Violence Baked into Many Religions, Including the Peaceful Mormons
Throughout history, religious followers have consistently persecuted non-believers, committing unspeakable violence in the name of self-preservation, bigotry and spreading the gospel.
The Old Testament describes, encourages, commands, condemns, rewards, punishes and regulates violent actions by God, including war, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, murder, rape, genocide, and criminal punishment.
The Christian Crusades were a series of religious wars that lasted from 1095 to 1291, in the name of reclaiming the Holy Land in the Middle East for Christianity. The violence resulted in the slaughter of anywhere from one million to nine million Muslims, Jews and other non-believers.
Muslim movements through history linked pacifism with Muslim theology but warfare has been an integral part of Islamic history both for the defense and the spread of the faith since the time of the prophet Muhammad. Islam’s early history and dogma stipulates violence and capital punishment and rules about when to whom war should be waged.
The violent history of the Mormon Church is reflected in a new Netflix movie, “American Primeval,” shedding light on the darkest and most violent period in Mormon history. It was a time of westward expansion in the U.S., rationalized as the nation’s “manifest destiny,” a time of bloody efforts by white Americans toward genocide of the Native Americans.
The church was founded on the teachings of Jesus Christ and “the virtues of peace, love, and forgiveness are at the center of Church doctrine and practice,” according to a report from the church.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known as the Mormon Church, is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has established congregations and built temples worldwide. According to the church, as of 2023, it had more than 17.2 million members of which over 6.8 million lived in the U.S.
But at the time of its founding in the 19th century, its numbers were far less and its future uncertain. The darkest and most violent period in Mormon history came in the mid-19th century when the church was a fledgling religion, trying to gain followers and a home base, that included sometimes violent clashes with native Americans.
Mormon experience with the Ute Indians was hardly filled with peace and love. The Utes historically lived in parts of Wyoming, eastern Nevada and Arizona. Sustained contact with Euro-Americans began in 1847 with the arrival of the Mormons and the gold rushes of the 1850s. Wars with settlers began in the 1850s when Ute children were captured in New Mexico and Utah by Anglo-American traders and sold in New Mexico and California.
The Utes fought to protect their homelands from invaders, but the Utah territorial governor and Mormon leader, Brigham Young, convinced President Abraham Lincoln to forcibly remove Utes in Utah to an Indian Reservation in 1864. Colorado Utes were forced onto a reservation in 1881.
The Mormon efforts to push the Utes off their native lands escalated into the Walker War (1853–54). By the mid-1870s, the U.S. government forced Utes in Utah onto a reservation, less than 9 percent of their former land.
In 1846, the Ute population was estimated at 6,000 in New Mexico, 7,000 in Colorado in 1866 and 13,050 in Utah in 1867, for a total of around 26,050 in the mid-19th century. The census of 1890 counted only 1,854 in Utah and 985 in Colorado.
Like virtually all other religions and sects, the history of the Mormon Church is littered in violence, often directed at native Americans but also targeting other non-believers. At one point, tensions grew so bad in Missouri that the governor ordered all Mormons to be either executed or expelled from the territory.
The most violent period was in the 19th century when Mormons were persecuted and fomented bloodshed in self-defense, while trying to extend Mormon reach. The 19th century was a lawless period in the western frontier when vigilantes often targeted minority groups or those perceived to be criminal or socially marginal or otherwise threatening to the community.
“American Primeval” is a largely fictional film that is rooted in facts, notably the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a series of attacks on a wagon train by Mormons who enlisted the help of members of the Southern Paiute Native Americans, leading to the deaths of at least 120 people.
The Southern Paiute people lived in the Colorado River basin of southern Nevada, northern Arizona, and southern Utah. Prior to the 1860s, there had been no long-term development of the land. Most of the non-native contact they had was with transient militants or traders. Paiute fought to defend their ancestral lands, and at first were successful in driving the settlers out.
During the second half of the 1800s, members and missionaries from the Mormon Church along with silver miners began to populate Nevada. In 1869, banker and financier François Louis Alfred Pioche, invested in a silver mine in the town which initially depended upon cheap Paiute labor to work in the mines. The conditions in the mines caused a dramatic decline in the Paiute population. By the early 1900s, there were approximately 800 Paiute people.
In Utah, aggression or retaliation by Mormons against their perceived enemies was most frequent during the first decade of settlement from 1847–1857.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre erupted at a time when, in early 1857, President James Buchanan received reports that the territorial governor, Brigham Young and the Latter-day Saints in Utah were rebelling against the authority of the federal government. Buchanan replaced Young as governor and sent 1,500 troops to Utah, triggering what is known as the Utah War. Brigham Young declared martial law in the territory, directed missionaries and settlers in outlying areas to return to Utah, and guided preparations to resist the army.
The target of the Sept. 11, 1857 Mormon attack at Mountain Meadows was the Baker–Fancher wagon train, which included about 40 families mostly from Arkansas and headed to California.
According to a report by the Mormon Church History Department, the massacre was led by a Mormon militia known as the Nauvoo Legion. The violence exploded when simmering tensions were about to boil over between Mormons and non-Mormon settlers. The bad blood resulted from clashes between the settlers and local Mormons over grazing land. Settlers had grown further frustrated because Mormon settlers had been instructed not to sell grain and other supplies to the settlers but rather to save their grain as a wartime policy.
The anger ignited violence when members of a branch of the Nauvoo Legion in southern Utah recruited Paiute Indians and laid siege to the wagon train of emigrants. Church leaders in Cedar City, Utah, advocated violence and sent John D. Lee, a militia major, to lead the attack.
The tensions escalated over the next few days when Mormon militiamen lured the emigrants from their circled wagons with a false flag of truce and, aided by Paiute Indians they had recruited, slaughtered them. Between the first attack and the final slaughter, the massacre destroyed the lives of 120 men, women, and children in a valley known as Mountain Meadows. Only small children — those believed to be too young to be able to tell what had happened — were spared. The children were placed in Mormon homes, and only reunited with their relatives a few years later, after the U.S. Army undertook a search to find them.
Two days after the massacre, a letter arrived from Mormon president Brigham Young telling local leaders to “not meddle” with the emigrants and to allow them to pass through southern Utah. It was too late and the militiamen sought to cover up the crime by placing the entire blame on Paiutes, some of whom were also members of the Mormon Church.
Two Mormons were eventually excommunicated from the church for their participation, and a grand jury that included Mormons indicted nine men. Lee was the only one to be convicted and executed for the crime, which fueled false allegations that the massacre had been ordered by Brigham Young.
After the massacre, U.S. cavalry soldiers began hunting for Shoshone Indians, believing they were responsible for the massacre. The Shoshone lived in Wyoming, southern Idaho, Nevada, and Utah and began warring with settlers in Idaho in the 1860s. Many of the conflicts between the Shoshone and the colonists, such as the Bear River Massacre, took place shortly after the Utah War. As more settlers encroached on Shoshone hunting territory, the natives raided farms and ranches for food and attacked immigrants.
The Bear River Massacre of 1863 started when U.S. forces attacked and killed an estimated 250 Northwestern Shoshone, who were at their winter encampment in present-day Franklin County, Idaho. Many of the dead were non-combatants, and included children who were killed by the soldiers. It was the most deaths the Shoshone suffered at the hands of United States forces. A total of 21 soldiers were also killed.
In 1820, the Shoshone population was estimated at 80,000. By 1855, the Shoshone numbered 36,000 people, with much of their population reduced through infectious disease epidemics and warfare. The 1910 census counted 3,840 Shoshone. As of the 2000 census, around 12,000 persons identified as Shoshone.
The Mormon Church was formed in New York in 1830 by Joseph Smith. Smith soon led church members westward and they began settling in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. In the following two decades, church followers were the victims of frequent violence. In 1833, mobs drove the Mormons from Jackson County, Mo. In 1838, the Missouri governor issued an order that the Mormons be expelled from the state or “exterminated.” The expulsion of at least 8,000 Mormons came during a bitter winter, causing extensive suffering among the refugees.
To escape the persecution in Missouri, the Mormons relocated in 1849 to a town they named Nauvoo, Ill., where they formed the Nauvoo Legion. Six years later, they were expelled from Nauvoo.
The Mormons then began a long and onerous trek across the Great Plains to Utah. As they passed through Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, resentment grew over their growing numbers, religious beliefs and social practices, that included polygamy. Opponents attacked Mormons verbally and then physically. Church leaders, including Joseph Smith, were tarred and feathered, beaten, and imprisoned.
The Hawn’s Mill Massacre of October 30, 1878, was the deadliest incident of the so-called Mormon War in Missouri. A mob attacked the Mormon settlement in Caldwell County, Mo., and at least 17 men and boys, ranging in age from 9 to 78, were slaughtered. Some Mormon women were raped or otherwise sexually assaulted while vigilantes and mobs destroyed homes and stole property.
Throughout the 19th century, Native Americans were mistreated and murdered to force them off of desirable lands and onto reservations. Some Mormons joined in the violence despite Mormon doctrine that viewed Indians as a chosen people.
Most Mormons sought peaceful relations with Indians but church members sometimes clashed violently with the indigenous people. Mormons often accused Indians of stealing but Indians believed the Mormons had a responsibility to share goods and livestock raised on Indian tribal lands.
In late 1849, tensions between Ute Indians and Mormons in Utah Valley escalated after a Mormon killed a Ute known as Old Bishop, who was accused of stealing his shirt. The Mormon and two associates hid the victim’s body in the Provo River. Settlers at Fort Utah reported other difficulties with the Indians, including shooting at settlers and stealing livestock and crops. Tensions mounted at Fort Utah, in part because Mormons refused to turn over to the Utes involved in the murder of Old Bishop or to pay reparations for his death.
In the winter of 1849–1850, a measles epidemic spread from the Mormon settlers to the Ute camps, killing many Indians and heightening tensions. At a council of Mormon church leaders in Salt Lake City on January 31, 1850, the leader of Fort Utah reported that the Utes’ actions and intentions were growing increasingly aggressive. In response, Brigham Young authorized a campaign against the Utes, that led to a series of battles in February 1850 and the murder of dozens of Utes and one Mormon.
Current radical Mormonism is reflected in Deseret nationalism, known online as #DezNat, a far-right Mormon nationalist movement that was started in 2018 by Logan Smith, a Mormon gospel singer. The group originated in 2018 after the Unite the Right rally, a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., from August 11–12, 2017.
Some within the DezNat community have advocated for the restoration of the historical, Mormon State of Deseret as an independent state outside of U.S. jurisdiction. Some DezNat commentators have suggested the new state should be a white ethnostate using both neo-Nazi and far-right accelerationist imagery.
The community has been criticized for promoting harassment against members of the LGBTQ community, ex-Mormons, feminists, abortion-rights advocates, and pornographic film actors. Some within DezNat advocate for violent actions under the pretext of blood atonement for certain sins, a practice the LDS Church leadership has disavowed.