April 15, 2024 • 58 mins
Build your celestial kingdom collection now! With over 50 potential wives, the world is your oyster. Each wife has a unique personality and traits! But watch out— it's possible to lose a wife if your resource management is poor! Play as THE PROPHET BRIGHAM YOUNG in this revolutionary new MOVEMENT!
CW: Murder, Proselytizing/Forced Conversion, Racism
Music provided by Dark Fantasy Studios. [License]
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-would-you-ask-that--5784165/support.
CW: Murder, Proselytizing/Forced Conversion, Racism
Music provided by Dark Fantasy Studios. [License]
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-would-you-ask-that--5784165/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, folks, Why would youask? That? Is a podcast that
answers some of the weirdest questions.A lot of those are inappropriate for some
listeners. If you're squeamish, easilydisturbed, we're just having a bad day,
this may not be for you.But if you've got to know the
answers like we do, stay tuned. Why would you ask that? Presented
(00:31):
by me M They them Am,Karen she her and Remy he they and
today we are revisiting the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Oh
fun, it's a mouthful for thoseof you not in the note. This
is the second part of this particularseries. Last part we went into Joseph
(00:56):
Smith in the origins of what wenow call Mormonism. Remy, it's just
sent me a very serious picture ofa man who would really look better if
he like tied back his hair.It's just one of the three pictures of
him that I have. Yeah,he didn't have what that back hair?
(01:18):
It would you know, if heif he let his hair in the front
kind of fly free a little bitmore. You know, let's photoshop out
that hair and he's fine. Imean, he's fine. He's a guy.
Maybe he needs like a little morelike waves going on, Like there's
just something about it that makes itlook like he has a cobra hood.
(01:42):
Yeah, it's definitely. It's notas if I'm personally a looker, but
maybe I when when the when thephoto first dropped into our chat, I
said, what the fuck is goingon with his head? If meg?
Oh, okay, it's hair.If I have taught us anything, it's
that you don't have to be attractiveto know what is attractive. All right,
(02:07):
So this is a subject of ourconversation today. Oh, yes,
you're a serious man that we've justbeen describing, well, the IM and
Karen have just been describing while Ilaughed about it. Yes, what is
the name of the man we havesomehow began roasting out of nowhere? He's
(02:30):
a Brigham Young, the pioneer prophet, the pioneer prophet. Okay, how
did he get this? Uh?This name? During his time when he
was alive, they called him thelion, the lion. Why did they
call him the lion? Uh?It was short for the lion of God.
That seems like a name that isantithetical to things. Lions are pretty
(02:58):
common and biblio cool story. No, it just seems like it's putting yourself
on a petistal. It does seemlike he's he's calling himself like a king
of some kind. Uh. Andbeing a lion is not necessarily always a
good thing. I me personally,when I was growing up in the church
(03:19):
and I heard about lions, Iwas immediately like David in The Lions Den,
Daniel Daniel in the Lions Den.I think of the lion, the
witch and the wardrobe for lion andSamson Sampson and the lion. Samson fought
a lion. Yeah, yeah,that was one of his claims to fame.
I don't know anything about this shit. They called him the Lion because
(03:40):
he was really loud and proud aboutsharing his testimony of the Lord Ah testimony
according to the Church of Jesus ChristOrg. Okay, okay, so this
is like him, said American MessiahsPart two. Bring him young. So
I just gonna start with his likea brief background information about him. He
(04:03):
was born in June in eighteen ohone in Vermont, just like Joseph was
born in Vermont. Brigham was theninth of eleven children. He did a
couple of things before he got intochurch stuff. He was a carpenter,
and he was a blacksmith for alittle while. And he got married to
a lady named Miriam in eighteen twentyfour and they had some daughters, and
(04:27):
so he was doing that with hislife before Mormonism came along, okay.
And then he read the Book ofMormon just pretty shortly after it was published
in eighteen thirty, and then hiswife died, and so he decided to
join the church. That's rough,buddy. What he did was he picked
up his life from Vermont and hejust sort of tredged his way out to
Kirtland, Ohio, where the whereJoseph Smith was at the time. And
(04:53):
it only took him two years beforeJoseph Smith ordained him as an apostle.
Oh wow, oh okay, sure, yeah, and they and he joined
something called the Quorum of the TwelveApostles. But what now, the Quorum
of the twelve Apostles quorum, Idon't know what that word means. So
I'm gonna sit here. It's likea group, just like a group of
(05:15):
twelve apostles for Joseph Smith. Andthat was an eighteen thirty five. Yeah,
and then he started working as amissionary because I didn't so I didn't
know that the Mormons were doing themissionary thing all the way as far back
as the eighteen thirties. I don'tknow why I thought they weren't. Maybe
because they were so busy building theirown city that I thought that maybe they
were gonna not be doing that atthat point. But no. He went
(05:38):
on a mission trip to England,and he traveled around the United States during
like the early eighteen forties. Wow. He decided to come back and help
build Navoo. And that's when hemet a second wife. Second wife's name
was Marianne Angel Mary an Angel.Oh, that's a that's a pretty spot
on name. Okay, all right. He married her in eighteen thirty four,
(06:00):
and then they were married for tenyears and then Joseph Smith died.
Oh oh oh, oh, dear. Okay, Yeah, So Joseph Smith
died ten years into Brigham Young's marriage, and Brigham was the head of the
Apostles. So he was just like, I'm going to succeed you as leader.
That's cool with everybody else. Sohe just decided to take over.
(06:21):
He just decided that he did.I'm going to take a detour to talk
about another guy, real quick,Brigham Young's opposition. I want to talk
about. Oh boy, sure,it's nothing good. So this guy,
he's James String like strangle. Yeah, that's half of that word, James
(06:42):
String. He was Brigham Young's opposition. Okay. So James Strang claimed that
Joseph Smith and an angel tapped himto lead the church over Brigham Young.
Oh uh oh, and uh sothey had a they fought for power a
bit. Strang was strange, hehad Sorry sometimes I chuckle at my own
(07:05):
joke. Strang was strange. Yeah. He was a man with delusions of
like royal grandeur. Essentially. Hewrote in his diary one time, quote,
I have spent the day in tryingto contrive some plan of obtaining in
(07:25):
marriage the heir to the English crown. Oh no, and he he lives
in Illinois in the middle of theeighteen hundreds, So I don't know what
he thought he was going to do. He says, it's a difficult business
for me, but I shall tryif there is the least chance. My
mind has always been filled with dreamsof royalty and power. Quote. Now,
(07:46):
obviously I guess something happened. Yeah, so Jung took over as head
of the church, and there wasjust a lot more people on his side.
So Strang took a bunch of followersthat were on his side and went
to a place called Beaver Island Islandapparently it was located off the coast of
(08:07):
Michigan, somewhere near the lower part, and right there he established a community
that engaged in piracy and robbery.Ah man, yeah, bad name for
pirates. Strang pirates. Yeah.Strang said that divine revelation permitted him to
be able to rob people. No, God said that I need this more
(08:30):
than you do. Yeah, exactly, And then an eighteen fifty string was
made a keen quote quote in alike weird ceremony with a cardboard crown.
No. And then the United Statesgovernment said, hold on, that's too
far, and so they indicted himon trees and charges. Wow. Yeah,
(08:50):
it was the cardboard crown that didit. He was acquitted, but
he was elected, and then hewas elected twice to the Michigan Legislature and
then he was murdered by his ownpeople. Wow. Okay, alrighty then
so there, I could probably havemade a whole episode about him. But
we're spending enough time on Mormonism already, so I just needed to give you
(09:13):
that little side trek into his life. Yeah, dang. And the person
that was opposing Brigham Young. Soyou could have had that guy as the
one who like really brought the Mormonsinto their like full force. Instead we
got Brigham Young. And this isthis is obviously the better choice. I
mean, I'm gonna tell you howBrigham Young is in a very good person,
(09:35):
but he was still the better choice. Okay, okay. So in
February of eighteen forty six, heled the beginnings of an exodus of some
twelve thousand Mormons from Illinois and wasdetermined to establish their faith beyond the reach
of American laws, was what hewas trying to do. So he wanted
to take them out of America,out of the United States, and into
somewhere else. This is why hewas called the Pioneer Prophet. And if
(10:00):
you look it up, Mormons actuallyplayed like a really weirdly huge role in
the wild West. You know,I'm really not surprised about that, considering,
you know, all of Utah.Yeah, that would have been a
lot of settling to do so,he set out with twelve thousand people out
to a part of the United Statesthat at the time do anything with.
(10:24):
His biographer Leonard Errington, wrote thatYoung and other church leaders knew about the
Great Salt Lake Valley from trappers journals, explorers reports, and interviews with travelers,
families travelers familiar with the region.So at the time, most of
what would become the American Southwest stillbelonged to Mexico. So Brigham Young was
(10:46):
like, that's where we're going,Mexico, okay. He believed that that
nation's hold on its northern frontier wasso continuous that the Mormons could just sort
of set up shop wherever they feltlike up there, and then nobody would
bother them, and nobody would stopthem from doing it. Him and his
twelve thousand people could just set uptheir own little city up there, and
(11:07):
the Mexican government wasn't going to care, he said, considering that Utah exists
still, how did that work out? So in the spring of eighteen forty
seven, he led an advance partyof one hundred and forty seven from an
encampment in Nebraska to the Great SaltLake Valley and then got there in July,
(11:28):
and then for two decades the Mormonsjust sort of filtered in, like
seventy thousand Mormons filtered in. Hestarted with twelve and he ended up with
seventy thousand just sort of just sortof trickled into the area. It was
like a really ruling. Yeah,it was a really grueling journey for them.
That's why it defines the experience ofthe LEDs. But this like big
(11:52):
exodus that they did. But that'show it worked for them, was they
just came in like little bursts untilthey had seventy thousand people. How did
they manage that huge joke population?Like that's a lot like did they did
they settle out like all over theplace or now they all settled in the
(12:13):
in the Salt Lake Valley. Whathappened? What's going to happen is he
started out with twelve thousand that wereinitially like really with him, and then
word just spreads and more people arelike, ah, the new prophet,
he's over there in Mexico, andso everybody just starts going where he's at.
And it was only a year laterthat Mexico was defeated in the Mexican
(12:33):
American War and signed the Treaty ofGuadaloupe Hidalgo and ceded to the United States
all of the area that would becomeCalifornia, Nevada, Utah, Texas,
and some of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Okay,
so everything that used to be Mexicobecame United States, including where the Mormons
(12:54):
were living. It was basically aboutsix months after they had just like finished
settling into the region, they wereright back under US control. So yeah,
alrighty, So again this is whyhe's called a pioneer because of all
this nonsense. So they wanted tobe in charge of themselves. So church
leaders sought official status as like aterritory. They petitioned Congress in eighteen forty
(13:20):
nine for territorial status and then forstatehood, and they wanted. What they
wanted was all the land from theRockies to the Sierra Nevada and from the
new border with Mexico all the wayto Oregon. Okay. Obviously they didn't
get that. No, they basicallywanted the entirety of of all that land
(13:41):
that was just given to the UnitedStates from Mexico, all those states that
I just read, ooh, yeah, that's uh no, Big Congress said,
this is a lot no, thankyou. We are having a big
fight right now about other problems,and we're not going to deal with you
because at the time Congress was havinga big problem with the slavery issue.
(14:03):
You know, it's right about thattime, and so they said, i'll
give you. I'm gonna call itthe Utah Territory, and that's what you
can have. So they reduced itdown to what's present day Utah. Nevada,
western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming was consideredUtah at the time, so they
lost a lot of land over time. Oh yeah, So Brigham Young ran
(14:26):
the Utah Territory a lot like howJ. Justice Smith was running Navo,
like a lot of conflicts between religiousand secular authorities because they were a solely
religious institution, but there was gonnabe secular people coming in from the federal
level. And yeah, the Mormonleaders were suspicious of both the character and
(14:48):
intent of anybody from the federal levelcoming in, such as there was a
judge who was found to have abandonedhis wife and children in Illinois and brought
up a sex worker to Utah,and then over the next seven years,
there was just like a large secessionof federal officers, judges, quote,
Indian agents, surveyors and stuff thatcame and went because they just couldn't get
(15:11):
along with Brigham Young. Wow.Wow. I would think that the federal
government would have more power in thissituation, but what they were actually finding
was that Brigham would just circumvent orreverse any of their decisions. Wow.
Yeah, that makes sense. FromIndian agent Jacob Holman, he wrote this
(15:33):
to his superior in Washington in eighteenfifty one. He said, Young has
been so much in the habit ofexercising his will, which is supreme here,
that no one will dare oppose anythinghe may say or do quote yeah
okay. Surveyor General David Burr reportedthat Young told him federal surveyors quote shall
not be suffered to trespass on Mormonland. Oh wow, okay. So
(15:54):
He's like, I don't even wantyou people here, and I'm done with
it. So through the mid eighteenfifties, federal appointees would go there and
then have to go back to Washingtonfrustrated or intimidated or both things out of
being able to do what they cameto do. And some of them wrote
books or articles about what had happenedto them while they were out there that
(16:18):
drove them away from their position.And all it really did was like make
anti Mormon sentiment bigger. Just madeit worse. So he made it worse,
Yes, he made it worse.So at this point, the practice
of plural marriage polygamy had extended beyondJoseph Smith in his inner circle, and
word of it had been passed bynon Mormon immigrants passing through Utah because all
(16:44):
the evidence of it happening was inplain view. Now they called it an
open secret. Mormon's embrace of pluralmarriage was based on a revelation that Joseph
Smith just reminded everybody said he hadreceived. He said that like that,
like Moroni came and told him itwas fine. Yeah. Yeah. They
used examples of polygamous biblical patriarchs likeAbraham and Jacob to be able to be
(17:10):
like, see, look it's fine, it's in the Bible. And what
Joseph Smith said, this is prettyfringe now yeah yeah, yeah, like
I mean, just to be clear, yeah, I say that in like
two paragraphs, Joseph Smith said,quote the possession of more than one wife
was not only permissible, but actuallynecessary for complete salvation much why so?
(17:33):
Brigham Young started out kind of iffyabout it because he had been married to
his second wife for like ten years. At that point. It was pretty
pretty fine with just that. Butthen he got really into it. How
do you get really into it?Like a hobby? Collect them all?
Yeah, exactly the joke I wasabout to make. Young said that polygamy
was necessary quote so that the noblespirits, which are waiting for tabernacles might
(17:57):
be brought forth quote, which islike he was trying to reference how Mormon's
view that afterlife. So studies havefound you want to guess how many wives
studies? Uh? One point fivethat he had one half? Oh okay,
now I oh you said studies foundAnd I'm like, what how many
(18:18):
wives did the studies find that hehad? Old documented pages? Bring them?
Okay? Yeah, bring them?Young? You tell me, I
want you to guess, because you'reprobably wrong. Well, if you're asking
me to guess, I'm going tosay twelve. I'm going to say twenty
five, or I'm going to beoutrageous and say one hundred and fifty two.
Whoa dude, that that wow,which nobody has that kind of time
(18:44):
or buddy, Now, which onedo you think was actually correct? Karen,
I'm leaning closer to my twenty numbertwenty five. Okay, So of
his will for well documented marriages,they found fifty five fifty five wives.
There's too many wives, like allat once? Or did he like what
(19:11):
I'm suddenly having flashbacks to keep sweet, pray and obey, good God,
it's too many wives. So manywives is like a whole commune of just
wives, Like at that point,like, what are you doing? That's
more than a month of like tryingto switch between every bedroom Like that doesn't
(19:36):
work, That doesn't work. Yeah, you're just a thought. So young
people like Clarissa Decker fifteen, oldpeople like Hannah King sixty five. He
married single women and widows. Mostunusually, he was sealed to both of
his mother in laws. Nah,this original one from his first wife and
the one from his second wife.No, Okay, I have a question
(20:03):
if he is being so indiscriminate aboutit, what really is his intention here,
Like, what is the explanation thathe is giving for this? What
is his intention? Is it toprovide benefits to these women? So that
he could take them into his household. I can tell you, is it?
(20:26):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah,please okay. Most controversially, he
married women who were already married,dude, some to moremon men who were
in good standing. What the fuck? What the what the fun? He
said one time to a woman whoreally was trying to become one of his
wives. He said, whenever Iwant a woman, whenever I want to
(20:48):
be sealed to a woman, I'lljust do it. So paraphrasemen. So
he just finds a lady likes andthen he says, well, I know
that you're married already, but I'mthe prophet, so they're gonna be my
wife now. Yeah. So,but I can explain what his thought process
(21:10):
was. Mostly his thought process wasthat he from the quotes that I read
from him, he thought that tobe a good Mormon and to be able
to go into the afterlife, hehad to have multiple wives. And so
he just said, I'm just gonnahave as many of them as I can
do. So what benefit is therefor the wives? Is there a betefit?
(21:32):
I can answer that too. Ohokay, yeah. So as early
as eighteen forty two, Brigham wascontent as a monogamist. He had his
wife Mary an angel, and thentwo months later, like after eighteen forty
January eighteen forty two, two monthslater he proposed marriage to a seventeen year
(21:52):
old British Mormon named Martha Brotherton,who said no, good, okay,
But then he immediately posed to anotherperson. How did his original wife number
one feel about this? Well,she's Mormon too, so probably she was
okay with it as you could asmuch as you could be. I mean,
oh, you know, I gottarecommend some some listening, like uh,
(22:15):
have you have you ever listened toWesley in a cult? I?
Yeah, I really think that youwould enjoy it. Uh. One of
their first episodes, I couldn't listento it all the way through, but
they were talking about sister wives inuh uh Mormon sect, and it was
like how people were trying to handlethe like how how a woman was trying
(22:38):
to handle the fact that she hadto share her sealed spouse. I have
the knowledge of, like how someof these women felt, how some of
these women felt, but not howall of them felt. So I couldn't
find how his first wife felt,but I did know how some of his
other women felt like I would liketo know, you know because like some
(23:03):
people I imagine like maybe it's it'sgood for them because they don't have to
like work on his attention or anything, or like other times maybe it's like
really bad or like because like hisreasoning is just it can't just be I
wanted like just get wives indiscriminately,Like there's gotta be other stuff. There's
(23:26):
other stuff involved, right, yougotta think about like why why would one
man feel secure in housing fifty fivedifferent women? So what some of the
women thought was really irritated and frustratedbecause he wasn't spending enough time with them,
and some of the women felt likebecause some of the women wrote a
(23:48):
lot of letters to him about howfrustrated they were with the whole situation,
some women didn't know there were thatmany other women when they signed on to
be one of his wives and wantedto divorce, and he would give them
a divorce when they asked for it, and then he would just go marry
somebody else. So so he hadlike a rotating door. Yeah, So
basically the fifty five women that stuckaround and stayed were fifty five women who
(24:12):
decided they wanted to stick around andstay, because if they wanted to leave,
he just said, yeah, okay, whatever, I'll let you leave,
and he just let him go.He would divorce them and let them
leave. But you know, didthat really wasn't really that easy to just
be like, I want a divorce. Like according to the stuff that I
was reading, yeah, it wasvery fine with giving divorces. There was
(24:34):
no argument on his end. Yeah, but what would it do to the
women? Probably not good things becauseto be divorced in the middle of the
eighteen hundreds not great. But ifthey stayed in Mormon society, maybe it's
different. But I don't but I'mnot sure about that because like you got
to think like that, okay,one the whole like not spending enough time
(24:56):
with people. That's like a commonproblem in polyamor recircles. Uh, And
like then you get people who didn'teven know how many wives this guy had
when they got married. Yeah,Like one woman divorced him and wrote a
biography called like it was like herbiography of Wife number nineteen and then later
(25:18):
it got rewritten as wife number twentyfive or something like that. And then
what and then actually what we've whatlike historians have been able to tell she
was closer to like forty something.Wow. Hold up, you said this
is a let's see a biography WifeNumber nineteen and Eliza Young. Yep?
(25:40):
Can I still like acquire this book? You could probably find it on Project
Gutenberg? Yeah? Hold up,you saycond Okay? Well, I wanted
to know, like, what exactlydid she go through? What was her
whole thing? Like? Oh shit, they have it on archive dot org.
Hold on, so I accidentally flippedto the back page. Oh my
god, six hundred and five pages. Wow to Let's see Wife Number nineteen
(26:02):
or the Story of a Life inBondage being a complete expos of Mormonism in
revealing the sorrows, sacrifices, andsuffering of women in polygamy by Anna Elyza
Young Brigham Young's Apostate Wife Ooh ApostateDamn, with introductory notes by John B.
Goff and Mary A. Livermore,Illustrated and sold by subscription only,
(26:26):
published by Dustin Gilman and Co.In eighteen seventy six. Uh, I
bet it's I bet it's probably reallyinteresting. She was very unhappy with being
in her marriage to him. Ithink anybody would, Uh, like not
only like just just talking about somebodywho's been in a PolyAm relationship marriage situation
(26:48):
before fifty four other people in thisAgain, you can't even like cycle through
bedrooms in one month, like imaginemeal times. I can tell you more.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah pleaseOkay. So after his first plural
marriage, Young married three more timesbefore Smith was murdered. Uh and then
(27:11):
he did not live with any ofhis additional wives and they bore him no
what and they bore him no childrenduring those years. They just lived on
their own. Uh oh okay,so he just like married them and like
said, all right, man,i'd yos. So what happens then is
they just live independently but as amarried woman. So they still have all
(27:33):
the status of a married woman,but they have basically complete independence. You
know, maybe like okay, whatit sounds like it could have been a
good deal if it is indeed likethat he left them alone, Like can
you imagine like so being like oneof his wives and just being like one
of the ones that gets to likebe separate. And also you're lesbian.
(27:57):
I'm writing fan fiction now, yeah, probably be good fan fiction. Yeah,
let me keep going. So afterSmith died, Young married fifteen more
women, just like just right after, and then celestial marriage became more of
like a quote unquote earthly reality becausehe started having children with some of his
(28:19):
wives. And then in eighteen fortysix his rate of marriage peaked because he
married about twenty additional wives in Navoo. Oh wow, he just speedway that
shit, Yeah he did. Andthen he headed for the American West,
and he brought them all with himunless they wanted a divorce. And so
(28:41):
here's what happened with the wives.In interactions with his wives, he was
at times romantic or aloof or generousor stingy. As an old man,
he would still say that he wouldfall in love and want to be with
new people, but sometimes he wouldget cold and distance with some of the
women. So, as was thecase with many of his other followers,
(29:06):
he could like deeply disappoint these women. But we've just talked about that in
excess. So Young didn't really careso much what people thought about the fact
that he had so many marriages,and he had like little time for his
wives when they expressed dissatisfaction. Whenwomen wanted divorces, he just gave it
to them and he would and hewould buy homes for women and outlining Utah
(29:30):
settlements. For wives who preferred tohave independence or privacy from him, he
would just buy them houses for themto go live in. Oh my god.
Yeah. And then and then alsoI found that at the same time
he would try to create like aharmonious united family feeling because he wanted to
have like one big prayer session withall of his people during the during the
(29:55):
evening. But yeah, so ifyou were one of his wives, some
of the them were having children withhim, but like, by and large,
from what I read, he didnot have any almost any relationship at
all with like thirty of those fiftyfive women. Do you think that maybe
there's like at least one wife thathe just forgot about. Certain there was
(30:15):
more than one. So if Iremember the numbers correctly, it was like
thirty or so women that he largelydidn't have any relationships with. They lived
in their own separate houses. Theywere independent but married, so they basically
ran their own lives and did theirown thing. And then the other ones
(30:37):
with some combination of like having childrenwith these women or living with him or
living in groups near him, andhe was having like some sort of relationship
with them, but maybe not physical. I did read that he didn't have
a physical relationship with very many ofhis wives. He had babies with several
of them. Yeah, so offifty five he had babies several. So,
(31:00):
but of fifty five there were notmany of them that he was having
physical relationships with. Just those oneshe was having babies with. IRE's still
a lot of women, though,Yeah, it is. That's more babies
than I've had. It's yeah.I did read that he was pretty that
he was like pretty big on women'srights, which is why he granted divorces
(31:22):
when they wanted them and let themlive independently when they wanted to. I'm
really divided on this because, onthe one hand, I can see the
benefit that could potentially be there,But you could essentially live like a spinster
if you didn't ever want to havesex and you didn't really want to have
to get married. You could justmarry him and then say, can you
(31:45):
just buy me a house? Ireally want my independence and my privacy from
you? And he would say whatever, sure thing, and he'd buy you
your own house and your own landin the Utah territory, and you could
just go live by yourself being anindependent woman but married, without the stigma
of being not married. I thinkwhere the problem comes in is the religious
(32:07):
aspect of it. Like if itweren't a like religious thing, I would
maybe be like, I mean,that's not great because technically it is a
form of fraud that he if youmarry someone and technically like doing married things
like that's what happened with UH,with the Ragniche Uh in Oregon they had
(32:34):
That's how they got kicked out ofAmerica was their marriage fraud. So yep,
me personally, I'm like, Idon't care if you get married for
tax purposes like in this economy,Ugh, I wouldn't blame you. But
I think, to me, it'sthat he's you know, he's married younger
girls as young as fifteen, andhe's he's he's defrauding Heaven. Yeah,
(32:59):
I mean, and he's trying tosay he's trying to in he's manipulating these
women into thinking that this is agood thing. He's manipulating these women into
believing that this is what they wantbe fair for the Mormon faith. He
doesn't have to manipulate them. Theyjust think it's a good thing. Yeah,
Joseph Smith already declared it a goodthing, so he's just kind of
(33:22):
I guess. I don't know howmuch effort on his part that takes,
but you know what, the fuckthis is what makes me really dislike ugh.
I dislike that. I dislike it. I hate it. Technically,
he is just defrauding Heaven in thissituation of the fraud because he's not legally
(33:45):
married to anybody except his one wife. He's just sealed. That's why it's
called sealed, not marriage. Ijust keep saying marriage. He's only really
defrauding Heaven because because he's not doingmarriage things with so many of them.
Yeah, and you think God isreally going to be like, oh uh,
you got married, you signed it, you kissed, Yep, you're
(34:07):
married. I don't think that.I think that God knows. God knows
if you don't, you know wifethings with your wife. I don't claim
to be all knowing and all powerful. It's just they they sure seem to
claim that he does that he is. So I just need some Claire.
I just have some clarifying questions forJoseph Smith and Brigham Young and all the
(34:30):
rest of the prophets that came afterbecause you know what's it's all based on
the prophet's word. That's yeah,they're interpreting for God. Okay. So
(34:52):
in eighteen fifty six, the RepublicanParty platform condemned polygamy. Grover Cleveland,
in an address to com Congress,said, no, it's got to be
the American family value system that wedo, you know how they do.
And then they said, you know, except for the Mormons who do this
own thing, but we don't likethat. And so the critics and the
(35:16):
newspapers and things said that what wasgoing on was actually really lascivious and gross,
and like, this is what's happeningin polygamy, and it's terrible.
According to historians, Mormon polygamy wasgrounded and traditional principles based on the Old
Testament, which provided for men totake multiple wives and a historian. One
(35:38):
historian argues that Mormon's sexual ethics werecomparable to other Americans of their time.
Mormons prohibited adultery. They believed,as others did, that male semen should
not be wasted in acts not directedto procreation, that kind of thing.
Sorry, So Mormons believe that sexdoing pregnancy resulted in sick babies and argue
(36:01):
that it was Remember this is themiddle of the eighteen hundreds, so nobody
knows anything. And they argue thatit was better for men to have other
alternatives than to force themselves on theirmonogamous, pregnant wife, and that's why
having plural marriages was better, becausethen the babies weren't going to be made
sick and they weren't gonna have tobe forcing themselves on women who didn't want
(36:21):
to have sex. All right,for the latter part of that, well,
as far as they know babies aregonna get sick, they don't know
any better. It's eighteen fifty havebabies been getting sick? When people fucking
go to both town While like pregnant, do you hit the baby top of
head? I just feel like Ifeel like that one is conjecture and was
(36:47):
not produced by a scientist. Ithink that they were just like, yeah,
it hits, it hits the topof the baby's head, for sure,
we got we gotta stop this,we gotta stop this right now,
as so much medicine in the eighteenfifties was just conjecture. Yeah, so
also true to beliefs of the day. They said that men were more sexually
(37:07):
inclined than women, so having moreoutlets than just the one woman was good.
I guess that's always been my problemwith it. Why the fuck?
Why the fuck is it always sisterwives and not sister husbands. That's always
been an issue for me. I'mlike, it's always based on the Bible,
and the Bible doesn't have that.No, the Bible just had Naomi.
(37:29):
Do you want to expand on that? Basically, they their husbands died
and not became lesbians, but likethey lived out the rest of their days
together and listening to other people discussit, like scholars and historians talk about
and h writers not necessarily writers.How do I describe it? I guess
(37:52):
historians like historical literature, people whoare specialized, who specialize in analyzed Biblical
texts. But they're like, it'swritten in a very homoerrotic way, or
like in a very it's supposed tobe, Like it's definitely talking about women
love women here, and that Naomiand Ruth were gay, like how they
(38:15):
talked about how David and John Jonathanwere gay. Everybody likes to forget all
the gay things in the Bible,So if women, I guess. I
guess their idea of having sister wivesis so they can also have their naomis.
But I don't know. That wasa criticism during the day, that
(38:37):
they can be getting up to morelike taboo sexual practices with all their multiple
wives. I mean, yeah.But also so for a Young's part,
he said, polygamy was quote oneof the best doctrines ever published. But
then twenty years after he died,Utah was admitted into the Union, and
(38:57):
in exchange they had to give uppolygamy. So they gave up. They
gave up polygamy like eighteen sixty,so that didn't take long. No,
So for like M's point earlier,that's how long the Mormons have not been
doing polygamy, Like the eighteen sixties, that's how long the Mormons have said
that they don't do polygamy anymore.The only ones who still do it are
(39:17):
like fringe people who don't abide bythe actual like laws that the Church is
setting out currently. Yeah, andlike it's not like it's impossible for the
the uh the church to update theissue though, is saying how infallible the
prophets are each time, and thenlike having to change. Well something,
(39:39):
Well, God is just updating whathe wants. God says he doesn't like
that anymore. It's not the prophet, it's God. Right. I think
some of it's like they just say, oh, there was a misunderstanding in
God's word or something like he didn'tquite understand the message that was being received
and stuff like that, because likethere's old Uh, there's old shit about
(40:04):
you know, the color of yourskin being related to how much sin you
have that kind of skin, Andthat's not even old. It was like
two decades ago the Mormons were stillsaying that they were going to be a
white and delightful people. Yeah.I just read that today recently, that
they that they stopped putting bars onblack people from doing things inside the church.
(40:27):
That's discussed. Wait, like it'sa lot, it's a lot.
This does segue really nicely into mynext point. Oh let's let's let's go
okay, so we'll talk about anotheraspect of bringing young that's also not great.
Uh, because I don't consider everythingabout the fifty five wives to be
bad, but I don't consider itto be great either. So in April
eighteen fifty five, at the MormonsSpring conference, Young called on some one
(40:52):
hundred and sixty men to abandon theirhomes, their farm and their families and
to head into the wilderness surrounding theUtah settlements to establish missions among the Native
Americans. Oh, just leave themalone. Yeah. So, in Mormon
cosmology, Native Americans are the descendantsof a fallen ancient patriarch, and church
(41:14):
officials say they were undertaking the missionsto convert tribes on their borders to their
faith and to improve their welfare.So there is a guy named Garland Hurt.
Garland Hurt, that guy was anIndian agent to Utah, and he
was really suspicious about what was happening, and a confidential letter to the head
(41:37):
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs inWashington, he wrote that the missions were
actually intended to tea, to teachthe natives to distinguish between quote Mormons and
Americans. Oh, a distinction headded that would be quote prejudicial to the
interests of the latter to the UnitedStates. So he thinks that what's happening
is that Bergham Young is going outthere, is telling his men to go
(41:58):
out there and teach them that theMormons are good guys. In the United
States. People are bad guys,and you should be good with us and
bad with them. Yeah. Thatsounds right. Yeah, that sounds like
an approximation of what would probably behappening. The first of the missionaries left
Salt Lake City in May of eighteenfifty five. One band of men rode
(42:19):
about three hundred and fifty miles northinto what's now Idaho, which is beyond
Young's legal jurisdiction. Another headed fourhundred miles southwest beyond Utah's borders into kind
of where Las Vegas is, anda third went just they were just still
in Utah. They went like twohundred miles southeast into where Moab, Utah
(42:40):
is now Okay. In August,Young wrote to the Las Vegas missionaries working
among the Payutes to congratulate them onthe quote prosperity and the success which has
thus far attended your efforts quote,and to exhort them to start baptizing Native
Americans, to quote gain their confidence, love and esteem, and make them
feel by your acts that we aretheir real friends. Quote that some sentences
(43:06):
make me uncomfortable. Yeah. Byeighteen fifty seven, non Mormon newspapers from
New York to California had begun reportingthat the Mormons were seeking the Native alliance
in case of a clash with theUnited States because they're like they're building an
army, was what the newspapers weresaying. And this was based on briefings
from officials who had returned to Washington, or gossip or just some of it
(43:30):
was just alarmist, like for example, in the National Intelligencer, a Washington
newspaper in eighteen fifty seven, theyput the number of Mormon Native allies at
three hundred thousand, even though thetotal population of the Utah Territory was only
like twenty thousand for Native Americans.Wow, and I just liked this quote.
(43:52):
But Young characterized the press coverage asa prolonged howl of base slander.
That's quote honestly accurate. I mean, jeez. So ultimately the missions last.
The missions lasted like almost no time, and they didn't really go much
of anywhere. The Southeast mission collapsedwithin four months after a skirmish with the
(44:16):
Ute Natives. The Las Vegas Missionfollowed because they decided to shift their focus
from conversion to doing a lead minefor some reason. All right, sure,
uh, and that didn't work.Out for them, and then the
Northern Mission called Fort Lemmy operated amongthe Bannock, Shoshone and others until eighteen
(44:38):
fifty eight. So it lasted thelongest, like a year, and that
is a lot. I didn't reallywork out for them. No, And
so all of this is happening eighteenfifty seven to fifty eight. And you
want to know something is that BrighamYoung's term as territorial governor had actually ended
in eighteen fifty four. Yeah,he was just kind of existing the saying
(45:00):
he was in charge. But thatis hilarious. He wasn't. So the
new president Buchanan, with his cabinet, uh said, uh, okay,
so this is kind of like you'regathering an army. Then, because he's
right there with that, he decidedto replace Sprigham Young with another guy who
was the mayor in Georgia for awhile, a mayor in someplace in Georgia.
(45:22):
And uh so he ordered instead ofjust ordering that guy to go,
he ordered troops to accompany the newgovernor west and to enforce federal rule in
Utah. But that are not clear. He did not notify Brigham Young that
he was coming to replace him.Oh shit, Yeah, so yeah.
So what happened was that Young foundout in July of eighteen fifty seven that
(45:47):
this was happening. The something calledthe Deseret News reported that Apostle Parley Parley
Pratt, what a name, ParleyPratt? So that that guy an apostle,
he had been killed in Arkansas bythe estranged husband of a woman he
(46:07):
had taken as his twelfth wife.Oh wow, who So they learned that,
and then they learned that the rumorswere circulating that federal troops were advancing,
prompting Apostle Heber Kimball. So thatprompted him to say, I will
(46:29):
fight until there is not a dropof blood in my veins. I have
wives enough to whip out the UnitedStates. We're gonna sick his wives on
the president. Oh my god.I could not include that. Oh my
(46:50):
god, I have wives enough.Oh my god. So Mormon two were
traveling into the area from the KansasMissouri area brought word and said, yes,
there are, in fact actually federaltroops coming here headed for Utah,
And that led to Young's announcement onthe tenth anniversary of his arrival in the
(47:12):
Great Salt Lake Valley that they weregoing to do something about this, dear,
So I'll tell you what happened.Six weeks later, a California bound
wagon train including one hundred and fortynon Mormon immigrants, most of them from
Arkansas, made camp in a lushvalley known as Mountain Meadows, about forty
miles beyond the Mormon settlement of CedarCity, and just before breakfast, According
(47:37):
to an account by historian Will Bagleyin a book called Blood of the Prophets,
Brigham Young and the Massacre at MountainMeadows, a oh, dear,
that oh, a child among theimmigrants fell struck by a bullet. And
that happened as a party of menwith painted faces attacked, and the immigrants
had to circle up their wagons.H After a five day siege, a
(48:01):
white man bearing a white flag approachedthe immigrants Mormons. He told them had
interceded with the attackers and would guaranteethe immigrants safe passage out of Mountain Meadows
if the Arkansans would turn over theirguns. And the immigrants accepted the offer.
So the Mormons said, will helpyou. We fought off those guys.
(48:22):
This sounds work is strated. Sothe wounded and the women and children
were led away first, followed bythe men, each guarded by an armed
Mormon. After half an hour,the guard's leader gave the order to halt.
Every man in the Arkansas party wasshot from point blank range. According
to eyewitness accounts sighted by Bagley,the women and older children fell to bullets,
(48:45):
knives, and arrows. Only seventeenindividuals, all of them children under
the age of seven, were spared. This is the Mormons that did this.
Yeah, that's uh, Nope,nope, what the fuck? What
the fuck? So for a longtime, yeah, for a long time,
decades, Mormon leaders blamed the PayuteIndians for the massacre. They took
(49:09):
part in the initial attack the massacre, but research by Bagley, Juanita Brooks,
and some other historians have established thatit was mostly all the Mormons.
Uh so. One of the modernday Mormon guys named Henry Iring, I
(49:29):
think finally just recently formerly acknowledged thatMormons in southern Utah organized and carried out
the massacre. It's about down time, yeah, he said. Quote what
was done here long ago by membersof our church represents a terrible and inexcusable
departure from Christian teaching and conduct.A separate expression of regret is owed to
(49:51):
the payute people who have unjustly bornefor too long the principal blame for what
occurred during the massacre. Yeah,did they pay reparations at very fucking least?
I seriously doubt it. No,I assume there was no reparations given.
But what happened with the troops?So September eighteen fifty seven, about
(50:12):
fifteen hundred federal troops were about amonth from reaching Fort Bridger, one hundred
miles northeast of Salt Lake City,and Young he was like in desperate need
of time to prepare an evacuation ofthe city, mobilized the militia to delay
the army. Okay, So forseveral weeks militiamen raided the troops supplies,
burned the grass to deny forage totheir horses, cattle and mules, and
(50:36):
burned Fort Bridger damn. And thenthere were some November snowstorms that intervened.
Snowbound and lacking supplies, the troopscommander decided to spend the winter at what
was left of the fort. Mormons, he declared to have quote placed themselves
in rebellion against the Union and entertainedthe insane design of establishing a form of
government thoroughly despotic and utterly repugnant ofour institution. Quote. There's a lot
(51:01):
of cognitive dissonance going on in mybrain, like, oh, yeah,
I don't like the Mormons. Idon't like what they've done. I don't
like anything. It's just wiping outpeople for their religious beliefs. But they
weren't. They didn't do this becauseof the religious beliefs. They did this
(51:22):
because of you know, the terriblethings that are going on because of the
Mormons. And I'm just like,well, originally those troops weren't even gonna
do anything except just ac company thenew governor. But now they're doing something.
Now they have to do something.Yeah, So spring thaw in eighteen
(51:44):
fifty eight, Johnston, the leaderof the army, decided like he needed
reinforcement, so we prepared to getthem and that would bring his numbers from
fifteen hundred to five thousand, whichat the time was a third of the
entire US Army. Jesus and atthe same time Young initiated what has become
known as the Move South, whichis an exodus of some thirty thousand people
(52:06):
from settlements in northern Utah. Beforeleaving Salt Lake City, Mormons buried the
foundation of their temple, their mostsacred building, and planted wheat to camouflage
it from the invader's eyes. Andthen a few men remained behind ready to
put houses and barns and orchards tofire to keep them out of the soldier's
hands. So that's what they wereready to do. So they were going.
(52:29):
They were ready to just like fightuntil they were exterminated. Essentially,
keep moving and fight until we're exterminated. But they weren't, obviously, because
they're one of the largest religious organizationsstill in the world. So that's not
one of the big ones, youknow. So that's due largely to the
intervention of an advocate of theirs namedThomas Kine. For the winter the winter
(52:53):
of eighteen fifty seven and fifty eight, Cain set out for Utah to try
to mediate what was being called theMormon crisis. The president was like,
I don't support what you're doing,but I'm not going to stop you from
doing it. By April, inexchange for peace, he had secured Young's
agreement to give way to the newgovernor. So he did a really good
(53:13):
job. He got there in February, sorry I skipped that word, and
then by April, and then byApril he had gotten Young to agree to
stop. And then the public,for its part, decided to blame the
president for what was going on becausehe didn't even bother to notify Young of
what was happening. And I wouldsay that that's his fault, so that
(53:36):
he didn't have to be embarrassed anylonger. Basically, the president sent a
peace commission out to Utah and Youngaccepted that. So that same month,
Johnston and the army march through thedeserted streets of Salt Lake City then kept
marching forty miles south to establish CampFloyd, which is in present day Fairfield,
Utah. And since the army wasno longer a threat, the Mormons
(53:58):
just sort of returned back to theirhomes and just began a long and fitful
accommodation to secular rule under a seriesof non Mormon governors. And there was
a lot of federal laws against polygamythat happened, but they already they were
already giving up polygamy anyway. Basicallypretty soon after this, because Young dies,
So yeah, and he was,you know, keeping it alive more
(54:20):
or less. Yeah, he throughhis own singular effort. Yeah, him
alone, So one historian says.One historian says, the United States government
used polygamy as a wrecking ball todestroy the old theocracy. By eighteen ninety
Mormons were hanging on by their fingernails. But then Wilford Woodriff delivered his manifesto
(54:43):
repudiating polygamy. He went further.He said that from now on, Mormons
would obey the law of the land. Quote. So statehood for Utah followed
in eighteen ninety six. So theirdreams of being their own independent, their
own basically independent state with their owndominion, free of the rule of United
States, that was over, andthey just entered the American fold. And
(55:04):
that's the end of Brigham Young's part. And the very last part of our
American Messiah's The LDS series is gonnabe about just what are they doing now?
There was just so much background.We had to have the background,
but we also need to know whatthey're doing currently. Yeah, and you
know what, you guys, youcould hear that in the next episode.
(55:25):
So stick around. We'll see youagain. Next week and then we'll return
to our regular programming. Ay nowagain, this is a part two.
We're gonna have a part three andgo listen to part one if you haven't
already, but if you've already listenedapart one and you're really itching to keep
(55:47):
hearing us. We are on somany social medias. We are on TikTok,
Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube YouTube. We do gaming stuff. If
we play video games, I believethe young people call it let's plays.
(56:07):
I don't know that they call itthat an actually do They might call it
something they don't know. They don'tcall it let's please anyone. I don't
know. I don't know what kidsare calling things these days. I'm not
even that I'm only thirty Jesus okay. Anyway, and if you want your
own questions answered, uh, youcan go ahead and send us a message
(56:29):
either by email, which is whywould you ask that pod at gmail dot
com? Again, that is whywould you ask that pod at gmail dot
com? Or you go to ourwebsite, why would you ask that dot
com? Go to our contact button. There's a little form there. You
don't have to do any kind ofemailing or anything, just throwing your name
doesn't have to be your name couldbe any name. If you made it
(56:52):
this far, do what was theirname? Pete starts with the P the
party. What's it at Harley Pratt? We'll put what wife number you want?
Yeah, but you are sorry anduh we'll know that you listen to
this episode and you get thrown aquestion. Could be any kind of question,
(57:15):
stupid that you think of, sweet, stupid, blended, splendiferousus,
uh, strange, sinister. Wetake them all. So we'll see you
(57:40):
guys again next week with the finalepisode in this set about the LDS Church.
So thank you, have a goodweek. The proper Give me that P.
Hey, folks, Why would youask? That? Is a podcast that
answers some of the weirdest questions.A lot of those are inappropriate for some
listeners. If you're squeamish, easilydisturbed, we're just having a bad day,
this may not be for you.But if you've got to know the
answers like we do, stay tuned. Why would you ask that? Presented
(00:31):
by me M They them Am,Karen she her and Remy he they and
today we are revisiting the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Oh
fun, it's a mouthful for thoseof you not in the note. This
is the second part of this particularseries. Last part we went into Joseph
(00:56):
Smith in the origins of what wenow call Mormonism. Remy, it's just
sent me a very serious picture ofa man who would really look better if
he like tied back his hair.It's just one of the three pictures of
him that I have. Yeah,he didn't have what that back hair?
(01:18):
It would you know, if heif he let his hair in the front
kind of fly free a little bitmore. You know, let's photoshop out
that hair and he's fine. Imean, he's fine. He's a guy.
Maybe he needs like a little morelike waves going on, Like there's
just something about it that makes itlook like he has a cobra hood.
(01:42):
Yeah, it's definitely. It's notas if I'm personally a looker, but
maybe I when when the when thephoto first dropped into our chat, I
said, what the fuck is goingon with his head? If meg?
Oh, okay, it's hair.If I have taught us anything, it's
that you don't have to be attractiveto know what is attractive. All right,
(02:07):
So this is a subject of ourconversation today. Oh, yes,
you're a serious man that we've justbeen describing, well, the IM and
Karen have just been describing while Ilaughed about it. Yes, what is
the name of the man we havesomehow began roasting out of nowhere? He's
(02:30):
a Brigham Young, the pioneer prophet, the pioneer prophet. Okay, how
did he get this? Uh?This name? During his time when he
was alive, they called him thelion, the lion. Why did they
call him the lion? Uh?It was short for the lion of God.
That seems like a name that isantithetical to things. Lions are pretty
(02:58):
common and biblio cool story. No, it just seems like it's putting yourself
on a petistal. It does seemlike he's he's calling himself like a king
of some kind. Uh. Andbeing a lion is not necessarily always a
good thing. I me personally,when I was growing up in the church
(03:19):
and I heard about lions, Iwas immediately like David in The Lions Den,
Daniel Daniel in the Lions Den.I think of the lion, the
witch and the wardrobe for lion andSamson Sampson and the lion. Samson fought
a lion. Yeah, yeah,that was one of his claims to fame.
I don't know anything about this shit. They called him the Lion because
(03:40):
he was really loud and proud aboutsharing his testimony of the Lord Ah testimony
according to the Church of Jesus ChristOrg. Okay, okay, so this
is like him, said American MessiahsPart two. Bring him young. So
I just gonna start with his likea brief background information about him. He
(04:03):
was born in June in eighteen ohone in Vermont, just like Joseph was
born in Vermont. Brigham was theninth of eleven children. He did a
couple of things before he got intochurch stuff. He was a carpenter,
and he was a blacksmith for alittle while. And he got married to
a lady named Miriam in eighteen twentyfour and they had some daughters, and
(04:27):
so he was doing that with hislife before Mormonism came along, okay.
And then he read the Book ofMormon just pretty shortly after it was published
in eighteen thirty, and then hiswife died, and so he decided to
join the church. That's rough,buddy. What he did was he picked
up his life from Vermont and hejust sort of tredged his way out to
Kirtland, Ohio, where the whereJoseph Smith was at the time. And
(04:53):
it only took him two years beforeJoseph Smith ordained him as an apostle.
Oh wow, oh okay, sure, yeah, and they and he joined
something called the Quorum of the TwelveApostles. But what now, the Quorum
of the twelve Apostles quorum, Idon't know what that word means. So
I'm gonna sit here. It's likea group, just like a group of
(05:15):
twelve apostles for Joseph Smith. Andthat was an eighteen thirty five. Yeah,
and then he started working as amissionary because I didn't so I didn't
know that the Mormons were doing themissionary thing all the way as far back
as the eighteen thirties. I don'tknow why I thought they weren't. Maybe
because they were so busy building theirown city that I thought that maybe they
were gonna not be doing that atthat point. But no. He went
(05:38):
on a mission trip to England,and he traveled around the United States during
like the early eighteen forties. Wow. He decided to come back and help
build Navoo. And that's when hemet a second wife. Second wife's name
was Marianne Angel Mary an Angel.Oh, that's a that's a pretty spot
on name. Okay, all right. He married her in eighteen thirty four,
(06:00):
and then they were married for tenyears and then Joseph Smith died.
Oh oh oh, oh, dear. Okay, Yeah, So Joseph Smith
died ten years into Brigham Young's marriage, and Brigham was the head of the
Apostles. So he was just like, I'm going to succeed you as leader.
That's cool with everybody else. Sohe just decided to take over.
(06:21):
He just decided that he did.I'm going to take a detour to talk
about another guy, real quick,Brigham Young's opposition. I want to talk
about. Oh boy, sure,it's nothing good. So this guy,
he's James String like strangle. Yeah, that's half of that word, James
(06:42):
String. He was Brigham Young's opposition. Okay. So James Strang claimed that
Joseph Smith and an angel tapped himto lead the church over Brigham Young.
Oh uh oh, and uh sothey had a they fought for power a
bit. Strang was strange, hehad Sorry sometimes I chuckle at my own
(07:05):
joke. Strang was strange. Yeah. He was a man with delusions of
like royal grandeur. Essentially. Hewrote in his diary one time, quote,
I have spent the day in tryingto contrive some plan of obtaining in
(07:25):
marriage the heir to the English crown. Oh no, and he he lives
in Illinois in the middle of theeighteen hundreds, So I don't know what
he thought he was going to do. He says, it's a difficult business
for me, but I shall tryif there is the least chance. My
mind has always been filled with dreamsof royalty and power. Quote. Now,
(07:46):
obviously I guess something happened. Yeah, so Jung took over as head
of the church, and there wasjust a lot more people on his side.
So Strang took a bunch of followersthat were on his side and went
to a place called Beaver Island Islandapparently it was located off the coast of
(08:07):
Michigan, somewhere near the lower part, and right there he established a community
that engaged in piracy and robbery.Ah man, yeah, bad name for
pirates. Strang pirates. Yeah.Strang said that divine revelation permitted him to
be able to rob people. No, God said that I need this more
(08:30):
than you do. Yeah, exactly, And then an eighteen fifty string was
made a keen quote quote in alike weird ceremony with a cardboard crown.
No. And then the United Statesgovernment said, hold on, that's too
far, and so they indicted himon trees and charges. Wow. Yeah,
(08:50):
it was the cardboard crown that didit. He was acquitted, but
he was elected, and then hewas elected twice to the Michigan Legislature and
then he was murdered by his ownpeople. Wow. Okay, alrighty then
so there, I could probably havemade a whole episode about him. But
we're spending enough time on Mormonism already, so I just needed to give you
(09:13):
that little side trek into his life. Yeah, dang. And the person
that was opposing Brigham Young. Soyou could have had that guy as the
one who like really brought the Mormonsinto their like full force. Instead we
got Brigham Young. And this isthis is obviously the better choice. I
mean, I'm gonna tell you howBrigham Young is in a very good person,
(09:35):
but he was still the better choice. Okay, okay. So in
February of eighteen forty six, heled the beginnings of an exodus of some
twelve thousand Mormons from Illinois and wasdetermined to establish their faith beyond the reach
of American laws, was what hewas trying to do. So he wanted
to take them out of America,out of the United States, and into
somewhere else. This is why hewas called the Pioneer Prophet. And if
(10:00):
you look it up, Mormons actuallyplayed like a really weirdly huge role in
the wild West. You know,I'm really not surprised about that, considering,
you know, all of Utah.Yeah, that would have been a
lot of settling to do so,he set out with twelve thousand people out
to a part of the United Statesthat at the time do anything with.
(10:24):
His biographer Leonard Errington, wrote thatYoung and other church leaders knew about the
Great Salt Lake Valley from trappers journals, explorers reports, and interviews with travelers,
families travelers familiar with the region.So at the time, most of
what would become the American Southwest stillbelonged to Mexico. So Brigham Young was
(10:46):
like, that's where we're going,Mexico, okay. He believed that that
nation's hold on its northern frontier wasso continuous that the Mormons could just sort
of set up shop wherever they feltlike up there, and then nobody would
bother them, and nobody would stopthem from doing it. Him and his
twelve thousand people could just set uptheir own little city up there, and
(11:07):
the Mexican government wasn't going to care, he said, considering that Utah exists
still, how did that work out? So in the spring of eighteen forty
seven, he led an advance partyof one hundred and forty seven from an
encampment in Nebraska to the Great SaltLake Valley and then got there in July,
(11:28):
and then for two decades the Mormonsjust sort of filtered in, like
seventy thousand Mormons filtered in. Hestarted with twelve and he ended up with
seventy thousand just sort of just sortof trickled into the area. It was
like a really ruling. Yeah,it was a really grueling journey for them.
That's why it defines the experience ofthe LEDs. But this like big
(11:52):
exodus that they did. But that'show it worked for them, was they
just came in like little bursts untilthey had seventy thousand people. How did
they manage that huge joke population?Like that's a lot like did they did
they settle out like all over theplace or now they all settled in the
(12:13):
in the Salt Lake Valley. Whathappened? What's going to happen is he
started out with twelve thousand that wereinitially like really with him, and then
word just spreads and more people arelike, ah, the new prophet,
he's over there in Mexico, andso everybody just starts going where he's at.
And it was only a year laterthat Mexico was defeated in the Mexican
(12:33):
American War and signed the Treaty ofGuadaloupe Hidalgo and ceded to the United States
all of the area that would becomeCalifornia, Nevada, Utah, Texas,
and some of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Okay,
so everything that used to be Mexicobecame United States, including where the Mormons
(12:54):
were living. It was basically aboutsix months after they had just like finished
settling into the region, they wereright back under US control. So yeah,
alrighty, So again this is whyhe's called a pioneer because of all
this nonsense. So they wanted tobe in charge of themselves. So church
leaders sought official status as like aterritory. They petitioned Congress in eighteen forty
(13:20):
nine for territorial status and then forstatehood, and they wanted. What they
wanted was all the land from theRockies to the Sierra Nevada and from the
new border with Mexico all the wayto Oregon. Okay. Obviously they didn't
get that. No, they basicallywanted the entirety of of all that land
(13:41):
that was just given to the UnitedStates from Mexico, all those states that
I just read, ooh, yeah, that's uh no, Big Congress said,
this is a lot no, thankyou. We are having a big
fight right now about other problems,and we're not going to deal with you
because at the time Congress was havinga big problem with the slavery issue.
(14:03):
You know, it's right about thattime, and so they said, i'll
give you. I'm gonna call itthe Utah Territory, and that's what you
can have. So they reduced itdown to what's present day Utah. Nevada,
western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming was consideredUtah at the time, so they
lost a lot of land over time. Oh yeah, So Brigham Young ran
(14:26):
the Utah Territory a lot like howJ. Justice Smith was running Navo,
like a lot of conflicts between religiousand secular authorities because they were a solely
religious institution, but there was gonnabe secular people coming in from the federal
level. And yeah, the Mormonleaders were suspicious of both the character and
(14:48):
intent of anybody from the federal levelcoming in, such as there was a
judge who was found to have abandonedhis wife and children in Illinois and brought
up a sex worker to Utah,and then over the next seven years,
there was just like a large secessionof federal officers, judges, quote,
Indian agents, surveyors and stuff thatcame and went because they just couldn't get
(15:11):
along with Brigham Young. Wow.Wow. I would think that the federal
government would have more power in thissituation, but what they were actually finding
was that Brigham would just circumvent orreverse any of their decisions. Wow.
Yeah, that makes sense. FromIndian agent Jacob Holman, he wrote this
(15:33):
to his superior in Washington in eighteenfifty one. He said, Young has
been so much in the habit ofexercising his will, which is supreme here,
that no one will dare oppose anythinghe may say or do quote yeah
okay. Surveyor General David Burr reportedthat Young told him federal surveyors quote shall
not be suffered to trespass on Mormonland. Oh wow, okay. So
(15:54):
He's like, I don't even wantyou people here, and I'm done with
it. So through the mid eighteenfifties, federal appointees would go there and
then have to go back to Washingtonfrustrated or intimidated or both things out of
being able to do what they cameto do. And some of them wrote
books or articles about what had happenedto them while they were out there that
(16:18):
drove them away from their position.And all it really did was like make
anti Mormon sentiment bigger. Just madeit worse. So he made it worse,
Yes, he made it worse.So at this point, the practice
of plural marriage polygamy had extended beyondJoseph Smith in his inner circle, and
word of it had been passed bynon Mormon immigrants passing through Utah because all
(16:44):
the evidence of it happening was inplain view. Now they called it an
open secret. Mormon's embrace of pluralmarriage was based on a revelation that Joseph
Smith just reminded everybody said he hadreceived. He said that like that,
like Moroni came and told him itwas fine. Yeah. Yeah. They
used examples of polygamous biblical patriarchs likeAbraham and Jacob to be able to be
(17:10):
like, see, look it's fine, it's in the Bible. And what
Joseph Smith said, this is prettyfringe now yeah yeah, yeah, like
I mean, just to be clear, yeah, I say that in like
two paragraphs, Joseph Smith said,quote the possession of more than one wife
was not only permissible, but actuallynecessary for complete salvation much why so?
(17:33):
Brigham Young started out kind of iffyabout it because he had been married to
his second wife for like ten years. At that point. It was pretty
pretty fine with just that. Butthen he got really into it. How
do you get really into it?Like a hobby? Collect them all?
Yeah, exactly the joke I wasabout to make. Young said that polygamy
was necessary quote so that the noblespirits, which are waiting for tabernacles might
(17:57):
be brought forth quote, which islike he was trying to reference how Mormon's
view that afterlife. So studies havefound you want to guess how many wives
studies? Uh? One point fivethat he had one half? Oh okay,
now I oh you said studies foundAnd I'm like, what how many
(18:18):
wives did the studies find that hehad? Old documented pages? Bring them?
Okay? Yeah, bring them?Young? You tell me, I
want you to guess, because you'reprobably wrong. Well, if you're asking
me to guess, I'm going tosay twelve. I'm going to say twenty
five, or I'm going to beoutrageous and say one hundred and fifty two.
Whoa dude, that that wow,which nobody has that kind of time
(18:44):
or buddy, Now, which onedo you think was actually correct? Karen,
I'm leaning closer to my twenty numbertwenty five. Okay, So of
his will for well documented marriages,they found fifty five fifty five wives.
There's too many wives, like allat once? Or did he like what
(19:11):
I'm suddenly having flashbacks to keep sweet, pray and obey, good God,
it's too many wives. So manywives is like a whole commune of just
wives, Like at that point,like, what are you doing? That's
more than a month of like tryingto switch between every bedroom Like that doesn't
(19:36):
work, That doesn't work. Yeah, you're just a thought. So young
people like Clarissa Decker fifteen, oldpeople like Hannah King sixty five. He
married single women and widows. Mostunusually, he was sealed to both of
his mother in laws. Nah,this original one from his first wife and
the one from his second wife.No, Okay, I have a question
(20:03):
if he is being so indiscriminate aboutit, what really is his intention here,
Like, what is the explanation thathe is giving for this? What
is his intention? Is it toprovide benefits to these women? So that
he could take them into his household. I can tell you, is it?
(20:26):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah,please okay. Most controversially, he
married women who were already married,dude, some to moremon men who were
in good standing. What the fuck? What the what the fun? He
said one time to a woman whoreally was trying to become one of his
wives. He said, whenever Iwant a woman, whenever I want to
(20:48):
be sealed to a woman, I'lljust do it. So paraphrasemen. So
he just finds a lady likes andthen he says, well, I know
that you're married already, but I'mthe prophet, so they're gonna be my
wife now. Yeah. So,but I can explain what his thought process
(21:10):
was. Mostly his thought process wasthat he from the quotes that I read
from him, he thought that tobe a good Mormon and to be able
to go into the afterlife, hehad to have multiple wives. And so
he just said, I'm just gonnahave as many of them as I can
do. So what benefit is therefor the wives? Is there a betefit?
(21:32):
I can answer that too. Ohokay, yeah. So as early
as eighteen forty two, Brigham wascontent as a monogamist. He had his
wife Mary an angel, and thentwo months later, like after eighteen forty
January eighteen forty two, two monthslater he proposed marriage to a seventeen year
(21:52):
old British Mormon named Martha Brotherton,who said no, good, okay,
But then he immediately posed to anotherperson. How did his original wife number
one feel about this? Well,she's Mormon too, so probably she was
okay with it as you could asmuch as you could be. I mean,
oh, you know, I gottarecommend some some listening, like uh,
(22:15):
have you have you ever listened toWesley in a cult? I?
Yeah, I really think that youwould enjoy it. Uh. One of
their first episodes, I couldn't listento it all the way through, but
they were talking about sister wives inuh uh Mormon sect, and it was
like how people were trying to handlethe like how how a woman was trying
(22:38):
to handle the fact that she hadto share her sealed spouse. I have
the knowledge of, like how someof these women felt, how some of
these women felt, but not howall of them felt. So I couldn't
find how his first wife felt,but I did know how some of his
other women felt like I would liketo know, you know because like some
(23:03):
people I imagine like maybe it's it'sgood for them because they don't have to
like work on his attention or anything, or like other times maybe it's like
really bad or like because like hisreasoning is just it can't just be I
wanted like just get wives indiscriminately,Like there's gotta be other stuff. There's
(23:26):
other stuff involved, right, yougotta think about like why why would one
man feel secure in housing fifty fivedifferent women? So what some of the
women thought was really irritated and frustratedbecause he wasn't spending enough time with them,
and some of the women felt likebecause some of the women wrote a
(23:48):
lot of letters to him about howfrustrated they were with the whole situation,
some women didn't know there were thatmany other women when they signed on to
be one of his wives and wantedto divorce, and he would give them
a divorce when they asked for it, and then he would just go marry
somebody else. So so he hadlike a rotating door. Yeah, So
basically the fifty five women that stuckaround and stayed were fifty five women who
(24:12):
decided they wanted to stick around andstay, because if they wanted to leave,
he just said, yeah, okay, whatever, I'll let you leave,
and he just let him go.He would divorce them and let them
leave. But you know, didthat really wasn't really that easy to just
be like, I want a divorce. Like according to the stuff that I
was reading, yeah, it wasvery fine with giving divorces. There was
(24:34):
no argument on his end. Yeah, but what would it do to the
women? Probably not good things becauseto be divorced in the middle of the
eighteen hundreds not great. But ifthey stayed in Mormon society, maybe it's
different. But I don't but I'mnot sure about that because like you got
to think like that, okay,one the whole like not spending enough time
(24:56):
with people. That's like a commonproblem in polyamor recircles. Uh, And
like then you get people who didn'teven know how many wives this guy had
when they got married. Yeah,Like one woman divorced him and wrote a
biography called like it was like herbiography of Wife number nineteen and then later
(25:18):
it got rewritten as wife number twentyfive or something like that. And then
what and then actually what we've whatlike historians have been able to tell she
was closer to like forty something.Wow. Hold up, you said this
is a let's see a biography WifeNumber nineteen and Eliza Young. Yep?
(25:40):
Can I still like acquire this book? You could probably find it on Project
Gutenberg? Yeah? Hold up,you saycond Okay? Well, I wanted
to know, like, what exactlydid she go through? What was her
whole thing? Like? Oh shit, they have it on archive dot org.
Hold on, so I accidentally flippedto the back page. Oh my
god, six hundred and five pages. Wow to Let's see Wife Number nineteen
(26:02):
or the Story of a Life inBondage being a complete expos of Mormonism in
revealing the sorrows, sacrifices, andsuffering of women in polygamy by Anna Elyza
Young Brigham Young's Apostate Wife Ooh ApostateDamn, with introductory notes by John B.
Goff and Mary A. Livermore,Illustrated and sold by subscription only,
(26:26):
published by Dustin Gilman and Co.In eighteen seventy six. Uh, I
bet it's I bet it's probably reallyinteresting. She was very unhappy with being
in her marriage to him. Ithink anybody would, Uh, like not
only like just just talking about somebodywho's been in a PolyAm relationship marriage situation
(26:48):
before fifty four other people in thisAgain, you can't even like cycle through
bedrooms in one month, like imaginemeal times. I can tell you more.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah pleaseOkay. So after his first plural
marriage, Young married three more timesbefore Smith was murdered. Uh and then
(27:11):
he did not live with any ofhis additional wives and they bore him no
what and they bore him no childrenduring those years. They just lived on
their own. Uh oh okay,so he just like married them and like
said, all right, man,i'd yos. So what happens then is
they just live independently but as amarried woman. So they still have all
(27:33):
the status of a married woman,but they have basically complete independence. You
know, maybe like okay, whatit sounds like it could have been a
good deal if it is indeed likethat he left them alone, Like can
you imagine like so being like oneof his wives and just being like one
of the ones that gets to likebe separate. And also you're lesbian.
(27:57):
I'm writing fan fiction now, yeah, probably be good fan fiction. Yeah,
let me keep going. So afterSmith died, Young married fifteen more
women, just like just right after, and then celestial marriage became more of
like a quote unquote earthly reality becausehe started having children with some of his
(28:19):
wives. And then in eighteen fortysix his rate of marriage peaked because he
married about twenty additional wives in Navoo. Oh wow, he just speedway that
shit, Yeah he did. Andthen he headed for the American West,
and he brought them all with himunless they wanted a divorce. And so
(28:41):
here's what happened with the wives.In interactions with his wives, he was
at times romantic or aloof or generousor stingy. As an old man,
he would still say that he wouldfall in love and want to be with
new people, but sometimes he wouldget cold and distance with some of the
women. So, as was thecase with many of his other followers,
(29:06):
he could like deeply disappoint these women. But we've just talked about that in
excess. So Young didn't really careso much what people thought about the fact
that he had so many marriages,and he had like little time for his
wives when they expressed dissatisfaction. Whenwomen wanted divorces, he just gave it
to them and he would and hewould buy homes for women and outlining Utah
(29:30):
settlements. For wives who preferred tohave independence or privacy from him, he
would just buy them houses for themto go live in. Oh my god.
Yeah. And then and then alsoI found that at the same time
he would try to create like aharmonious united family feeling because he wanted to
have like one big prayer session withall of his people during the during the
(29:55):
evening. But yeah, so ifyou were one of his wives, some
of the them were having children withhim, but like, by and large,
from what I read, he didnot have any almost any relationship at
all with like thirty of those fiftyfive women. Do you think that maybe
there's like at least one wife thathe just forgot about. Certain there was
(30:15):
more than one. So if Iremember the numbers correctly, it was like
thirty or so women that he largelydidn't have any relationships with. They lived
in their own separate houses. Theywere independent but married, so they basically
ran their own lives and did theirown thing. And then the other ones
(30:37):
with some combination of like having childrenwith these women or living with him or
living in groups near him, andhe was having like some sort of relationship
with them, but maybe not physical. I did read that he didn't have
a physical relationship with very many ofhis wives. He had babies with several
of them. Yeah, so offifty five he had babies several. So,
(31:00):
but of fifty five there were notmany of them that he was having
physical relationships with. Just those oneshe was having babies with. IRE's still
a lot of women, though,Yeah, it is. That's more babies
than I've had. It's yeah.I did read that he was pretty that
he was like pretty big on women'srights, which is why he granted divorces
(31:22):
when they wanted them and let themlive independently when they wanted to. I'm
really divided on this because, onthe one hand, I can see the
benefit that could potentially be there,But you could essentially live like a spinster
if you didn't ever want to havesex and you didn't really want to have
to get married. You could justmarry him and then say, can you
(31:45):
just buy me a house? Ireally want my independence and my privacy from
you? And he would say whatever, sure thing, and he'd buy you
your own house and your own landin the Utah territory, and you could
just go live by yourself being anindependent woman but married, without the stigma
of being not married. I thinkwhere the problem comes in is the religious
(32:07):
aspect of it. Like if itweren't a like religious thing, I would
maybe be like, I mean,that's not great because technically it is a
form of fraud that he if youmarry someone and technically like doing married things
like that's what happened with UH,with the Ragniche Uh in Oregon they had
(32:34):
That's how they got kicked out ofAmerica was their marriage fraud. So yep,
me personally, I'm like, Idon't care if you get married for
tax purposes like in this economy,Ugh, I wouldn't blame you. But
I think, to me, it'sthat he's you know, he's married younger
girls as young as fifteen, andhe's he's he's defrauding Heaven. Yeah,
(32:59):
I mean, and he's trying tosay he's trying to in he's manipulating these
women into thinking that this is agood thing. He's manipulating these women into
believing that this is what they wantbe fair for the Mormon faith. He
doesn't have to manipulate them. Theyjust think it's a good thing. Yeah,
Joseph Smith already declared it a goodthing, so he's just kind of
(33:22):
I guess. I don't know howmuch effort on his part that takes,
but you know what, the fuckthis is what makes me really dislike ugh.
I dislike that. I dislike it. I hate it. Technically,
he is just defrauding Heaven in thissituation of the fraud because he's not legally
(33:45):
married to anybody except his one wife. He's just sealed. That's why it's
called sealed, not marriage. Ijust keep saying marriage. He's only really
defrauding Heaven because because he's not doingmarriage things with so many of them.
Yeah, and you think God isreally going to be like, oh uh,
you got married, you signed it, you kissed, Yep, you're
(34:07):
married. I don't think that.I think that God knows. God knows
if you don't, you know wifethings with your wife. I don't claim
to be all knowing and all powerful. It's just they they sure seem to
claim that he does that he is. So I just need some Claire.
I just have some clarifying questions forJoseph Smith and Brigham Young and all the
(34:30):
rest of the prophets that came afterbecause you know what's it's all based on
the prophet's word. That's yeah,they're interpreting for God. Okay. So
(34:52):
in eighteen fifty six, the RepublicanParty platform condemned polygamy. Grover Cleveland,
in an address to com Congress,said, no, it's got to be
the American family value system that wedo, you know how they do.
And then they said, you know, except for the Mormons who do this
own thing, but we don't likethat. And so the critics and the
(35:16):
newspapers and things said that what wasgoing on was actually really lascivious and gross,
and like, this is what's happeningin polygamy, and it's terrible.
According to historians, Mormon polygamy wasgrounded and traditional principles based on the Old
Testament, which provided for men totake multiple wives and a historian. One
(35:38):
historian argues that Mormon's sexual ethics werecomparable to other Americans of their time.
Mormons prohibited adultery. They believed,as others did, that male semen should
not be wasted in acts not directedto procreation, that kind of thing.
Sorry, So Mormons believe that sexdoing pregnancy resulted in sick babies and argue
(36:01):
that it was Remember this is themiddle of the eighteen hundreds, so nobody
knows anything. And they argue thatit was better for men to have other
alternatives than to force themselves on theirmonogamous, pregnant wife, and that's why
having plural marriages was better, becausethen the babies weren't going to be made
sick and they weren't gonna have tobe forcing themselves on women who didn't want
(36:21):
to have sex. All right,for the latter part of that, well,
as far as they know babies aregonna get sick, they don't know
any better. It's eighteen fifty havebabies been getting sick? When people fucking
go to both town While like pregnant, do you hit the baby top of
head? I just feel like Ifeel like that one is conjecture and was
(36:47):
not produced by a scientist. Ithink that they were just like, yeah,
it hits, it hits the topof the baby's head, for sure,
we got we gotta stop this,we gotta stop this right now,
as so much medicine in the eighteenfifties was just conjecture. Yeah, so
also true to beliefs of the day. They said that men were more sexually
(37:07):
inclined than women, so having moreoutlets than just the one woman was good.
I guess that's always been my problemwith it. Why the fuck?
Why the fuck is it always sisterwives and not sister husbands. That's always
been an issue for me. I'mlike, it's always based on the Bible,
and the Bible doesn't have that.No, the Bible just had Naomi.
(37:29):
Do you want to expand on that? Basically, they their husbands died
and not became lesbians, but likethey lived out the rest of their days
together and listening to other people discussit, like scholars and historians talk about
and h writers not necessarily writers.How do I describe it? I guess
(37:52):
historians like historical literature, people whoare specialized, who specialize in analyzed Biblical
texts. But they're like, it'swritten in a very homoerrotic way, or
like in a very it's supposed tobe, Like it's definitely talking about women
love women here, and that Naomiand Ruth were gay, like how they
(38:15):
talked about how David and John Jonathanwere gay. Everybody likes to forget all
the gay things in the Bible,So if women, I guess. I
guess their idea of having sister wivesis so they can also have their naomis.
But I don't know. That wasa criticism during the day, that
(38:37):
they can be getting up to morelike taboo sexual practices with all their multiple
wives. I mean, yeah.But also so for a Young's part,
he said, polygamy was quote oneof the best doctrines ever published. But
then twenty years after he died,Utah was admitted into the Union, and
(38:57):
in exchange they had to give uppolygamy. So they gave up. They
gave up polygamy like eighteen sixty,so that didn't take long. No,
So for like M's point earlier,that's how long the Mormons have not been
doing polygamy, Like the eighteen sixties, that's how long the Mormons have said
that they don't do polygamy anymore.The only ones who still do it are
(39:17):
like fringe people who don't abide bythe actual like laws that the Church is
setting out currently. Yeah, andlike it's not like it's impossible for the
the uh the church to update theissue though, is saying how infallible the
prophets are each time, and thenlike having to change. Well something,
(39:39):
Well, God is just updating whathe wants. God says he doesn't like
that anymore. It's not the prophet, it's God. Right. I think
some of it's like they just say, oh, there was a misunderstanding in
God's word or something like he didn'tquite understand the message that was being received
and stuff like that, because likethere's old Uh, there's old shit about
(40:04):
you know, the color of yourskin being related to how much sin you
have that kind of skin, Andthat's not even old. It was like
two decades ago the Mormons were stillsaying that they were going to be a
white and delightful people. Yeah.I just read that today recently, that
they that they stopped putting bars onblack people from doing things inside the church.
(40:27):
That's discussed. Wait, like it'sa lot, it's a lot.
This does segue really nicely into mynext point. Oh let's let's let's go
okay, so we'll talk about anotheraspect of bringing young that's also not great.
Uh, because I don't consider everythingabout the fifty five wives to be
bad, but I don't consider itto be great either. So in April
eighteen fifty five, at the MormonsSpring conference, Young called on some one
(40:52):
hundred and sixty men to abandon theirhomes, their farm and their families and
to head into the wilderness surrounding theUtah settlements to establish missions among the Native
Americans. Oh, just leave themalone. Yeah. So, in Mormon
cosmology, Native Americans are the descendantsof a fallen ancient patriarch, and church
(41:14):
officials say they were undertaking the missionsto convert tribes on their borders to their
faith and to improve their welfare.So there is a guy named Garland Hurt.
Garland Hurt, that guy was anIndian agent to Utah, and he
was really suspicious about what was happening, and a confidential letter to the head
(41:37):
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs inWashington, he wrote that the missions were
actually intended to tea, to teachthe natives to distinguish between quote Mormons and
Americans. Oh, a distinction headded that would be quote prejudicial to the
interests of the latter to the UnitedStates. So he thinks that what's happening
is that Bergham Young is going outthere, is telling his men to go
(41:58):
out there and teach them that theMormons are good guys. In the United
States. People are bad guys,and you should be good with us and
bad with them. Yeah. Thatsounds right. Yeah, that sounds like
an approximation of what would probably behappening. The first of the missionaries left
Salt Lake City in May of eighteenfifty five. One band of men rode
(42:19):
about three hundred and fifty miles northinto what's now Idaho, which is beyond
Young's legal jurisdiction. Another headed fourhundred miles southwest beyond Utah's borders into kind
of where Las Vegas is, anda third went just they were just still
in Utah. They went like twohundred miles southeast into where Moab, Utah
(42:40):
is now Okay. In August,Young wrote to the Las Vegas missionaries working
among the Payutes to congratulate them onthe quote prosperity and the success which has
thus far attended your efforts quote,and to exhort them to start baptizing Native
Americans, to quote gain their confidence, love and esteem, and make them
feel by your acts that we aretheir real friends. Quote that some sentences
(43:06):
make me uncomfortable. Yeah. Byeighteen fifty seven, non Mormon newspapers from
New York to California had begun reportingthat the Mormons were seeking the Native alliance
in case of a clash with theUnited States because they're like they're building an
army, was what the newspapers weresaying. And this was based on briefings
from officials who had returned to Washington, or gossip or just some of it
(43:30):
was just alarmist, like for example, in the National Intelligencer, a Washington
newspaper in eighteen fifty seven, theyput the number of Mormon Native allies at
three hundred thousand, even though thetotal population of the Utah Territory was only
like twenty thousand for Native Americans.Wow, and I just liked this quote.
(43:52):
But Young characterized the press coverage asa prolonged howl of base slander.
That's quote honestly accurate. I mean, jeez. So ultimately the missions last.
The missions lasted like almost no time, and they didn't really go much
of anywhere. The Southeast mission collapsedwithin four months after a skirmish with the
(44:16):
Ute Natives. The Las Vegas Missionfollowed because they decided to shift their focus
from conversion to doing a lead minefor some reason. All right, sure,
uh, and that didn't work.Out for them, and then the
Northern Mission called Fort Lemmy operated amongthe Bannock, Shoshone and others until eighteen
(44:38):
fifty eight. So it lasted thelongest, like a year, and that
is a lot. I didn't reallywork out for them. No, And
so all of this is happening eighteenfifty seven to fifty eight. And you
want to know something is that BrighamYoung's term as territorial governor had actually ended
in eighteen fifty four. Yeah,he was just kind of existing the saying
(45:00):
he was in charge. But thatis hilarious. He wasn't. So the
new president Buchanan, with his cabinet, uh said, uh, okay,
so this is kind of like you'regathering an army. Then, because he's
right there with that, he decidedto replace Sprigham Young with another guy who
was the mayor in Georgia for awhile, a mayor in someplace in Georgia.
(45:22):
And uh so he ordered instead ofjust ordering that guy to go,
he ordered troops to accompany the newgovernor west and to enforce federal rule in
Utah. But that are not clear. He did not notify Brigham Young that
he was coming to replace him.Oh shit, Yeah, so yeah.
So what happened was that Young foundout in July of eighteen fifty seven that
(45:47):
this was happening. The something calledthe Deseret News reported that Apostle Parley Parley
Pratt, what a name, ParleyPratt? So that that guy an apostle,
he had been killed in Arkansas bythe estranged husband of a woman he
(46:07):
had taken as his twelfth wife.Oh wow, who So they learned that,
and then they learned that the rumorswere circulating that federal troops were advancing,
prompting Apostle Heber Kimball. So thatprompted him to say, I will
(46:29):
fight until there is not a dropof blood in my veins. I have
wives enough to whip out the UnitedStates. We're gonna sick his wives on
the president. Oh my god.I could not include that. Oh my
(46:50):
god, I have wives enough.Oh my god. So Mormon two were
traveling into the area from the KansasMissouri area brought word and said, yes,
there are, in fact actually federaltroops coming here headed for Utah,
And that led to Young's announcement onthe tenth anniversary of his arrival in the
(47:12):
Great Salt Lake Valley that they weregoing to do something about this, dear,
So I'll tell you what happened.Six weeks later, a California bound
wagon train including one hundred and fortynon Mormon immigrants, most of them from
Arkansas, made camp in a lushvalley known as Mountain Meadows, about forty
miles beyond the Mormon settlement of CedarCity, and just before breakfast, According
(47:37):
to an account by historian Will Bagleyin a book called Blood of the Prophets,
Brigham Young and the Massacre at MountainMeadows, a oh, dear,
that oh, a child among theimmigrants fell struck by a bullet. And
that happened as a party of menwith painted faces attacked, and the immigrants
had to circle up their wagons.H After a five day siege, a
(48:01):
white man bearing a white flag approachedthe immigrants Mormons. He told them had
interceded with the attackers and would guaranteethe immigrants safe passage out of Mountain Meadows
if the Arkansans would turn over theirguns. And the immigrants accepted the offer.
So the Mormons said, will helpyou. We fought off those guys.
(48:22):
This sounds work is strated. Sothe wounded and the women and children
were led away first, followed bythe men, each guarded by an armed
Mormon. After half an hour,the guard's leader gave the order to halt.
Every man in the Arkansas party wasshot from point blank range. According
to eyewitness accounts sighted by Bagley,the women and older children fell to bullets,
(48:45):
knives, and arrows. Only seventeenindividuals, all of them children under
the age of seven, were spared. This is the Mormons that did this.
Yeah, that's uh, Nope,nope, what the fuck? What
the fuck? So for a longtime, yeah, for a long time,
decades, Mormon leaders blamed the PayuteIndians for the massacre. They took
(49:09):
part in the initial attack the massacre, but research by Bagley, Juanita Brooks,
and some other historians have established thatit was mostly all the Mormons.
Uh so. One of the modernday Mormon guys named Henry Iring, I
(49:29):
think finally just recently formerly acknowledged thatMormons in southern Utah organized and carried out
the massacre. It's about down time, yeah, he said. Quote what
was done here long ago by membersof our church represents a terrible and inexcusable
departure from Christian teaching and conduct.A separate expression of regret is owed to
(49:51):
the payute people who have unjustly bornefor too long the principal blame for what
occurred during the massacre. Yeah,did they pay reparations at very fucking least?
I seriously doubt it. No,I assume there was no reparations given.
But what happened with the troops?So September eighteen fifty seven, about
(50:12):
fifteen hundred federal troops were about amonth from reaching Fort Bridger, one hundred
miles northeast of Salt Lake City,and Young he was like in desperate need
of time to prepare an evacuation ofthe city, mobilized the militia to delay
the army. Okay, So forseveral weeks militiamen raided the troops supplies,
burned the grass to deny forage totheir horses, cattle and mules, and
(50:36):
burned Fort Bridger damn. And thenthere were some November snowstorms that intervened.
Snowbound and lacking supplies, the troopscommander decided to spend the winter at what
was left of the fort. Mormons, he declared to have quote placed themselves
in rebellion against the Union and entertainedthe insane design of establishing a form of
government thoroughly despotic and utterly repugnant ofour institution. Quote. There's a lot
(51:01):
of cognitive dissonance going on in mybrain, like, oh, yeah,
I don't like the Mormons. Idon't like what they've done. I don't
like anything. It's just wiping outpeople for their religious beliefs. But they
weren't. They didn't do this becauseof the religious beliefs. They did this
(51:22):
because of you know, the terriblethings that are going on because of the
Mormons. And I'm just like,well, originally those troops weren't even gonna
do anything except just ac company thenew governor. But now they're doing something.
Now they have to do something.Yeah, So spring thaw in eighteen
(51:44):
fifty eight, Johnston, the leaderof the army, decided like he needed
reinforcement, so we prepared to getthem and that would bring his numbers from
fifteen hundred to five thousand, whichat the time was a third of the
entire US Army. Jesus and atthe same time Young initiated what has become
known as the Move South, whichis an exodus of some thirty thousand people
(52:06):
from settlements in northern Utah. Beforeleaving Salt Lake City, Mormons buried the
foundation of their temple, their mostsacred building, and planted wheat to camouflage
it from the invader's eyes. Andthen a few men remained behind ready to
put houses and barns and orchards tofire to keep them out of the soldier's
hands. So that's what they wereready to do. So they were going.
(52:29):
They were ready to just like fightuntil they were exterminated. Essentially,
keep moving and fight until we're exterminated. But they weren't, obviously, because
they're one of the largest religious organizationsstill in the world. So that's not
one of the big ones, youknow. So that's due largely to the
intervention of an advocate of theirs namedThomas Kine. For the winter the winter
(52:53):
of eighteen fifty seven and fifty eight, Cain set out for Utah to try
to mediate what was being called theMormon crisis. The president was like,
I don't support what you're doing,but I'm not going to stop you from
doing it. By April, inexchange for peace, he had secured Young's
agreement to give way to the newgovernor. So he did a really good
(53:13):
job. He got there in February, sorry I skipped that word, and
then by April, and then byApril he had gotten Young to agree to
stop. And then the public,for its part, decided to blame the
president for what was going on becausehe didn't even bother to notify Young of
what was happening. And I wouldsay that that's his fault, so that
(53:36):
he didn't have to be embarrassed anylonger. Basically, the president sent a
peace commission out to Utah and Youngaccepted that. So that same month,
Johnston and the army march through thedeserted streets of Salt Lake City then kept
marching forty miles south to establish CampFloyd, which is in present day Fairfield,
Utah. And since the army wasno longer a threat, the Mormons
(53:58):
just sort of returned back to theirhomes and just began a long and fitful
accommodation to secular rule under a seriesof non Mormon governors. And there was
a lot of federal laws against polygamythat happened, but they already they were
already giving up polygamy anyway. Basicallypretty soon after this, because Young dies,
So yeah, and he was,you know, keeping it alive more
(54:20):
or less. Yeah, he throughhis own singular effort. Yeah, him
alone, So one historian says.One historian says, the United States government
used polygamy as a wrecking ball todestroy the old theocracy. By eighteen ninety
Mormons were hanging on by their fingernails. But then Wilford Woodriff delivered his manifesto
(54:43):
repudiating polygamy. He went further.He said that from now on, Mormons
would obey the law of the land. Quote. So statehood for Utah followed
in eighteen ninety six. So theirdreams of being their own independent, their
own basically independent state with their owndominion, free of the rule of United
States, that was over, andthey just entered the American fold. And
(55:04):
that's the end of Brigham Young's part. And the very last part of our
American Messiah's The LDS series is gonnabe about just what are they doing now?
There was just so much background.We had to have the background,
but we also need to know whatthey're doing currently. Yeah, and you
know what, you guys, youcould hear that in the next episode.
(55:25):
So stick around. We'll see youagain. Next week and then we'll return
to our regular programming. Ay nowagain, this is a part two.
We're gonna have a part three andgo listen to part one if you haven't
already, but if you've already listenedapart one and you're really itching to keep
(55:47):
hearing us. We are on somany social medias. We are on TikTok,
Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube YouTube. We do gaming stuff. If
we play video games, I believethe young people call it let's plays.
(56:07):
I don't know that they call itthat an actually do They might call it
something they don't know. They don'tcall it let's please anyone. I don't
know. I don't know what kidsare calling things these days. I'm not
even that I'm only thirty Jesus okay. Anyway, and if you want your
own questions answered, uh, youcan go ahead and send us a message
(56:29):
either by email, which is whywould you ask that pod at gmail dot
com? Again, that is whywould you ask that pod at gmail dot
com? Or you go to ourwebsite, why would you ask that dot
com? Go to our contact button. There's a little form there. You
don't have to do any kind ofemailing or anything, just throwing your name
doesn't have to be your name couldbe any name. If you made it
(56:52):
this far, do what was theirname? Pete starts with the P the
party. What's it at Harley Pratt? We'll put what wife number you want?
Yeah, but you are sorry anduh we'll know that you listen to
this episode and you get thrown aquestion. Could be any kind of question,
(57:15):
stupid that you think of, sweet, stupid, blended, splendiferousus,
uh, strange, sinister. Wetake them all. So we'll see you
(57:40):
guys again next week with the finalepisode in this set about the LDS Church.
So thank you, have a goodweek. The proper Give me that P.
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