- jader3rd on The “Jim Bridger Discovered the Great Salt Lake” Billboards and the Myth of the Empty West: “I think that the word discover is legitimately used here. Many times when the word discover is used, it is in the context of informing the largest community of humans at the time who were writing information down, and passing that information along in the form of universities and schools. I can’t think of a better word to use when crossing the boundary of something not known by the group of scholars trying to collect all knowledge, to the other side when they are informed about it.” Mar 8, 22:26
- on A Review: Rise Up and Speak: Selected Discourses of Eliza R. Snow: “The idea that Joseph Smith was some fast talking charlatan who was able to con some backwoods yokels, so he could sleep with a few other women, really ignores the reality that Joseph Smith was surrounded by very smart and assertive people, like Eliza R Snow, who would have called him out on his shenanigans in a second.” Mar 8, 22:17
- on Latter-day Saint Where’s Waldo and Stephen Biesty Cross-Sections: “I loved “I Spy a Nephite!”” Mar 8, 20:05
- on The “Jim Bridger Discovered the Great Salt Lake” Billboards and the Myth of the Empty West: “John Mansfield, those are some good points. bmp, I am well aware of what is implied in settler colonialism. I am less aware of violence being justified by it (I trust you that it has happened, but I find it ironic, since the point of settler colonialism is to highlight a system of imposing violence on Indigenous peoples). As indicated in some of my other comments, I am not completely aligned or comfortable with the framework of settler colonialism, but I do think that scholars who speak from that framework do have some legitimate points, which is why I brought it up here. That being said, even though I’ve offered some defense of what I said, please keep in mind that they way I wrote this post was that I read the book, which is definitely a settler colonialist critique of settler society, and felt like the sign was an interesting case-in-point example of what the book was saying that appeared at the same time I read it. When I’ve done more formal writing on the history of Latter-day Saint settlement in Utah, I’ve tried to be a bit more balanced and portray things from the perspective that is sympathetic to both the Latter-day Saints and to the Native peoples who lived here at the same time. I know it’s a reality that White settlers could sustain a denser population through agriculture and that if the Latter-day Saints didn’t do it, eventually other Americans would. And to your statement, yes, the LDS pioneers were aware that there were people living in the land who had a long history in the region, but the issue is more around how they (and other American settlers) chose to tell the story of their settlement. I’ve read many autobiographical sketches and historical recollections of the pioneers, and it is not uncommon for them to talk about the land being a barren wilderness and only mentioning Native Americans to talk about either efforts to assimilate them or violent conflicts. Take, for example, the Zerah Pulsipher family autobiographical sketches. (https://zerahpulsipherplace.wordpress.com/autobiographies/.): Zerah talks about his ancestors settling in “an entire wilderness country where seldom a blow had been struck by a white man there.” Native Americans are “the roving savage” in his accounts, and are mostly noted for killing his livestock. His wife, Mary, states that “We helpt cultivate the baren desert and made it blosum like the rose,” without mentioning any Native Americans in her account. That’s a pretty straightforward statement of “empty west.” Zerah’s sons served missions to the Shoshone tribes, so mention them a bit more, but, again, mostly in the context of violence and civilizing efforts – the things that tend to be used to invalidate the way of life of the Indigenous peoples in favor of settlers. For example, Charles talks about having to “protect our selves from the Savage Indians that inhabited the western country” on the trek west, and, later, describes being caught by a Ute band during a conflict and having to fast-talk his way out. His message to them was, “a great many moons ago that we was all good brothers together and lived in peace with each other but through their waring with each other and sheding of much blood and liveing on wild meat and neglecting to raise grain to live on that they had dwindled down to what they are now, but the time has come for you to quit fighting and go to work like we do and quit fighting and when you come to see us We should feide [feed] you on Mormon beef and flour and when we come to See you, You should give us venson to eat and thus be good friends.” Again, the main purpose of Native Americans in his story are about their violence and need for being civilized. Their way of telling the story is common, though, of course there are some exceptions. Jacob Hamblin is one example of someone who left writings that express both awareness and sympathy for the situation they were imposing on the Paiutes in southern Utah.” Mar 8, 16:06
- on The “Jim Bridger Discovered the Great Salt Lake” Billboards and the Myth of the Empty West: “What’s interesting about this is that the billboard is not trying to teach history, it’s just trying to do market research for a billboard company. Jim Bridger is sort of irrelevant to that effort. It looks like they just picked him as almost a token figure to fill a role. What they’re doing is surveying who knows anything about Jim Bridger, and then leaving the billboards up for a month, and then doing another survey to develop data on the extent to which billboards are effective. The associated web site acknowledges that Jim Bridger may well have not found the lake, although its list of who the other possibilities were only lists white explorers. One thing is for sure: more people know who Julie Reagan is than used to know.” Mar 8, 12:23
- on The “Jim Bridger Discovered the Great Salt Lake” Billboards and the Myth of the Empty West: “I can’t speak for the Reagan advertising company, but the Mormon pioneers didn’t believe in the myth of the empty west at all. They saw themselves in a place with thousands of years of human history. Differences in productivity aren’t fantasy. If you want to understand reality, you have to face the harsh economic truth that industrial societies can maintain larger and denser populations than agricultural societies, which can maintain larger and denser populations that hunter/gatherer societies. You might think that “settler colonialism” just means settlers founding colonies, but it actually implies a whole ideological framework that gives legitimacy to some people and denies it to others. The pioneers could just as reasonably be called “immigrants” or “refugees,” but that would recognize their moral right to exist and practice their religion that “settler colonialism” denies. The framework of “settler colonialism” has already been used to justify violence and it should not be treated as a simple descriptive term.” Mar 8, 06:23
- on The “Jim Bridger Discovered the Great Salt Lake” Billboards and the Myth of the Empty West: “DaveW, you asked what Bridger discovered? He discovered that the Bear River flows into a great body of salt water that he could speculate was the Gulf of California or some other arm of the Pacific Ocean. He discovered a question. That question was answered when the Sublette group explored the shoreline, followed up by Bonneville, and Washington Irving could publish in 1837 The Adventures of Captain Bonneville and let the public at large know, thirteen years after Bridger touched it, that a great salt lake exists in North America high above sea level. Bonneville through Irving estimated the elevation as “one and three-fourths mile above the level of the ocean.” Fremont in 1843 could with instruments significantly improve Bonneville’s elevation estimate. Finally, Stansbury received orders in 1849, twenty-five years after Bridger touched it, to spend the next couple years first surveying the Great Salt Lake and then compiling an extensive report on it. I find all of that activity meaningful, part of an unfolding understanding of the North American continent that hasn’t stopped. Building knowledge involves step after step of work by many, and there are certain thresholds, often argued over, that get labelled “discovery.” Big hints of what may be discovered precede discovery, and vastly greater understanding developed by others will follow that. From Jerry Enzler’s biography of Bridger, pp. 34-35, “The course of the Bear River is like a great question mark in its route, and so it was in the trappers’ minds. Where would it go next? Could it be the ‘Bonaventura,’ that mysterious river that rumor held might be the water passage to the west? They argued among themselves about the course of the Bear, and some trappers made a wager. Twenty-year old Bridger was selected to explore its course.” [ . . . ] “Then he saw it. The canyon walls fell away and the river flowed into a great expanse of water that expended for miles, its choppy waters dotted with whitecaps. He rode up to its shore and tasted it.” That was a key moment in the history of the Great Basin and of North America, and I prefer to honor it instead of trying to bring it down a notch.” Mar 7, 20:49
- on Latter-day Saint Where’s Waldo and Stephen Biesty Cross-Sections: “Only tangentially related: in the 90s, a third party publisher put out a Where’s Waldo copycat called “I Spy a Nephite”. (I just looked and noticed the publisher is “White Horse Books” which is just so on the nose for the time period.) May be worth your time!” Mar 7, 05:50
- on The “Jim Bridger Discovered the Great Salt Lake” Billboards and the Myth of the Empty West: “I quite like that perspective, Carey. One of my BYU professors said something similar at the end of a class which was very heavily focused on racial reckoning. I suspect that will be summarily dismissed as “guilt prophylaxis” or some such Dan McClellan-ism by parties so inclined. But I suppose you can’t please everybody.” Mar 6, 21:40
- on The “Jim Bridger Discovered the Great Salt Lake” Billboards and the Myth of the Empty West: “From a theological perspective, we could frame issues like this within the idea that each generation seeks forgiveness for the sins and shortcomings of its time. That concept is even reflected symbolically in the temple washing ordinance, which includes language about being cleansed from the sins of one’s generation. Approaching the question this way allows us to view the pioneers in a more complete light recognizing both their heroism and their failures without feeling forced to choose between the two. It provides a way to honor their courage and sacrifices while also acknowledging that they were not flawless.” Mar 6, 19:00
