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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Under the Mormon scheme of things in 1831, somewhere in Indian territory (somewhere it was thought, west of Independence, Missouri) a city was to be built by those who accepted the gospel restored through Joseph Smith, Jr., God's prophet for the latter days. It was to be a city of refuge – a place where the saints would be safe from both the corruptions of the day and the judgement that was to fall upon the world – and a city of righteousness, endowed with the Spirit of the Lord.
1 A Book of Commandments for the Government of the Church of Christ (Zion [Independence, Mo.]: W. W. Phelps, 1833), 29, 8; 49, 9, 48.Google Scholar
2 Smith, Joseph Jr., The Book of Mormon (Palmyra, N.Y.: E. B. Grandin for the author, 1830), p. 566.Google Scholar
3 Cowdery learned of Smith's gifts when boarding with Smith's parents in Palmyra, N.Y., travelled to Harmony, Pa., to meet the prophet, who was working on the Book of Mormon, and stayed on to act as his secretary and (after the organization of the Church of Christ) as second elder in the church. Pratt was given a copy of the Book of Mormon when a Reformed Baptist (Campbellite) and travelled to New York to meet its author. He was baptized a month before his call to be a missionary to the Indians. Whitmer met Smith when the latter stayed at the Whitmer home in Fayette, N.Y., and was one of eight men who testified that they had seen the plates from which the Book of Mormon was supposedly translated. Peterson had been one of Smith's neighbors in Palmyra. Williams, however, did not meet the prophet before his departure for the frontier. He wasconverted when Pratt took his companions to Kirtland, Ohio, to witness to his former congregation. The mission is announced in the Book of Commandments, chapters 30 and 32, and the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Carefully Selected from the Revelations of God (Kirtland, Oh.: F. G. Williams for the proprietors, 1835)Google Scholar, section 54. For an account of the journey, see Jennings, Warren A., “The First Mormon Mission to the Indians,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 37 (1971), 288–99.Google Scholar
4 Book of Mormon, pp. 23, 29–32, 85, 115–18, 229, 501, 528;Smith's interest in the Indian perhaps followed from his belief that he was of Indian descent (Book of Mormon, p. 68).
5 Second rev, and enl. edn. (Poultney, Vt.: Smith & Shute, 1825), p. 248; Hullinger, Robert N., “The Lost Tribes of Israel and the Book of Mormon,” Lutheran quarterly, 22, (1970), 320.Google Scholar
6 Smith, Samuel Stanhope, Essay (Philadelphia: Robert Aitken, 1787), pp. 60–62Google Scholar; Jordan, Winthrop D., White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (1968; Baltimore: Penguin, 1969), pp. 523–24, 539–41.Google Scholar
7 Book of Mormon, p. 177. Second thoughts about this process led Smith to reflect that intermarriage might lighten Indian complexions (see Arrington, Leonard J. and Bitton, Davis, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints [New York: Random House, 1979], p. 195)Google Scholar, and to change his text to read “pure and delightsome” in the third, Nauvoo edition of the Book of Mormon.
8 Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr., “Model Zions for the American Indian,” American Quarterly, 15 (1963), 176–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Viola, Herman J., “From Civilization to Removal: Early American Indian Policy,” in Smith, Jane F. and Kvasnicka, Robert M., eds., Indian–White Relations: A Persistent Paradox (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1976), pp. 45–56.Google Scholar
9 McCoy, , History of Baptist Indian Missions (1840), p. 197Google Scholar, quoted in Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr., Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Indian Missions and American Indian Response, 1787–1862 (New York: Atheneum, 1972), p. 101.Google Scholar
10 Berkhofer, , “Model Zions,” 188Google Scholar, quoting the United Foreign Missionary Society Board of Managers (5 May 1823); Finley, James Bradley, Sketches of Western Methodism: Biographical, Historical, and Miscellaneous, Illustrative of Pioneer Life, ed. Finley, W. P. (Cincinnati: J. B. Finley, 1854), p. 317.Google Scholar
11 Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the UnitedStates of America(Philadelphia, 1838), pp. 51–54Google Scholar, cited in Coleman, Michael C., “Not Race but Grace; Presbyterian Missionaries and American Indians, 1837–1853,” Journal of American History, 67, 1 (06 1980), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Berkhover, , Salvation and the Savage, passim.Google Scholar
12 Book of Mormon, p. 499; Book of Commandments, 9: 16.
13 Book of Mormon, p. 497.
14 In Palestine converted Jews would establish a second holy city by rebuilding “Jerusalem of old”: Book of Mormon, p. 566.
15 Book of Mormon, pp. 85, 500; cf. Micah 5: 8–9.
16 Pratt, Parley P., Mormonism Unveiled (New York, 1838), p. 13Google Scholar, and A Voice of Warning (New York, 1837), p. 189Google Scholar, discussed in Underwood, Grant, “Book of Mormon Usage in Early LDS Theology,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 17, 3 (Autumn 1984), 50–51Google Scholar. Although Smith foresaw that intermarriage could make the Lamanites “white, delightsome and just” (Arrington and Bitton, p. 195)and would be a way for Mormon missionaries to “gain a residence in the Indian territory, independent of the agent” (Ezra Booth, Ohio Star, 8 December, 1831), both considerations were probably incidental to the goal of being “numbered among … the remnant of Jacob”:Book of Mormon, p. 501.
17 Sprague, William Bell, Annals of the American Pulpit (New York: Robert Carter Brothers, 1865), 5, 710.Google Scholar
18 The Smith family belonged to the class of the socially disinherited or economically threatened who take comfort from the prospect that all things will be made new. Grant Underwood has argued, “Early Mormon Millenarianism: Another Look,” Church History, 54 (1825), 223Google Scholar, that “to portray Mormons as millenarians no longer requires us to see them as… disenfranchised”; however, as Bushman, Richard L. has noted, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1984), p. 51Google Scholar, a series of economic reversals had persuaded Smith's father that he and his family “traveled a barren land”; Smith had no reason to have confidence that things would work out for the good without a magical or divine intervention. For a useful introduction to the subject of premillennial thought, see Talmon, Yonina, “Millenarian Movements,” European Journal of Sociology, 7 (1966), 159, 181–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Berkhofer, , Salvation and the Savage, p. 45Google Scholar; Lawrence, Henry Gipson, ed., The Moravian Indian Mission on the White River (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1938), p. 369Google Scholar; Weslager, C. A., The Delaware Indian Westward Migration (Wallingford, Pa.: The Middle Atlantic Press, 1978), pp. 58–60.Google Scholar
20 Weslager, p. 65.
21 Pratt, Parley P., Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt (1874, 5th edn., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1961), p. 55Google Scholar; Cowdery to Smith, 8 April, 1831, in Hill, Donna, Joseph Smith, The First Mormon (New York: Doubleday, 1977), p. 123.Google Scholar
22 Caldwell, Martha B.. Annals of the Shawnee Methodist Mission and Manual Labour School (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1939), pp. 13, 23Google Scholar; Cummins to Clark, 20 January 1831, in Jennings, p. 298; according to the 8 April Cowdery letter someof the Shawnee believed the Mormon message: Hill, p. 123. Cummins was one of those who signed a petition to demand the Mormon departure from Jackson County, in July 1833: Smith, Joseph, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. Roberts, B. H. (2nd edn. rev., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1964), 1, 376.Google Scholar
23 Cummins to Clark, 20 January 1831: Jennings, 298.
24 Times and Seasons, 5 (15 February 1844), 43.Google Scholar
25 Whitmer, John, The Book of John Whitmer, Kept by Commandment, ed. McKiernan, F. Mark and Launius, Roger D. (Independence, Mo.: Herald Publishing House, 1980), p. 62Google Scholar; Howe, E. D., Mormonism Unveiled (Painesville, Oh.: E. D. Howe, 1834), p. 105Google Scholar; cf. McFerrin, John Barry, History of Methodism in Tennessee (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1886–1895), 1, 348.Google Scholar
26 Howe, pp. 105, 184; cf. Josiah Jones's account: Backman, Milton V. Jr., “A Non-Mormon Account of the Birth of Mormonism in Ohio,” Brigham Young University Studies, 12 (1971–1972), 311.Google Scholar
27 Howe, p. 184; Book of Commandments, 44 9.
28 Book of Commandments, 48, 59–61.
29 Howe, p. 194.
30 Smith, Joseph Jr., The Holy Scriptures, Containing the Old and New Testaments: An Inspired Revision of the Autborized Version, Corrected Edition (Independence, Mo.: The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1944)Google Scholar, Genesis 7: 23. For the date of this “translation” see Matthews, Robert J., “A Plainer Translation”: Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible, A History anda Commentary (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1975), p. 96.Google Scholar
31 Book of Commandments, 44: 26–30. The underlying principles of stewardship had been prefigured in the Book of Mormon, pp. 126, 193; such ideas were to an extent commonplaces, however: cf. Burns, Rex, Success in America: The Yeoman Dream and the Industrial Revolution (Amherst, Md.: University of Maryland Press, 1977), p. 11Google Scholar. Useful are: Higdon, Miriam Elizabeth, “Eyes Single to the Glory of God: The History of the Heavenly City of Zion,” Restoration Studies, 1 (1980), 269–77Google Scholar; Howard, Richard P., Restoration Scriptures: A Study of their Textual Development (Independence, Mo.: Herald Publishing House, 1969), pp. 243–63Google Scholar; Arrington, Leonard J., Fox, Feramorz Y. and May, Dean L., Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), pp. 15–40.Google Scholar
32 Book of Commandments, 48: 58–67.
33 Ibid., 49: 9–23.
34 Ibid., ch. 53; Whitmer, p. 62; Pratt, pp. 61–62; Times and Seasons, 3 (1 April 1842), 747–48Google Scholar: Smith, George A., in The Journal of Discourses: Reports of Addresses by Brigham Young and Others (London: F. D. and S. W. Richards, 1853–1886), 5, 214.Google Scholar
35 Book of Commandments, 45: 3.
36 Rigdon had been Pratt's pastor in Kirtland; after baptism he had become Smith's secretary, and then his counselor in the “First Presidency” of the church. Copley was a Shaker convert to Mormonism.
37 Book of Commandments, 52: 25–26.
38 Doctrine and Covenants, 27: 2.
39 A revelation given at the time merely promised that by intermarriage the Lamanites would become white and delightsome (Arrington and Bitton, p. 195), but the revelation's sitz im leben was the need for access to Indian territory, and marriage was understood by Smith's hearers to be the means to be used (Ezra Booth, Ohio Star, 8 December 1831).
40 Smith, History 2: 358. Presumably these remarks were made at that day's meeting of the Kirtland High Council – but Smith does not hint at them in his diary entry for that day (Jessee, Dean C., comp. and ed, The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1984], p. 124)Google Scholar, and it ispossible that he added them when compiling this part of his history in 1843.
41 Phelps had been the editor of the Canadaigua (New York) Ontario Phoenix; he had been called to Missouri to be a printer to the church.
42 The Evening and the Morning Star, December 1832 and January 1833.
43 Cowdery to Smith, 8 April 1831, in Hill, p. 123.
44 Christian Guardian (Toronto), 20 December 1837.
45 Greene, John P., Orton, Amos R., Young, Lorenzo D.: Smith, , History, 207–9.Google Scholar
46 Smith, , History, 1, 125Google Scholar: Smith's attitude was probably what led the author of “A History of the Persecution, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Missouri– to omit all references to the Indians when describing Cowdery's mission to Independence: Times and Seasons, I (December 1839), 17.Google Scholar
47 William Clayton diary, I March 1845, referring to a mission “to fill Joseph's original measures,” in Ehat, Andrew F., “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith and the constitution of the Kingdom of God,” Brigham Young University Studies, 20 (1979–1980), 269Google Scholar. Smith had died the previous year; Clayton, an English convert, had been one of his secretaries and an intimate friend. See also Esplin, Ronald K., “‘A Place Prepared’: Joseph, Brigham and the Quest for Promised Refuge in the West,” Journal of Mormon History, 9 (1982), 90–91Google Scholar. The idea that the Indians would fight for the saints had surfaced in 1832 (see the letter of Joseph Antrim, June 1832, quoted in Kimball, Stanley B., “Sources on the History of the Mormons in Ohio: 1830–38 [Located East of the Mississippi],” Brigham Young University Studies, 11 [1970–1971] 535Google Scholar, cf. the letter of F. G. Williams, 10 October 1833 in Smith, , History, 1, 419)Google Scholar: it has not survived into contemporary Mormonism: see Joseph Fielding smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. McConkie, Bruce R. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954), 2, 249–50Google Scholar for the disassociation of the Indian from the destruction of the last days.
48 Smith, , History, 5, 480.Google Scholar
49 Ehat, Andrew F. and Cook, Lyndon W., comps. and eds., The Words of Joseph: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Provo, Ut.: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1980), p. 169Google Scholar. but cf. Whitmer, p. 32; Esplin, 90.
