Notes on 1856-8 Utah, Harney, etc.

There is an evil, bred of Chaos and delusions of superiority, which began in Europe and which shows up in the early American Colonies. One can see it in the government rhetoric of the Haberdasher who lived on land which was never purchased and to which its owners could not return except on pain of legal extermination.

I am speaking of Truman and the Mc Carthy hearings, the anti-protest counter-movement during Viet Nam. Itargues that the common people are miserable wretches, and without a Strongman or Strong woman to lead them by the hand can plan or do nothing, not even act upon their own feelings, develop new religions or even have cherished and legitimate culture of their own.

There was a movie and book some years ago rhat my family read with some interest called the Immigrants who came from Denmark at a time of peak mass expulsion and religious and political Genocide. This is why Brigham Young planned for the largely Scandinavian Immigrants at the time of the Mountain Meadows to come by Handcart.

The Summer Companies fared well and reached the Valley in good physical and reasonable mental condition. They had lost much, but had saved their lives and been assigned property, set to building and Irrigation projects.

Those who were driven out later, who had only arrangements intended for Pioneers of the next season, who Brigham would never have advised to start so late, where help could not be gotten to them--and Squaw Killer Harney was on the trail ahead with his first contingent of troops.

They believed promises made to the Summer Companies and fulfilled,
creating a mythology of a Prophet with larger than life qualities in whom
they could entrust their lives, who had made them sacred promises which would bring them through in good stead.

My Mortensen ancestors, most of whom were children and young boys,
believed a promise of supernatural aid intended for summer Saints who followed the plan and was never much more than a prediction of probabilities. Brigham was faced with, if Lund was correct in the Fire of the Covenent 1300 wagons on the snowy trail West and a starving Federal Army holed up for the winter at Fort Bridger with their aptly named commander, Squaw Killer Harney, a comrade in arms and purpose with Custer. and very certain to have met a gruesome end if allowed to reach the Valley.

People in the East knew this, they knew that this slender, almost girlish
Bucky Buchannon with his promises of ending the challenges of the Western lands forever by the use of such Genocidal strongman was a formula that they did not want used against white people. Many had horrified family both in the East and California and these gave the name Buchannons folly, or sometimes Buchanon's Blunder to Squaw Killer's deployment to settle the Mormon question once and for all.

The life expectancy in the urban slums to which many Scotch had been
driven was only twenty fields. Learning that my thrice Great Grandfather had three years of college which were intended to prepare him for the
Scotch Ministry, Brigham sent him South to work leaning the plethora
of Native American language. He sent his young wife and baby to the
tribe then living among the beautiful wooded high country belonging to the Panguitch Indians.

A few things have been passed down from previous generations who
were close to the Village Elders and Indian Doctors of past generations.
According to information gleaned from 3 generations of these men,
the local indians helped verify and tracking and killing 2 men who escaped as far as Las Vegas Springs, or wells. Some were slavers under
Spanish rule, and dealt with men wearing hats, according to the idiographs on the Calendar stone near the one time encampment
in Fiddlers Canyon which had an upright stone with a window cut in it
where a medicine person could stand and find the eqinoxes and solstices. My grandfather took me and Larry Dean Olson up and showed us the Sacred site, certainly pre-Escalante.

On top of the bluff there were two rocks, probably not used since the
movement of the first Yankee/European Mormon explorers to enter Cedar Valley. Led by a member of the Mormon Battalian named Jefferson Davis. He gained his skill as a Scout as one of the elder boys in a group
of shoeless orphans who wandered, as young WWII partisans did, eating what they could find to eat and sleeping in barns when farmers were kind enough to overlook them and find let them raid the rootseller or icehouse, the chickencoop--finding what they could scrim to eat.

Jefferson Davis was among the Sutter Mill War Vetran Crew who discovered Gold and he brought his sister a pair of Gold earings. These were useless to her--she had starved over that winter and had lost the baby who had been born in Nauvoo. The identity o the father was not spoken of. It may have been another child who did not go to Nauvoo with the others, she may have been victimized or eploited in return for food and a stay in a Bachelor Farmers barn.

After leading a scouting epedition looking for good townsites he founded Whittier, Caliofornia as a station on the separate Mormon Pony Express Line.

This used teenage boys and supported ranches where Mormons reared horses for use along the mail line
to the port in San Diego.
Rhoda Leach Neese, his Sister, Second wife to James Guymon married to him iin Nauvoo, later chose to share her house withMarie Boudin, a teenaged French aristocrat who ran off to America with a man who mistreated her
and abandoned her in Salt Lake.

Marie is a major Character in my novel. I put James at the Point of the mountain formost of the novel in ordernot to have to deal with him until I've gotten the serial books finished. I would love to hear from any of her descendants since I am too ill to come to Salt Lake and Environs to look for any papers she may have left behind--I have an inkling that she may have left something of interest behind.

Much Mormon History can be found in California--particularly at Riverside. I picked up Rhoda's brother's trail at the museum of the California Pioneers.

It was easy to stop off when I lived in San Francisco the last year I was well enough to do proper research.

This blog is a result of oral history--some still on tape or in the hands of my first husband's very large family. My mother had very little time for divorced men. She distroyed the Guymon material I had with a cavalier and almost sneering attitude.
I talk to hima few times a year. She told me she’d destroyed his phone number to watch my reaction. It did not occur to her that I remembered them, all she did was do more damage to the difficult relationship between us.

There were many people doing research during the Arrington Historical period, looking for leads to family organizations and elderly keepers of original documents--as promised, and as one of the last things President Hinkley did, he made sure that these materials would be at least seen by Historians again.

But whether they will have the feel for the land and people, I don't know. I found this failing even in Gene England, who did much research on the massacre. I was at the Y the years my Grandparents were excavating John D. Lee's Cooperatively owned mill
and he was collecting alot of Mountain Meadows' material along with my Children’s Book Children's writing professor who had many hundreds of hours of oral history on tape.

She would stop in any town and ask for the oldest people in town, then knock on the indicated door--a pretty writing professor from the Y with a love for children's literature. Even more she understood that Utah History, as elsewhere, is writen in blood. We are human and Human History is written in blood.

My professor told me of being a small girl and overhearing the teachers saying that her father had shot her mother and then himself. She ran home and was in her parents bedroom before anyone noticed her. This, my teacher said, is Utah History.


There is an evil, bred of Chaos and delusions of superiority, which begans in Europe and shows up in the early American Colonies. One can see it in the government rhetoric of Truman, the Haberdasher who lived on Missouri land which was never purchased and to which its owners could not return except on pain of legal extermination.

I am speaking of Truman and the Mc Carthy hearings, the anti-protest counter-movement during Viet Nam. Something in such leaders believes that the common people are miserable wretches--without a Strongman or Strong woman to lead them by the hand they can plan or do nothing, not even act upon their own feelings, develop new religions or have cherished and legitimate culture of their own.

There was a movie and book some years ago that my family read with some interest called the Immigrants. It was about Denmark at a time of peak mass expulsion Genocide. These are the years just preceding the massacre.

Brigham Young planned for the largely Scandinavian
Immigrants at the time of the Mountain Meadows to come by Handcart.

The Summer Companies fared well and reached the Valley in good physical and reasonable mental condition. They had lost much, but had saved their lives and been assigned property, set to building and Irrigation projects.

Those who were driven out later, who had only arrangements intended
for Pioneers of the next season, who Brigham would never have advised to start so late, when help could not be gotten to them. Squaw Killer Harney was on the trail ahead with his first contingent of troops.

They believed promises made to the Summer Companies and were easily fulfilled. Theirs was a mythical Prophet with larger than life qualities in whomthey could entrust their lives. They beleived sacred promises would bring them through in good stead, contrary to their or anyones common sense--certainly Brigham. E.E. Erickson’s writing on Brigham Young are very interesting here.

My Mortensen ancestors, most of whom were children and young boys, believed a promise of supernatural aid intended for summer Saints who followed the plan and was never much more than a prediction of probabilities. Brigham was faced with, if Lund was correct in the Fire of the Covenent 1300 wagons on the snowy trail West and a starving Federal Army holed up for the winter at Fort Bridger with their aptly named commander, Squaw Killer Harney, a comrade in arms and purpose with Custer.

People in the East knew this, they knew that this slender, almost girlish Bucky Buchannon with his promises of ending the challenges of the Western lands forever by the use of such Genocidal strongmen as Harney Many had horrified family both in the East and California and these gave the name
Buchannons folly, or sometimes Buchanon's Blunder to Squaw Killer's
deployment to settle the Mormon question once and for all.

I don't know if the story of the Missouri Wildcats killing one or more Indian women and poisoning wells was true--it is possible that it was a legend born of Squaw Killer's name itself.

It was said to be true by a normally reliable BYU history professor who grew up near there. Could I ever suggest to my sublings and cousins that Brigham had promised, probably, that those with means might sacrifice their wagons and go by handcart, thus providing their desperate urban co-religionists a means of escaping the fate that faced those who remained in Europe. Brigham’s plan and promise was intended for sunny days and grassy flowery fields. The life expectancy in the urban slums to which many Scotch had been driven was only twenty five.

My thrice Great Grandfather had lost four children to a herpetic epidemic the year before he came to America. He had had three years of college which were intended to prepare him for the Scotch Ministry, Brigham sent him South to work leaning the plethoraof Native American language.

His son was sent, with his young wife and baby to the tribe then living among the beautiful wooded high country belonging to the Panguitch Indians. A few things have been passed down to me from previous generations who
were close to the Village Elders and Indian Doctors of past generations.

According to information gleaned from 3 generations of men who felt a call to work with the Indians, the local indians helped in tracking and killing 2 men who escaped as far as Las Vegas Springs, or wells. That was their only involvement. They probably undressed the men for buriel for what they might be carrying in their pockets--this would have included verifying whether they were dead or not.

I don't know if the story of the Missouri Wildcats killing one or more
Indian women and poisoning wells was true--it is possible that it was a
legend born of Squaw Killer's name itself. It was said to be true by
a normally reliable BYU history professor who grew up near there. Could I ever suggest to my sublings and cousins that Brigham had promised, probably, that those with means might sacrifice their wagons and go by handcart, thus providing their desperate urban co-religionists a means of escaping the fate that was faced those who remained in Europe. It was a promise intended for sunny days and grassy flowery fields and to deny it is a such indication of impiety.