by Rosalyn Eves
Mormons and the American West
As a story that touches primarily on one character’s journey, it’s impossible to do justice to the historical context of the time in this one novel. I hope to expand on some of that here.
The formal name of the Mormon Church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, I use the term “Mormon” in this book deliberately, both because it is the term that nineteenth-century members would have used to describe themselves and because it encompasses a cultural identity that is broader than strict membership in the LDS Church. I should note here that I personally identify as Mormon. It’s not always an easy identity, as it is not for Elizabeth. There are things I value about my faith community, but there are also, as the following history makes clear, things that I and other members must wrestle with, both in our past and in our present.
Mormons have historically had a somewhat contentious relationship with the rest of the United States. In 1838, Mormons were driven out of Missouri by mob violence, fueled by neighbors who didn’t trust their political influence or their strange new religion. The persistent rumors of polygamy, already practiced but not openly acknowledged by the Church until 1852, didn’t help either. Not only did it offend mainstream sensibilities, but it also fanned fears of racial mixing (see W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color). The governor of Missouri issued an executive order authorizing the expulsion, even extermination, of Mormons—an order that wasn’t formally rescinded until 1976. After being forced from Illinois in 1846, members of the LDS Church made their way across the plains to Utah, the vanguard company arriving in the summer of 1847.
While the Mormons were sometimes victims of violence, they also perpetrated instances of frontier violence. The idea of the frontier is itself problematic: while Mormons and other white settlers saw themselves expanding the “frontier” of America as part of Manifest Destiny, the lands that they chose were already homelands to Indigenous peoples. While most LDS settlers were initially kindly disposed toward the Indigenous people already in Utah, primarily as potential converts, that interest waned as local tribes rejected conversion and competition over land and other resources began to intensify. Mormons clashed with their Paiute and Ute neighbors, particularly during the Black Hawk War (1865–1872), which included the tragic Circleville massacre of Paiute men, women, and children in 1866. Some Mormons participated in the enslavement of Indigenous people, justifying their involvement in the slave trade by rationalizing that they were purchasing (mostly Paiute) slaves from Ute and Mexican traders to save them from being sold to Mexico or from being killed by slavers. But the up-to-twenty-year indentured servitude that followed probably didn’t look much different, and many adoptees were not treated as equals (see Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History; also Martha C. Knack, Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 1775–1995; and Brian Q. Cannon, “ ‘To Buy Up the Lamanite Children as Fast as They Could’ ”). In 1857, not far from where I live now, Mormons planned and executed the Mountain Meadows massacre of approximately 120 Southern emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California, sparing only seventeen children. Though LDS Church leaders denounced the crime, arresting and excommunicating the organizers of the massacre, many Mormons laid much of the blame on local Paiutes (see Richard E. Turley, Jr., Mountain Meadows Massacre).
These practices, along with the perceived theocracy (both religious and civic life were governed by Mormons) of Utah Territory, led many Americans to see Mormons as a threat to the authority of the United States. In the 1856 presidential election, the Republicans ran on a platform that promised to eliminate the dual barbarisms of their day—slavery and polygamy—the latter targeted particularly at the Mormons. In 1878, a Salt Lake City journalist, John Coyer, wrote: “If something is not done soon to stop the development of this law-breaking, law-defying fanaticism, either our free institutions must go down beneath its power, or, as with slavery, it must be wiped out in blood.”
The plight of Mormons was never as serious as those faced by people of color, particularly Black and Indigenous people. However, they were clearly outsiders. Like many Roman Catholics (especially the Irish and Italians), Mormons were seen as a subclass of whites (not white enough to mix with the top tiers of society, but not quite people of color) until the twentieth century. Protestant Americans could find no explanation for the adoption of polygamy by whites unless their racial identity was somehow corrupted (see W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color; and Max Perry Mueller, Race and the Making of the Mormon People); this racial difference was used in part to justify mistreatment of Mormons.
In response to the othering by Protestant America, Mormons began to distance themselves from their Black members. While the founder, Joseph Smith, had sanctioned ordination of Black men to the church’s priesthood, in the 1850s, Brigham Young and other leaders initiated a ban on Black men holding the priesthood and a temple ban on both Black men and women, which persisted until 1978.
Despite those injustices, there were Black Americans who joined the LDS Church. Quincy D. Newell’s recent biography of Jane Manning James offers a detailed and nuanced look at the life of this Black convert, who had little official power in the Church but nonetheless claimed a rich spiritual life for herself. As Newell argues, James is an important figure in the history of Mormonism, and her cameo in this book is a deliberate nod to that history. (For more history of Black converts to the LDS Church, check out the University of Utah’s digital archive “A Century of Black Mormons.”)
In the mid-twentieth century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a bid for mainstream acceptance. They succeeded so well—the pinnacle of that acceptance perhaps coming in Mitt Romney’s bid for president—that most people have forgotten that there was ever a time when Mormons were considered Other. The contemporary LDS Church continues to be, as scholar Terryl Givens describes it, defined by paradox—both American-born but seeking a global place; hierarchical but open to individual inspiration; struggling to be a safe place for some members of color and LGBTQ+ members but committed to worldwide humanitarian work. Still, the real heart of the Church is its members, who derive meaning from their faith in different ways: in theological exploration, in private devotion, in community service, and more. Like all religious believers, Mormons are not monolithic, and my perspective may not align with someone else’s.
Race in the American West
Many American readers learn the history of the American West through the stories of white pioneers and their encounters with the Indigenous peoples already living in the West. As a result, we tend to forget how diverse the nineteenth-century West truly was. Historians Elizabeth Jameson and Susan M. Armitage note that between 1860 and 1900, approximately one-quarter to one-third of people living in the West were immigrants from other countries. While many of these were European immigrants (Elizabeth’s town of Monroe was settled by Danish, Swedish, and other Scandinavian immigrants), Chinese immigrants recruited to work on the rail lines often stayed in western towns when the railroads were completed. Japanese immigrants gathered in Hawaii and western states at the end of the nineteenth century. Spanish colonial settlements shaped the culture of the Southwest.
Black Americans also contributed to settling the West (see Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier). Many followed the railroad: Ogden, Utah, had a large Black population in the 1870s because it was a hub of the Union Pacific railroad line, and the Pullman Palace Car Company employed significant numbers of Black porters (by 1900, they were perhaps the largest employer of Black Americans).
In some cases, the contact zones of the West ushered in relatively peaceful coexistence between cultural groups. In many cases, however, that contact proved uneasy or violent. Many white settlers of the American West brought with them the biases cultivated in the American East. While interracial marriages existed in all states and territories, as non-white populations increased (and therefore the perceived ris
k of interracial marriages), most western states passed anti-miscegenation laws, prohibiting such marriages (see Aaron Gullickson, “Black/White Interracial Marriage Trends, 1850–2000”). Colorado passed such a law in 1864, after Mr. and Mrs. Stevens would have married, though such a law would have undoubtedly affected some public perceptions of their marriage.
Some may argue that this book is not accurate because Elizabeth and her friends adopt more progressive attitudes toward race than were likely for the era. To this I would say, first, attitudes in the West toward race were as varied as the individuals living there. Second, this is a work of fiction, not a historical study, and some liberties are allowed for the sake of the story. Historical fiction is always a balancing act between the mores of the past and present values.
Some Notes on Historical Characters
Most of the main characters in this book are figments of my imagination, but a number of the secondary characters are drawn from historical records of the West in 1878. Where possible, viewpoints and dialogue are adapted from those records.
Monroe, Utah
Phoebe Wheeler is listed in local records as the first teacher at the Presbyterian school, built in 1877.
Sister Aditi Tait: Caroline Crosby recorded in her journal that an Indian woman married a Mormon missionary in India and followed him to Utah (though she lived in Cedar City, rather than Monroe).
While Brother Timican was invented, there were historically Paiute converts to the LDS Church (local ecclesiastical records in Sevier County show a handful of ordained elders), though at this historical distance it’s hard to know if such conversions were genuine or a means of survival and resistance (a way to accommodate their more powerful neighbors in order to create space for their own cultural beliefs).
Salt Lake City, Utah
Jane Manning James: As mentioned above, James is a significant figure in the history of Mormonism. The recent movie Jane and Emma offers a fascinating look at the relationship James formed with Emma Smith, the prophet Joseph Smith’s wife.
Rawlins, Wyoming
Thomas Edison, George Barker, Henry and Anna Draper, and Henry Morton were all historically present in Rawlins for the eclipse. Thomas Edison likely needs no introduction. Though not an astronomer, Edison went west to test out a new invention, the tasimeter, a device intended to measure heat from distant stars. Unfortunately, he could not get the sensitive device to work as he had hoped during the eclipse. George Barker, a professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania, extended the invitation to Edison to join the Rawlins party.
Henry Draper was a chemistry professor at New York University with a passion for astronomy that he shared with his wife, Anna. Dr. Henry Morton was president of the Stevens Institute of Technology. I owe an apology to Dr. Morton, as I don’t know if his views were as sexist as depicted here, though such feelings were common, perhaps most notoriously embodied in Dr. Edward H. Clark’s 1873 Sex in Education, or a Fair Chance for the Girls. In his book, Clark decried higher education for women. He believed women who studied in a “boy’s way” (that is, vigorous mental activity) were at risk for atrophy of the uterus and ovaries, sterilization, masculinization—even insanity or death.
Texas Jack, born John Omohundro, a frontier actor and guide, did indeed confront Edison at the hotel in Rawlins and shoot at a weathervane. The account of the incident and much of his dialogue are adapted from Edison’s record of the event. He was also the inspiration for a series of dime novels, much like the one Elizabeth reads in the opening scene.
The child Lillian Heath, who follows Elizabeth to see the telescope in Rawlins, later became the first female physician in Wyoming.
Denver, Colorado
Will and Alice’s grandpa, Barney Lancelot Davis, is inspired by Barney Lancelot Ford, who was a prominent Black businessman in 1870s Denver. A former escaped slave, Ford, by 1870, was one of the wealthiest men in Denver and an important member of the community. Henry O. Wagoner, whom Elizabeth meets at a dance at the Trans-Oceana, was another prominent African American in Denver. In 1876, Wagoner was appointed a clerk in the first Colorado State Legislature, and he later became the first Black deputy sheriff of Arapahoe County, in 1880.
Maria Mitchell was the preeminent female astronomer in the nineteenth century, famed for her discovery of a comet in 1847. She went on to become the first female astronomy professor at Vassar College and was a firm advocate for women’s education. Bits of her speech here come from Renée Bergland’s Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science; others come from Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals, assembled by her sister Phebe Mitchell Kendall, an artist who accompanied Miss Mitchell to Colorado for the eclipse.
Miss Mitchell’s students are based on the few extant records I could find, though their characters have been fictionalized for this story. Emma Culbertson became a well-respected physician and leader. Although she never married, she was one of many women who popularized “Boston marriages,” where two women lived together for economic and emotional support. Cora Harrison went from Vassar to study mathematics at Harvard, but she later contracted consumption and died in Denver in 1889. Elizabeth Owen Abbot later became a registrar at Barnard College.
Dr. Alida Avery was a former Vassar colleague of Miss Mitchell, living and working in Denver at the time of the eclipse. She was one of the few prominent women included in W. B. Vickers’s History of the City of Denver.
Helen Hunt Jackson (Mrs. Jackson), a friend of Dr. Avery’s, was a prominent writer about the American West living in Colorado Springs. In the 1880s, she became a vocal advocate for Native Americans (writing both A Century of Dishonor and Ramona). The opinions she espouses here about Mormons come largely from her book Bits of Travel at Home.
Pikes Peak, Colorado
General Albert J. Myer founded the US Army Signal Corps in 1860, just prior to the Civil War, and later adapted the use of the corps for the National Weather Service.
Samuel Pierpont Langley was a well-known astronomer, physicist, and aviation pioneer. There is some dispute as to whether Langley could have brought a bolometer to Pikes Peak for the eclipse. Anthony Aveni writes that he did, while other sources claim the bolometer was not invented until 1880. Langley’s biographer Charles Doolittle Walcott says he began work on the bolometer in 1878, but Langley’s own published work on the bolometer suggests he began systematically working on it in 1879, and his account of the eclipse says his job was to sketch the eclipse—he makes no mention of the bolometer. But Cleveland Abbe mentions that a Signal Corps member measured temperature and radiation, which is what the bolometer does.
Samuel Langley’s brother, John Langley, was a chemistry and physics professor at the University of Michigan. The brothers were invited by General Myer to observe the eclipse from the summit of Pikes Peak, but when they arrived on the mountain, they found that the local Signal Corps officers had not been informed.
Cleveland Abbe was the first chief scientist of the National Weather Service. His published record of the 1878 eclipse is invaluable for its thoroughness: most of my description of the eclipse borrows from his account. He did contract nearly fatal altitude sickness and was sent down from the peak by General Myer after the general’s arrival on Sunday, July 28.
Changes to the Historical Timeline
I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible in terms of recorded history, but I did make a few tweaks to the timeline to allow for my story. I sent most of the scientists west earlier than the historical record shows. Thomas Edison left New York on July 13, where in this story he’s already arrived in Rawlins by that point. (I did not feel it too much of a stretch, as Edison took an extended vacation after the trip to hunt and tour the West, and, in fact, George Barker recorded that the ten days they had to set up proved only just enough time.) Miss Mitchell arrives a couple of days early in my account, as does her telescope, which made it to Denver on Friday, July 26,
rather than Wednesday. I’ve also moved Cleveland Abbe’s illness forward by two days so that Elizabeth could hear about the Signal Corps’ wiring for a doctor. Occasionally, distances have been fudged in the name of narrative pacing.
I hope readers enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.
Sources for Further Reading
Aveni, Anthony. In the Shadow of the Moon: The Science, Magic, and Mystery of Solar Eclipses. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017.
Baron, David. American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World. New York: Liveright, 2017.
Bergland, Renée. Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008.
Cannon, Brian Q. “ ‘To Buy Up the Lamanite Children as Fast as They Could’: Indentured Servitude and Its Legacy in Mormon Society,” Journal of Mormon History, vol. 44, no. 2, 2018: pp. 1–35.
Givens, Terryl L. People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Gordon, Sarah Barringer. The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Hafen, P. Jane, and Brendan W. Rensink, eds. Essays on American Indian and Mormon History, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019.
Jameson, Elizabeth, and Susan M. Armitage, eds. Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Knack, Martha C. Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 1775–1995. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.
