The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 3
605 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Trek South: How the Mormons Went to Mexico
church, through its official press, deny that Mexico was being con-
sidered as a haven for Mormon stalwarts, but it went further. It
was contended that the anti-Mormon element wished to see a new
exodus take place so they could enrich themselves on abandoned
Mormon industry and land." Many Mormons came to see in the
seeming moral outrage over polygamy an ulterior avarice for their
hard-won economic establishment." When, in 1884 and 1885, the
church began to quietly advise the heads of polygamous households
to consider Mexico as an acceptable retreat from capture by United
States marshals, many were still suspicious of the wisdom of leaving
their possessions to gentile intruders. In the words of Bishop Henry
Lunt, who was himself forced into Mexico, polygamy was but a
"hobbyhorse" used by Mormons' foes to accomplish fraudulent
ends." It was only with a good deal of misgiving that Mormon
polygamists cast their lot with a new life in the Mexican desert."
By mid-decade, however, the severity of anti-Mormon pressures
became so intolerable that something had to be done. In league with
local ecclesiastical authorities in southern Arizona, President John
Taylor and other high authorities of the Mormon Church reversed
their earlier policy and selected a site in the Casas Grandes Valley
of Chihuahua as a recommended sanctuary for harrassed Mormons
in the United States.1 Speaking in St. David, Arizona, on January
18, 1885, the Mormon hierarchy announced the renting of some three
hundred acres near Corralitos, in Chihuahua, and named a commit-
tee responsible for purchasing yet more land for the establishment
of colonies south of the international line. Word then spread like
a prairie fire that a place had been found where members of the church
could both practice their religion and live in peace.'" Almost before
8Ibid., March io, 188o, March go, 1881.
For a more extensive commentary on economic distress due to the "Raid," see Ar-
rington, G eat Basin Kingdom, 353-36o. Another interesting adjunct is raised by the
study of Hansen, who finds polygamy often to have been used only as a moral lever
so as more effectively to hobble what gentiles considered the chief Mormon offense:
monolithic control of territorial politics. Quest for Empire, 147-179.
"o"Letter from Bishop Henry Lunt," The Latter-day Saints' Millenial Star, XLVIII
(January, 1886), 28.
""Journal of William Morley Black, 1826-1914," in "Miscellaneous Mormon Diaries"
(typescript, BYU), XI, 19; and Grace Foutz Boulter, "History of Bishop Jacob Foutz, Sr.,
and Family" (microfilm of typescript, BYU), 27.
"Jesse N. Smith, Journal of Jesse Nathaniel Smith: The Life Story of a Mormon Pio-
neer, 1834-zgo6 (Salt Lake City, 1953), 301-303; Joseph Fielding Smith, Life of Joseph
F. Smith, Sixth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake
City, 1892), 381-382; and Andrew Jenson, Church Chronology (Salt Lake City, 1899), 117.
"'Smith, Journal of Jesse N. Smith, 303.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970, periodical, 1970; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117147/m1/19/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.