OCR Text |
Show The Record pans polygamy by Bettina Moench The Mormons first came to the Salt Lake Valley in the late 1840s to escape religious persecution in the East. Their ways were not only considered different by "Gentiles," or non-Mormons; non-Mormons; they were also thought to be dangerous to the harmony of the country. By 1857, President James Buchanan's concern had grown such that the United States Army had a twofold responsibility in the Territory of Utah: to protect the Overland Mail route from Indian attack, and to keep an eye on the Mormons. In fact, the Mormons were considered such a worrisome problem that off-duty off-duty Army personnel were permitted to prospect in hopes that a discovery of mineral resources would flood the Territory with Gentiles. Gen-tiles. To the Gentiles, one of the most outrageous of the Mormon practices was that of polygamy. Until it was officially of-ficially outlawed in 1890, the taking of more than one wife was considered a crime in the eyes of non-Mormons. In the Sept. 29, 1983 edition of the Park Mining Record, the editors railed against polygamy and a Salt Lake judge who ignored the problem. "No one in his or her senses sen-ses doubts that the crime of polygamy is rampant in Utah," asserted the Record. "The memory of the oldest inhabitant runs not to the contrary in fact, so far as Utah is concerned, in its history were polygamy left out it would be very much like Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out." The Record devoted frontpage front-page space to ridiculing Judge Hunter for his failure to act against polygamists, whose lifestyle was impossible im-possible to ignore. "In Salt Lake (not to mention men-tion every other inhabited place in the Territory), he could not throw his cigar stump in any direction as he strolls along the street without hitting a polygamist, and yet the only occupant of the Pen for the crime of polygamy is a Gentile from Park City who married a wife without having a divorce divor-ce from one then living. Would Frazier have been an occupant of the Pen if he had been a Mormon?" wondered the Record. The Record further lambasted lam-basted the judge for his failure to mete out punishment punish-ment for the 20 murders that had occurred in Summit County during his term. "Lapse of time is as efficacious ef-ficacious in clearing the culprits from murder as revelations are immunity against polygamy," ranted the Record. But Gentile Utahns were not the only ones to frown on polygamy. A dispatch from Milwaukee noted that the great Indian Chief Sitting Bull had nearly found his way to God, but had foundered foun-dered because of his attachment at-tachment to more than one wife. "The ceremony of receiving Sitting Bull into the Catholic Church has been postponed because Sitting Bull can't decide which of two wives to let go," said the news item. It seems that a Bishop Morely had been giving Sitting Sit-ting Bull religious instruction instruc-tion for several months, and the Chief apparently was a willing and apt student. That is, up until he found that the Church forbade communicants com-municants to have more than one wife. "Separation from his wives was too much for him, and he will probably return to heathenism," the reporter wrote with obvious gloom. |