Native American people and Mormonism

Over the past two centuries, the relationship between Native American people and Mormonism has included friendly ties, displacement, battles, slavery, education placement programs, and official and unofficial discrimination.

Adherents saw Native Americans as part of God's chosen people and they believed that preaching to them was part of the

During the 1840s, Smith sent missionaries to the Sioux (Dakota), Potawatomi (Bodéwadmi), Stockbridge (Mahican) people in Wisconsin and Canada. Additionally, representatives from the Sauk (Asakiwaki) and Fox (Meskwaki) people met with Smith at the Latter Day Saint headquarters in Nauvoo, Illinois.^{[21][22]: 492} Smith was quoted in a Nauvoo Council of Fifty meeting as stating "If the Lamanites won't hearken to our council, they shall be oppressed & killed until they will do it."^[23][24] Counselor Orson Spencer stated subsequently that "The gospel to [Native Americans] is, they have been killed and scattered in consequence of their rejecting the everlasting Priesthood, and if they will return to the Priesthood and hearken to council, they shall have council enough, that shall save both them and us."^[23][24] Later, Potawatomi leaders asked the Mormons to join them in an alliance with some other tribes, but Smith declined.^[21] The governor of Iowa John Chambers was wary of these meetings which were reported to him by interpreter Hitchcock, as Chambers believed Smith was "an exceedingly vain and vindictive fellow" who might use an alliance with Potowatomi people to start a conflict to seek revenge against Missouri.^{[22]: 500–501}

Under Brigham Young

After Smith's death and six months of a succession crisis, Brigham Young became leader of the majority of Smith's followers and the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Young discussed an alliance with some Native American nations with other top leaders but these efforts were abandoned in 1846 as Young's followers were preparing to migrate west.^[21] According to former Church Historian and emeritus church Seventy Marlin Jensen, before Mormon colonization of the region there were about 20,000 Native American people in the Great Basin.^[28] These included the Shoshone, Goshute, Ute, Paiute, and Navajo nations.^{[26][27]: 273} The settlers initially had some peaceful relations, but because resources were scarce in the desert, hostilities broke out.^[26] As tens of thousands of LDS colonizers arrived and took over the land, and resources Native Americans had used for thousands of years diminished, native nations felt they had to resist for their survival.^{[25]: 21—23 [26]}

By 1860 the population of Mormon migrants in Utah had grown to 40,000 and within another ten years that number had doubled to 86,000.^[27]: 266 By 1890 Native Americans made up only 1.6% of Utah's population.^[29]: 112 Over a century later in 2010 that number had remained about the same at 1.3%.^[30] Within 50 years of Mormon settlement the population of Utah's Native Americans had gone from 20,000 to under 2,700, a large decline of 86%.^[27]: 273 Young stated, "towards so degraded and ignorant a race of people, it was manifestly more economical and less expensive, to feed and clothe, than fight them."^[34] Of the monumental LDS colonization of the Intermountain West LDS leader Jensen stated, "Regardless of how one views the equities of Indian-Mormon relations in those times, the end result was that the land and cultural birthright Indians once possessed in the Great Basin were taken from them. ... [T]he least we can do from a distance of 160 years, is to acknowledge and appreciate the monumental loss this represents on the part of Utah's Indians. That loss and its 160-year aftermath are the rest of the story."^{[35][25]: 24}

Young taught that cursed racial lineages were in a three-tiered classification of redemption with Lamanites (Native Americans) on top, Jewish people in the middle, and Cain's descendants (Black people) on the bottom.^{[2]: 205–206} This corresponded to the time when they would each receive the gospel, with Native Americans in the foreseeable future, Jewish people after they were gathered at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and Black people in the afterlife during the resurrection.^{[2]: 205–206} Young sent Jacob Hamblin as a leader for several missionary efforts among Great Basin Native Americans resulting in important Hopi conversion of Chief Tuba.^[36]

In the 1890s, James Mooney of the Smithsonian Institution of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and Missouri military commander Nelson Miles, placed some blame on Mormon settlers for the events that precipitated the Wounded Knee Massacre.^{[37]: 94, 97} Some later scholars perpetuated these ideas, however, historical evidence does not support them.^[37]: 89

Though, nearly killed by US soldiers in the 1863 Bear River Massacre, Chief Sagwitch became a notable ally of Young and church member by 1873. 100 of his people were also baptized into the LDS Church, and they settled and farmed in Washakie, Utah. They also contributed large amounts of labor towards the building of the Logan Utah Temple in the 1870s and 80s.^{[38]: xiv, 174} Sagwitch's grandson Moroni became the first Native American bishop in the LDS Church.^[38]: xiv

20th Century

During the century between 1835 and 1947 the official LDS hymnbook had lyrics discussing Native Americans which included the following statements: "And so our race has dwindled/ To idle Indian hearts ... And all your captive brothers/ From every clime shall come/ And quit their savage customs", "Great spirit listen to the Red Man's wail! ... Not many moons shall pass away before/ the curse of darkness from your skins shall flee".^[40] In 1975 George P. Lee became the first Native American LDS general authority, though he was excommunicated in 1989, and later pleaded guilty in 1994 to having groped a young girl.^[41] By 1977 the LDS Church stated that there were almost 45,000 Native American members in the US and Canada (a number larger than any other Christian denomination except the Roman Catholic Church).^[42] In the latter half of the 20th century, the LDS Church sold lands that had served as settlements for Native American church members to private interests, as at Washakie, and the Natives were forced to move to other reservations or into nearby towns.^[43]

Beginning in 1945 then apostle Spencer Kimball was assigned to be over church relations with Native Americans, and he would go on to become president of the church and was very influential in church actions and teachings around Native Americans for four decades until his death in 1985.^{[44]: 237 [45]} Twentieth century teachings connecting modern Native Americans and Lamanites reached their height under the presidency of Spencer W. Kimball (1973 –1985),^[46]: 159 then declined, but did not disappear.^{[47]: 157–159} For example in 1967, then apostle (later church president) Kimball stated that Native Americans were descendants of Middle Eastern settlers who traveled over the ocean, and were "not Orientals" of East Asian origin,^[48] further quoting a previous First Presidency proclamation which said God, "has revealed the origin and the records of the aboriginal tribes of America, and their future destiny.-And we know it."^[49]

Kimball definitively stated in 1971, "The term Lamanite includes all Indians and Indian mixtures, such as the Polynesians ...." and, "the Lamanites number about sixty million; they are in all of the states of America from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Point Barrows, and they are in nearly all the islands of the sea from Hawaii south to southern New Zealand."^{[47]: 159 [50]} The 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon said Lamanites "are the principal ancestors of the American Indians".^[46]: 159 No evidence of the large civilizations or battles described in The Book of Mormon have been found by anthropologists and archaeologists, and DNA studies of Native Americans show that they came from Asia during the latest ice age, and not from the Middle East.^[7][51][52]

21st Century

The LDS Church altered statements after 2007 to say that Lamanites are "among the ancestors" rather than the "principal ancestors" of Native Americans.

The LDS Church's stance towards slavery alternated several times in its history, from one of neutrality, to anti-slavery, to pro-slavery. Smith had at times advocated both for and against slavery, eventually coming to take an anti-slavery stance later in his life. According to historian Andres Resendez, one of Smith's successors Brigham Young and other LDS leaders in Utah Territory leaders "did not so much want to do away with Indian slavery as to use it for their own ends."^[27]: 272 Young officially legalized Native American slavery in the Utah Territory in 1852 with each purchased Native American person allowed to be held up to twenty years in indentured servitude.^{[27]: 272 [57]} Children between seven and sixteen years old were supposed to be sent to school three months of the year, but were otherwise put to work.^[27]: 273 Soon after Mormons colonized the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 child slaves became a vital source of their labor, and were exchanged as gifts.^[57] Within a decade of settling the Salt Lake Valley over 400 Native American children were purchased and lived in Mormon homes.^[57] In 1849 a posse of around 100 LDS men in southern Utah chased and killed twenty-five Native American men in retaliation for some cattle raids, and their women and children were taken as slaves.^[27]: 274

Leader Brigham Young advocated buying children held by Native Americans and Mexican traders as slaves, and encouraged Latter-day Saints to educate and acculturate the children as if they were their own.^[58][59][57] However, despite the requirement to educate the Native American indentured servants, the majority had received no formal education according to an 1860 census.^[16]: 279 Young's spouse owned a Native American slave Kahpeputz. At age seven she was kidnapped from her Bannock family and tortured, and later purchased by Brigham Young's brother-in-law and gifted to one of Young's wives and renamed Sally.^[56] She was a servant in the Young household for over a decade working long hours with the rest of the servants and was not taught to read or write.^[55]

While considering appropriations for Utah Territory, Representative

Battles

Violence between Mormon adherents and Native Americans include the Black Hawk War, Ute Wars, Wakara's (Walker's) War, and Posey War.

Massacres of Native American people by LDS adherents

Timpanogos extermination order

During the 1850 escalation to the Battle at Fort Utah, Brigham Young ordered his Deseret Territorial Militia to "go and kill" the Timpanogos people of Utah Valley, further stating, "We have no peace until the men [are] killed off—never treat the Indian as your equal". He clarified that the militia should "let the women and children live if they behave themselves."^[62][63] Following this order was the "bloodiest week of Indian killing in Utah history."^[64]: 54 By the end of the wintertime conflict over 100 Timpanogos Utes were killed by Young's forces, and 50 of their bodies were beheaded and their heads put on display for several weeks in Fort Utah as a warning to the 26 surviving Native American women and children prisoners from the conflict held there.^[67] The prisoners were then distributed to LDS families to be used as slaves.^{[65]: 711 [68]: 76}

Table of massacres

Massacres of LDS adherents by Native American people

Mountain Meadows Massacre

In 1857 LDS militiamen dressed up as Native Americans and recruited a smaller party of Southern Paiutes for a five-day siege on a wagon train of White pioneers travelling from Arkansas to California through Utah. The disguises were an attempt to shift blame for the aggression from White Mormon people onto the local Native Americans, and for many years after, the mass murder which became known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre was blamed on Paiute Indians.^[77] During the militia's first assault on the wagon train, the emigrants fought back, and a five-day siege ensued. Eventually, fear spread among the militia's leaders that some emigrants had caught sight of the White men, likely discerning the actual identity of a majority of the attackers. As a result, militia commander William H. Dame ordered his forces to kill all the adults. 120 men and women, and all their children over the age of seven were slaughtered and their bodies left unburied.^[78] The massacre almost pushed the US government into the Utah War with the LDS Church.^[78]

Bear River Massacre

In 1863 (Jan 29) Col. Patrick Connor led a United States Army regiment killing up to 280 Shoshone men, women and children near Preston, Idaho under the urging of Mormon residents of Cache Valley, Utah after the killing of several cattle by Shoshoni men from Wyoming. The people of this camp had not been involved in the cattle killing. Refugees from this massacre moved into Box Elder County where they converted to Mormonism and eventually settled on church-owned property at Washakie, Utah.^[79][80]

Indian Placement Program

The Indian Placement Program (also called the Indian Student Placement Program and the Lamanite Placement Program) was operated by the LDS Church in the United States, officially operating from 1954 and virtually closed by 1996. It had its peak during the 1960s and 1970s.^[81] Native American students who were baptized members of the LDS Church were placed in foster homes of LDS members during the school year. They attended majority-White public schools, rather than the Indian boarding schools or local schools on the reservations. This was in line with the Indian Relocation Act of 1956. An LDS author wrote in 1979 that in southeast Idaho Native Americans from reservations were often treated with disdain by LDS and non-LDS White people.^{[14]: 378 [82]}

The program was developed according to LDS theology, whereby conversion and assimilation to Mormonism could help Native Americans.^[15] An estimated 50,000 Native American children went through the program.^[83][3] The foster placement was intended to help develop leadership among Native Americans and assimilate them into majority-American culture. The cost of care was borne by the foster parents, and financially stable families were selected by the church. Most of these placements took place on the Navajo Nation, with a peak participation of 5,000 students in 1972. The program decreased in size after the 1970s, due to criticism, changing mores among Native Americans, and restriction of the program to high school students as schools improved on reservations. In the 70s and 80s more Native Americans attended the church's Brigham Young University than any other major US institution of higher learning.^[7] Many of the students and families praised the program; others criticized it and the LDS Church for assimilationist policies weakening the Native Americans' ties to their own cultures.^[7]

In the spring of 2015, four plaintiffs (now referred to as the "Doe Defendants") filed suit in the Window Rock District of the Navajo Nation Tribal Court, alleging they had been sexually abused for years while in the foster program, roughly from the years 1965 to 1983, and the LDS Church did not adequately protect them.^[84] The LDS church filed suit in federal district court in Salt Lake City, alleging that the Tribal Court did not have jurisdiction and seeking an injunction "to stay the proceedings from moving forward under tribal jurisdiction."^[84] Federal district court judge Robert Shelby denied the church's motion to dismiss and also ruled that it first had to "exhaust all remedies" in Tribal Court.^[84]

Teachings on Native American skin color

Shivwits Band of Paiute people being baptized into the LDS Church by White missionaries in 1875

Several church leaders have stated that The Book of Mormon teaches that Native Americans have dark skin (or the "curse of redness") because their ancestors (the Lamanites) were cursed by God, but if Native Americans follow church teachings, their dark skin will be removed.

Native American Jeanette Smith married LDS, European American Dudley Leavitt in 1860.

In the past, LDS Church leaders have consistently opposed marriages between members of different ethnicities, but today, interracial marriage is no longer considered a sin. Early Mormon leaders made an exception to the interracial marriage teachings by allowing White LDS men to marry Native American women because Native Americans were viewed as being descended from the Israelites; however, under Young, leaders did not sanction White LDS women marrying Native American men.^{[98]: 64 [97]} In 1890 Native Americans made up only 1.6% of Utah's population.^[29]: 112 In the 1930s many states had laws banning Native Americans from marrying White people, though, Utah did not.^[29]: 106

The 1831 transcript of a revelation by Joseph Smith approving marriages between church members and Native Americans, stating "For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles."

On July 17, 1831, Smith said that he received a

There is evidence that Young may have married^[56] his Bannock^[113] servant^[112]: 66 Kahpeputz (Sally) Young. Kahpeputz would later marry Ute chief Kanosh) in a temple,^{[108]: 195 [14]: 150} and they were both buried in their LDS temple robes, a custom for LDS members.^{[106]: 215–216, 348}

By 1870 only about 30 Mormon men had Native American wives,^[29]: 121 and few further interracial marriages with Native Americans occurred. Later Mormons believed that Native American skins would be lightened through some other method.^[98]: 119 Under the presidency of Spencer W. Kimball, the church discouraged interracial marriages with Native Americans.^[114] In 2013, the LDS Church disavowed previous teachings which stated that interracial marriage is a sin.^[115][116]

Other Latter Day Saint groups' teachings

In 1920, what was then the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now called the Community of Christ), published a pamphlet titled Whence Came the Red Man which summarized The Book of Mormon stating, "two great camps ... began to quarrel bitterly among themselves. Part of them became the color of fine copper and the red brethren fought against the white."^{[117]: 65–66}

See also

• Black people and Mormonism
• Criticism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Curses of Cain and Ham and the LDS Church
• Mormonism and Pacific Islanders
• Genetics and the Book of Mormon
• Archaeology and the Book of Mormon
• Criticism of the Book of Mormon
• Phrenology and the Latter Day Saint Movement

References