A Bright Light On The Dark Puzzle of Mountain Meadows

 February 23, 2025

   It's very hard to find a hero in the Mountain Meadows Massacre story but I finally found one.

   In August of 1918 she was living in Bunkerville, Nevada and teaching school in nearby Mesquite. At her Mormon church one Sunday she found herself sitting next to an old man with "sharp black eyes and long beard." Nephi Johnson later came to the schoolhouse where she was teaching and stood patiently behind her desk until class was dismissed. As the last kid ran out the door, he pulled up a chair and said, "My eyes have witnessed things that my tongue has never uttered and before I die, I want them written down."

A typical desert country school

   She actually missed Nephi's confession (but she did catch his dying plea, "Blood! Blood! Blood!"), and she became committed to finding out the truth of what actually happened on September 11, 1857.

   Almost everyone in her town and her church tried to stop her but she was fearless and she went right into the teeth of a very paternalistic culture.

   In the end, she made a huge difference, not only in preserving history, but in helping her church to heal. They sure fought her though but she was a true hero in my eyes. She told the truth and made no apologies about it.

Daily Whip Out:

"The 20-year-old Mesquite School Teacher"

"I feel sure that nothing but the truth can be good enough for the church to which I belong."

—Juanita Brooks