The Mountain Meadows Massacre is a topic that has intrigued me since I took a Church History class a few years ago, during which we discussed it in depth. It is also a topic that can be, for obvious reasons, quite a touchy and a controversial subject. Many people still think of it as one of the skeletons in the closet of the LDS Church. I certainly never expected to go to a fireside where it would be the primary focus. But Bro. Leonard handled the topic very well and helped to shed some new light on the subject.
One of the points that he emphasized was the fact that good people do bad things. And sometimes, when one group of good people encounters a different group of good people, they can make bad decisions in how they treat each another. Such was definitely the case at Mountain Meadows in 1857.
Also, it helps to take into account that the people who committed the terrible crime lived in a much-different time than we do. They were people who had been bullied and pushed from place to place, time and time again. They had been beaten, tortured, and misused. And they were not going to be kicked out of their homes again.
Earlier in 1857, shortly before the massacre, one of their most beloved Apostles, Parley P. Pratt, had been murdered in Arkansas. Some of the emigrants from Missouri boasted that they had helped to kill Joseph Smith, while some of the Arkansans boasted that they had taken out Elder Pratt. And these people feared that others were yet to be killed.
It doesn't make what they did acceptable, but it helps me to understand where they were coming from a little bit better.
I am now looking forward to reading the book and getting the rest of the story.
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