women, little babies dead because their mothers were starving, men who froze on the trail because they would not spend another night among fiends who dared take the Lord's name in vain and call themselves “Christians.”

We pray in Jesus' name, we beg favors of his Father, we listen for the whispering of the Holy Ghost. We are people of the book, we believe our Trinity to be one in Spirit, in Purpose, in Love, and what is God but Love.

I believe, and I'm a Pacifist, that if anyone had the right to defend themselves from a two front war--caught in the Genocidal pinchers of fiends and goons--it was these men.
And if any Indian anywhere had the right to stand and prevent
Genocide, it was these, who had already suffered for 500 years
under the Spanish Iron yoke.

The Cherokee Scouts knew this and were white in color. They prepared themselves in the traditional way, with the paint prepared by their families, traditionally, and when the surviving children saw them wash it off they were white men in Indian
Buckskins.

One of my BYU professors anscestors were from the hamlet near which the Indian Woman was shot--before or after? And how did they poison the well--by throwing her body diown?

The reaction to Mountain Meadows was about racism. Why didn't we just kill the vermin and take the land, like the Army did everywhere else. We didn't even want them, though North of the Black Ridge we were as Yankee as anywhere else. We understand Post Traumatic Stress Disorder now. Can those who want to bring back the old prejudices--and they will come if this is mishandled.

What did Jesus say--examine the pus in your own eye before you scrutinize others. “Let he who is without sin cast the first
stone.”