March 24, 2025
As you may know, Marshall Trimble has retired, but I talked him into coming out of the lap of luxury for one more trip down memory lane, this Saturday at the Superstition Mountain Lost Dutchman Museum from 10 to 3 on Saturday. See you there, but be sure to wear hipboots. It's going to get deep, real fast.
Small Town BSers Unite for One More Run
https://superstitionmountainlostdutchmanmuseum.org/
Cousins Galore
When we were at Old Tucson for the Jay Dusard True Westerner Award presentation, my Kingman cousin, Robert Jerl Stockbridge showed up. Haven't seen him in some time and, just for the record he looks just like his old man.
(yes, we are both named for our grandfather, Robert Guess)
Meanwhile, today my cousin from my dad's side of the family came out to Cave Creek so we could catch up on the Bell side of the family.
A Recipe for Disaster
On January 1, 1856 Brigham Young appointed John D. Lee “Farmer to the Indians”. In this capacity Lee was a federal government agent and it was his job to protect the Southern Paiutes and emigrants from each other and to teach them to farm. Lee was paid a $600 annual salary, paid in gold, which was a fortune in that time and place. There were also rumors that the Mormons were arming their Paiute allies. Lt. Sylvester Mowry of the U.S. Army claimed they were “all armed with good rifles. Two years ago they were armed with nothing but bows and arrows of the poorest description.”
Author Will Bagley makes the claim “The Mormons came to regard the Indians as a weapon God had placed in their hands.” And that the Indians would help to fulfill Joseph Smith’s Laminate prophesies, and “avenge the blood of the prophets.” Patriarch Elisha H. Groves prophesied as he blessed Col. William Dame in 1854, “The angel of vengeance shall be with thee.” Many of the Southern Utah Saints believed the war at the end of time had already begun and the Saints believed the Indians were a weapon God had placed in their hands.
As the conflict between the U.S. government and Mormons increased, so did harassment of travelers. Into this cauldron of resentment the Fancher wagon train proceeded tragically. Add to that, the belief in blood atonement and you have a recipe for the slaughter that followed.
The Southern Utah Saints saw themselves as Old Testament people As one of them, Jedediah Grant, put it, “We would not kill a man, of course, unless we killed him to save him.”
Add to all of this, the Mormon apostle Parley Platt’s brutal assassination in Arkansas at the hands of a vengeful husband which did nothing to endear the Saints towards wagon trains from Arkansas traveling through their region.
"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn."
—Bertrand Russell
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